Domains: January 2008 Archives

In some ways the failure of .eu to capture hearts and minds makes me sad. I'm European. I'd like to think that a European namespace could be a success, but that seems to be a misplaced desire.

As I mentioned some time ago, the only way to grow a namespace or TLD is through usage. Once people start to see a domain extension in "action" then they begin to start using it. If people start using it then everyone benefits - registry, registrars, "normal" registrants and domain investors alike.

When was the last time you saw a high profile .eu site?

You'd have to think long and hard about it, wouldn't you?

Even the "big boys" aren't really using their .eu domains actively.

Google.eu doesn't have any A records ie. it doesn't point anywhere.

Yahoo.eu points to a Yahoo site, but not to the European one!

Ebay.eu actually does what you'd expect it to do, but it was the only one I could find when I did a quick search this evening.

Why do I bring this up?

Last week John McCormack sent me some preliminary statistics on domain usage for the EU namespace and the figures were quite worrying. He's since published a blog piece with a breakdown of the stats and if I were in Eurid I'd be sobbing.

You can read John's article, but the basic underlying truth is hard to avoid.

Adoption of .eu has been pretty bad and that's being diplomatic about it.

While there may be a large number of domains registered only a very small fraction are in active use, with many simply redirecting to a ccTLD equivalent or being parked.

Launching a new TLD is not easy.

Afilias have resorted over the past couple of years to literally giving away domains for free and it looks like Eurid are adopting a similar approach.

DotMobi, however, have worked hard to build up interest in their TLD among users of all shapes and sizes and got the investors interested as well.

What will the future hold for .eu?

Will their PR pay off or will it all fizzle out?

This afternoon's auction has been going well overall, however bidding has had to be paused several times due to technical issues.
It's not clear what exactly has been happening, but it seems to affect online bidders.

Technorati Tags: auction, domainfest, domains, hollywood, snapnames

Dude.com which had a reserve of $1.1 million has failed to sell at the SnapNames auction.

While some observers felt that the name was worth the price tag the bidders this afternoon obviously didn't share that view.

Technorati Tags: auction, domainfest, domains, hollywood, snapnames

This afternoon's auction is about to start in the Hollywood Highland. Unlike yesterday, where there were domains with low reserves, today's list is from the complete opposite end of the spectrum.
Domains up for grabs today include:

• dude.com with a reserve of $1.1 million
• authorize.com with a reserve of $599k
• bookmarks.com with a reserve of $250k
• checkout.com with a reserve of $450k
• ar.com with a reserve of $225k

Whether or not these and the other domains will achieve the results some are anticipated will be decided over the next 3 hours. If nothing else it should be an interesting auction!

Technorati Tags: auction, snapnames, domains, domainfest, hollywood

According to post earlier today on Jothan Frakes' blog the .me registry is going to be managed by Aflilias in partnership with GoDaddy.

Francesco posted about the tendering process back in November and while his post does cover most of the issues with the tender he obviously hadn't considered the possibility of a registry operator teaming up with a registrar - but who could have?

What will be interesting to see is how they manage the registry moving forward. Is it likely to end up being converted into something that it wasn't intended to be originally? (think .tv or .ws) Or will it manage to strike the balance between catering for the region's residents while also serving the global market? (Unlikely, but you never know!)

Only time will tell! (And yes - I have used that phrase before)

John Battelle is one of the keynote speakers at DomainFest this year.

In the most recent post to his blog he's been asking a few interesting questions about the domain industry. They're probably the most obvious questions someone could ask, but that doesn't make it any easier to actually answer them accurately:

A few things I'd love to know with some authority:

- Overall size of the market

- What percentage of traffic is "type in"?
- How do majors figure in the business - do they endorse, ignore, partner (I know Google partners...)
- How much of the domaining business revenue is Google Adsense?

A lot of that information is closely guarded, a fact that people like Michael Gilmour are not slow top point out when questioning the transparency of the parking companies.