Millions spent on new gTLDs as 11 auctions settled

New gTLD portfolio applicants settled at least 11 new gTLD contention sets last week, sharing the spoils of a private auction that looks to have totaled seven figures in sales.
Applicant Auction carried out auctions for 13 contested strings last week, which I believe lasted at least three days.
I’ve been able to determine that Donuts won six sets, Uniregistry won three and Minds + Machines won two. Radix seems to have lost at least five auctions, walking away with a great big pile of cash instead.

.hosting — Uniregistry won after Radix (which owns .host) withdrew.
.click — Uniregistry beat Radix.
.property — Uniregistry won after withdrawals from M+M and Donuts.
.yoga — M+M won, beating Donuts and Uniregistry.
.garden — M+M beat Donuts and Uniregistry again.
.娱乐 — Donuts won this string (Chinese for “.entertainment”) after Morden Media withdrew.
.deals — Donuts beat M+M and Radix.
.city — Donuts beat TLD Registry and Radix.
.forsale — Donuts beat DERForsale.
.world — Donuts beat Radix.
.band — Donuts beat What Box?

Minds + Machines disclosed this morning that the four auctions in which it was involved cost it $5.97 million.
It’s not possible to work out how much .garden and .yoga cost the company; the $5.97 million figure is net of the money it won by losing .property and .deals, ICANN refunds and auctioneer commissions.
However, it seems reasonable to assume that the average price of a gTLD, even not particularly attractive ones (.garden? Really?), has sharply risen from the $1.33 million I calculated from the first 14 auctions.
In January, M+M raised roughly $33.6 million for auctions with a private share placement. The company is listed on London’s Alternative Investment Market.
The company said it now has an interest in 28 uncontested applications.
Also today, the Canadian Real Estate Association withdrew its Community application for .mls, but this is not believed to be related to the auctions. It has a non-Community application for the same string remaining.

101domain shifts blame to Google as premium buyers offered 50% discount

101domain has offered a 50% discount to customers that were sold premium new gTLD domains for a vastly reduced price, and has tried to shift some of the blame to the registry, Google.
The offer was made in a letter (pdf) to affected registrants — previously hit with delayed invoices for thousands of dollars for domains they bought for $12.99 — sent yesterday.
It indicates that the registrar is prepared to eat at least part of its pricing error on both first-year registrations and subsequent annual renewals.
101domain told customers:

• You now have until June 23, 2014 to make a decision whether to delete the name or pay for the premium name.
• If you want to keep the name(s), 101domain will offer you a 50% discount on the first year premium price and a 25% discount on premium annual renewals.
• If you give up your name(s), we will give you a credit on 101domain.com for any future purchases equal to 25% of the price of the premium name.

Previously, affected registrants had been told to pay up or have their domains deleted the following day.
As we reported last week, almost 50 domains in Google’s .みんな (“.everyone”) were sold for $12.99, despite some being earmarked by the registry as “premiums” with annual fees of up to $7,000.
In its letter to customers yesterday, 101domain characterized Google’s system for handling premiums as non-standard and difficult for registrars to work with.
Google’s list of premium names was circulated to registrars via an email, and the registry had no EPP commands for checking out whether a name was premium in real-time, the registrar says.
There was also no way for registrars to prevent the registration of premiums and no way to check with the registry for premium sales, it added.
It seems clear from the letter that the discounts now on offer mean that if registrants choose to keep their names they’ll be getting them at less than the registry fee — 101domain will eat the difference.

We contacted Google and requested them to work with us on the matter since we felt strongly that both sides were responsible to right the situation. Google offered no assistance other than extending the date to delete the names — telling us it was our problem.

Despite this seemingly generous response to domainer outrage, at the least one affected customer is not impressed.
In an email to DI last night the original registrant that first alerted us to the pricing problem described the latest 101domain offer as “lame”.

Microsoft dumps .live gTLD bid

Microsoft has abandoned its application for the .live new gTLD, leaving the erstwhile dot-brand in the hands of either Donuts or Google.
I found this quite surprising initially, as “Live” has been a core, cross-platform brand for the company, covering services such as Windows Live, Xbox Live and Office Live. The company also owns live.com.
But it recent years the brand has started to be phased out.
While Xbox Live is still a thing, Windows Live was closed down in April 2013 and Office Live seems to have suffered a similar fate in 2012, after the new gTLD application phase ended.
The withdrawal means that the .live contention set now only comprises Google’s Charleston Road Registry and a Donuts subsidiary. It’s likely headed to ICANN auction.
Unlike Microsoft, both remaining applicants propose open-registration spaces.

.nokia — a dot-brand without a brand?

Will .nokia be the next withdrawal from the new gTLD program?
It seems possible, if reports about the death of the Nokia brand are to be believed.
The news blog Nokia Power User reported yesterday that Nokia the company will be renamed Microsoft Mobile following the close of the $7.2 billion acquisition of Nokia by Microsoft this Friday.
The blog, which may live to regret its own choice of brand, quoted from a memo from the company to business partners, reading:

Please note that upon the close of the transaction between Microsoft and Nokia, the name of Nokia Corporation/Nokia Oyj will change to Microsoft Mobile Oy. Microsoft Mobile Oy is the legal entity name that should be used for VAT IDs and for the issuance of invoices.

