ShortDot drops premium fees on millions of domains
New gTLD registry ShortDot says it is making 2.4 million “premium” domains available at its standard registry fee.
From September 1, domains across .bond, .cfd, .icu, .cyou and .sbs will no longer have premium renewals.
The company said that “first and last names, city names, dictionary terms, and more” will return to standard prices, but it appears that it’s the mainly lower-tier inventory, where retail prices can be currently as low as $15 a year, being released.
Judging by the list, it appears that the vast majority of domains are four-character LLLL strings and three, four and five-digit numerics (including US zip codes).
Some geographic names representing low-population areas are on the list, while larger, more well-known cities do not appear to be.
A full spreadsheet of the names can be downloaded from Dropbox here.
ShortDot bought another gTLD. Guess what .sbs stands for now?
Growing new gTLD portfolio registry ShortDot has acquired another unwanted dot-brand, .sbs, which it intends to repurpose as an open, generic TLD.
.sbs was originally owned by SBS, for Special Broadcasting Service, an Australian public-service broadcaster. But the company never used it.
Now, while launch plans are still in development, ShortDot intends to relaunch .sbs to mean something entirely different, much as it recently did with .cfd.
“.sbs will be branded as shorthand for ‘Side by Side’, perfect for social causes, charitable organizations and other philanthropic initiatives,” ShortDot COO Kevin Kopas told us.
That does not appear to be a meaning of the acronym in common usage.
ShortDot is currently two weeks away from general availability for its next most-recent acquisition, .cfd, which originally stood for the financial term “contracts for difference” but is now being marketed as “clothing and fashion design”.
The company, best known for high-volume .icu, which has sold and lost over five million registrations over the last two years, now has five gTLDs in its stable, including unused dot-brand .bond and .cyou.
More dot-brands dump their gTLDs
A further three new gTLDs have applied to ICANN for self-termination over the last few months, bringing the total to 76.
They’re all dot-brands: .sbs, .rightathome and .symantec.
The most recent application came from the Australian broadcaster SBS, for Special Broadcasting Service. This seems to be a case of a brand owner briefly experimenting with redirects to its .au domain, then deciding against it.
.symantec is biting the dust because the security company Symantec recently rebranded as NortonLifeLock Inc.
.rightathome also appears to be a case of a discontinued brand, in this case formerly used by consumer products firm SC Johnson.
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