However, in a blog post confirming the April 25 close date, Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith did not mention a rebranding.
The domain name nokia.com will live for up to a year, he said:

While the original deal did not address the management of online assets, our two companies have agreed that Microsoft will manage the nokia.com domain and social media sites for the benefit of both companies and our customers for up to a year.

What does that mean for the .nokia gTLD application?
According to the ICANN web site, Nokia is currently “in contracting” for the dot-brand.
It would not be unprecedented if it were to withdraw its application, however. Back in February 2013, the American insurance company AIG withdrew its bid for .chartis after a rebranding.

.guru first new gTLD to 50,000 names

Donuts’ pioneering .guru yesterday became the first new gTLD to surpass 50,000 domain name registrations, according to today’s zone files.
DI PRO makes today’s total 50,210, having added 209 names yesterday. Technically, that means .guru passed the 50k mark on Wednesday, but I’m excluding some infrastructural domains used by the registry.
The gTLD went into general availability January 29, so it’s passed this milestone in 78 days, therefore selling on average 643 names per day. That average is skewed obviously by the low-volume seven-day premium phase and a sharp spike when names hit baseline pricing on February 5.
If we assume that the average price for a .guru is $20 (which I’m guessing is probably not too wide of the mark), then the gTLD is already million-dollar business.
For a while it looked as if number-two new gTLD .berlin was going to overtake .guru and might have hit 50k first, but its relative growth compared to .guru slowed down a few weeks ago.
According to our zone file analysis, there are 556,063 new gTLD domains today.

First .london anchor tenants named

The forthcoming .london gTLD has earmarked its first 28 domain names, most of which are going to some famous, and not-so-famous, local brands.
Judging by the list of names, registry Dot London Domains is going for a relatively classy bunch of anchor tenants, which is probably why I wasn’t invited to the launch event earlier this week.
Judging by newspaper reports, the registry managed to get a celebrity businesswoman, Deborah Meaden, to cut the ribbon, as well as a glowing endorsement from the mayor, Boris Johnson.
Dot London Domains is affiliated with London & Partners, the marketing arm of the mayor’s office.
The list of names, which come from the pool of up to 100 that the registry is allowed to set aside for promotional purposes before sunrise begins on April 29, was revealed by today’s .london zone file.
About half a dozen appear to be reserved for the use of the registry itself.
Three registrars also get their names — 1and1.london, fasthosts.london, godaddy.london — which seems to confirm that .london will get valuable Go Daddy distribution.
These are the others. I have to say, only a handful are household names over here. I had to Google about half of them.

absolutelymagazines.london — a publisher of the women’s magazine Absolutely, apparently.
dating.london — it’s going to be interesting to see who gets control of this, the only dictionary word so far on the list. Like all the others on this list, it currently belongs to the registry.
exterionmedia.london — an advertising company specializing in billboards and such, formerly CBS Outdoor. I’ve seen this brand quite a lot on public transport, which could be good news if it starts using a .london URL.
fortnumandmason.london — Fornum & Mason, an upmarket department store. Far too classy to let the oiks like me through the door.
londonlive.london — a TV station dedicated to London that I didn’t know existed.
meantime.london — probably the Greenwich-based brewing company called Meantime.
metrobank.london — a bank, currently using metrobankonline.co.uk.
penniblack.london — Penni Black, a catering company.
remoracleaning.london — a cleaning company that currently uses a .com.
scoffandbanter.london — a restaurant chain specializing in British food.
standard.london — the London Evening Standard, the capital’s widely-read free daily newspaper. When the paper announced its participation in .london on its Wednesday front page, pretty much every commuter in the city will have seen it.
symphonyorchestra.london — The London Symphony Orchestra.
techhub.london — a Google-backed shared work-space for tech start-ups, just down the street from DI HQ.
theallstars.london — Not sure. Possibly these musicians.
thecommitments.london — The Commitments, a West End musical based on the movie and novel of the same name.
westhamunited.london — West Ham United, one of London’s several Premier League football teams.
whufc.london — also West Ham.
wingstravel.london — a travel agency specializing in oil and gas industries. Interestingly, its current web site uses a .travel domain: wings.travel.

The .london gTLD goes to sunrise April 29, with general availability slated for September 9.

.rich promises new marketing after pitiful launch

I-Registry’s .rich may have taken the ignominious title of Worst New gTLD Launch Yet, but the company says it’s not in any rush and is planning to start its marketing campaign in about a month.
According to zone files, .rich has 22 registered names, despite the fact that it’s been in general availability for a week. All 22, according to the registry, were registered during its sunrise period.
The price has certainly got a lot to do with that — the registry fee is $1,750 and you can find registrars selling for as much as $2,599 — but the non-existent marketing may have also played a part.
Visiting the I-Registry web site today won’t give you any idea where you can buy the names or any indication that they’re even available.
As I and others have pointed out, the .rich string is a hard sell. Andrew Allemann of Domain Name Wire, with his tongue only a little in his cheek, doesn’t reckon it passes “The Douche Test“.
But I-Registry’s Michael Hauck told DI that the company is planning to launch a revamped nic.rich site, possibly as early as next week, with an all-new “marketing site” to follow about a month later.
“It will communicate the right message around .RICH,” Hauck said of the nic.rich site. “Clients will understand much better what we intend .RICH to be. And of course you will find a list of supporting registrars there, which today amounts to over 40 registrars.”
The marketing site will offer to sell .rich names directly via an ICANN registrar, he said. Email, hosting, privacy and other stuff will be included in the price, he said. He added:
“We will be also offering an affiliate program with a very attractive PPS program for people who are not registrars or resellers to market this domain product and give them all the margin that usually a registrar has,” he said.
“So a guy who is running for example a millionaire’s dating website or is writing about exclusive products and services in his blog is able to work with us and to promote .RICH,” he said.
Given that the registry doesn’t seem to have sold a single domain during its first week of GA, I think it’s going to need as much marketing support as it can get.

dotBest cancels landrush

PeopleBrowsr has decided to cancel the landrush phase for its forthcoming .best new gTLD, citing “very little engagement” from registrants.
The TLD is due to go to sunrise today. Two days after it ends on May 19, it will go directly to general availability.
VP of operations Michael Deparini said in an email:

Many of our registrars have given us feedback that there has been very little engagement with the TLD Landrush Phase. We have decided to cancel Landrush.
We are excited to announce that we will open General Availability (GA) ahead of schedule to commence on May 21 at 16:00:00 GMT (12pm EST).

PeopleBrowsr is also the company behind .ceo, which launched two weeks ago with just 250 names in its first couple of days on the market — about 40% of which belonged to one cybersquatter.
.ceo currently has 798 domains in its zone, making it the fourth-smallest of the 74 new gTLDs that currently appear to be selling names.

New gTLD domains top 500,000 as Schilling goes on parking spree

The total number of new gTLD domains broke through half a million for the first time yesterday, but it seems to be due to Frank Schilling obtaining tens of thousands of names in his own TLDs.
Uniregistry’s .link became the fifth-largest new gTLD, moving almost 20,000 names, but it appears that the vast majority are registered to a company affiliated with CEO Schilling.
Uniregistry’s other gTLDs — .tattoo, .sexy, .pics, .photo and .gift — all saw huge jumps too, apparently for the same reason.
This morning’s .link zone files show a pop of 19,945 names, to a total of 20,050.
That would be the third-best GA-day performance, after .guru and .berlin, of any new gTLD to date, but it seems the vast majority are actually premium names acquired by a Uniregistry affiliate.
Of those new .link names, 18,272 (91%) are being parked on internettraffic.com, another Schilling company.
I took a random sampling and found them all registered to North Sound Names, a company based on Seven Mile Beach in Grand Cayman, which is where Schilling lives.
Schilling said this on Twitter yesterday:

@TimJamesDomains @DomainNameWire .. they are the company that has done a deal for our premium names

— Frank Schilling (@Frank_Schilling) April 15, 2014

Premium names are of course those that were reserved by the registry. So either a third-party has bought them wholesale, or Uniregistry has simply shifted them over to an affiliated company.
I’ve asked Schilling to confirm that North Sound Names is also his company and will update this post with his answer.
Testing some domains in Uniregistry’s other gTLDs, I found a similar pattern — big spike, mostly parked at internettraffic.com, North Sound Names in a sampling of the Whois.
Here’s a screenshot of today’s best-performing new gTLDs from DI PRO (click to enlarge):

Overall, six of Uniregistry’s new gTLDs grew by a total of 50,735 domains today — 95% of the 53,147 industry total — and internettraffic.com’s name servers are responsible for 37,668 new names.
This brings the total number of “registered” domains to 538,093, though I would suggest that this metric may no longer be a decent measurement of actual end user interest in new gTLD domains.

Pricey .luxury made $500k already

The new gTLD .luxury seems to have sold more than $500,000 worth of domain names already.
(UPDATE: That’s probably not accurate. I seem to have misread some registrar pricing pages. The sunrise price was actually much lower than $1,000. See comments below.)
Saturday’s zone file for the Luxury Partners-owned TLD popped from 1 domain to 470 domains. Most of the new names appear to have been registered during the sunrise period, which ended early last week.
Given the current retail price of over $1,000, it seems .luxury is already a $500,000 business, at least for 2014. Renewal pricing is around the $700 mark, equating to $329,000 a year just on sunrise registrations.
That’s including the registrar markup, of course. The registry will be making a bit less.
“Luxury” brands such as Cartier and Formula 1 bought multiple domains during sunrise. Some tech firms, such as Facebook and Google, continued their blanket approach to defensives.
With such a high price, one wonders what some of these rights holders are thinking: do they really believe cybersquatters are prepared to drop $700 a year infringing their brands?
Sadly there are already a couple of examples of newbie squatters spending absurd sums on clearly infringing new gTLD domains.
It will be interesting to see whether any of these registrants actually use their domains, or whether they’re mainly defensive registrations. I suspect the latter will be more often the case.
Currently in landrush, .luxury is due to go to general availability in about a month.