Archive for the ‘new tlds’ Category
TLDH adds to its stable of geo top level domains with .budapest.
Top Level Domain Holdings Limited (AIM:TLDH.L), parent company of Minds + Machines, announced today that it has applied for the .budapest domain name with the blessing of the city of Budapest. The city will earn a revenue share from the deal.
TLDH is also on the applications for .London, .Miami, .Bayern and .NRW. .NRW is for North-Rhine Westphalia, the most populous state in Germany.
These applications are pretty close to “sure things” since an applicant needs approval (or non-objection) from a governmental authority to apply for geo domains like these. The only exception would be if there’s more than one location of the same name. .NRW could also run into a bit of an issue if there’s a competing application because it’s not actually the name of a location and could have a different use.
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Warren Adelman discloses new TLD applications and discusses the challenges of offering more domain choices to customers.
Go Daddy, the world’s largest domain name registrar, has applied for three top level domains, CEO Warren Adelman told Domain Name Wire today. (News of the applications was first reported by Paul Sloan at CNET).
The company has applied for its own .brand domain .godaddy, as well as two additional top level domains (TLD). That’s a lot less than you can expect from at least one competitor.
“As the world’s largest domain name registrar, we wanted to have our own TLD,” said Adelman.
He thinks the company’s plans for the additional two TLDs will be more interesting. But he is mum on what those TLDs will be since the application process is still open.
Even bigger on the company’s radar for the next couple years is how it will offer hundreds of new TLDs to its customer base.
“No one can sell 2,000 TLDs,” he said.
Go Daddy already uses algorithms to determine which TLDs to show in domain search results. The company received a patent on its ranking system last year. Think of it like Google Adwords; registries “bid” for placement on GoDaddy.com and then are ranked based on a number of algorithms.
“We’ve done some work with it [the algorithm] and you may see it become more important in 2013 as a way for us to actually handle a fairly large number of new TLDs,” said Adelman. “All registrars will have to make decisions about how to best present TLDs to customers.”
With registry-registrar integration, Go Daddy will be able to offer its own TLDs to its customers. Although that may create a conflict, Adelman points to the company’s handling of .me as proof that it can be managed. The company helped commercialize .me, the country code for Montenegro.
“.Me started with an email I sent to the Minister of Communications in Montenegro,” Adelman said. Go Daddy has certainly promoted .me on its site, but it’s not the number one search result.
As for the company’s position on new TLDs in general, Adelman says it has always been cautious.
“We always voiced caution in the size of the rollout,” he said. “We said ‘Listen, there’s a lot of things happening simultaneously — new TLDs, IPV6, IDNs, DNNSEC. Perhaps there should be a more cautious approach.’”
Problems with ICANN’s new TLD application system are one example of unexpected challenges that can come up — and that’s just with applying. Adelman says ICANN will certainly have to explain the problems to the community at its next meeting in Prague. But he puts it in perspective.
“Every day I wake up and, generally speaking, the internet works. People kind of trivialize that accomplishment, but for the most part they’ve made sure the infrastructure is up and working and we can access IP addresses as part of the domain name system. They’ve done this in a complicated environment of various internet users.”
“2013 will be a wild year,” said Adelman.
That’s for sure.
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Offering an additional $5,000 refund just draws more attention to ICANN’s top level domain system failure.
ICANN’s offer to refund 100% of applicant fees if new gTLD applicants pull their applications was a dumb move.
First, this offer isn’t a big deal. It’s an offer of $5,000 more (just 3%) than the refund schedule previously in place offered if you withdrew your application before names were revealed.
Second, will this offer actually prompt people to recall their applications? I doubt it.
But the real reason it was a bad idea is that it sends a message that the application “glitch” is a really bad thing. (It is, but this just calls more attention to it.) To the casual news reader, it sounds like this is a screw up of epic proportions if ICANN is offering refunds. It almost sounds like the program has been closed.
Here are a couple headlines about the move:
“ICANN offers refunds to domain name applicants” – Bloomberg
“ICANN offers refunds over gTLD system shutdown” – ZDNet
I suspect some readers will assume the entire program has been canned based on these headlines. (Oh, you mean they’ll click through and read the entire story?)
ICANN has egg on its face. A little bit more won’t destroy it. But I don’t think this was a smart move.
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That’s a whole lotta top level domains.
[Updated with comment from Demand Media and from investor call] Demand Media, parent company of eNom, announced today that it has invested $18 million into new top level domain names.
It’s not clear if this is for application fees only:
In April 2012, Demand Media invested $18 million in pursuit of its generic Top Level Domain (“gTLD”) initiative, which it believes represents a complementary strategic growth opportunity for its Registrar services.
Given that this refers only to the month of April, when Demand Media would have completed its applications, it’s possible that this is for application fees and related expenses only. That’s a whole lot of top level domains.
Kristen Moore, VP, Corporate Marketing & Communications at Demand Media, tells Domain Name Wire: “As the ICANN application process is not yet completed, we aren’t commenting on the specifics of any applications beyond the size of our investment and our enthusiasm for the opportunity at this time.”
On the investor conference call today, the company said it has committed $18 million in “support” of the program. It has signed two partners that will use its backend system. It also said it “may become a registry in our own right”, e.g. apply for domains itself. Its CFO said it “funded” $18 million in April, which still leads us back to application fees.
Interestingly, by the spirit of the rules, Demand Media shouldn’t be eligible to apply for new TLDs due to multiple UDRP losses. But there are plenty of technicalities to get around that.
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.Nxt moves across the pond.
The third .Nxt conference covering issues related to new top level domains takes place June 20-22 at Victoria Park Plaza in London.
I caught up with show founder Kieren McCarthy yesterday to discuss his latest show.
After holding two conferences in San Francisco, McCarthy said a number of interested attendees asked him to hold a show in Europe. With ICANN holding a meeting in Prague starting June 24, McCarthy felt that a stop of in London made sense. (It doesn’t hurt that McCarthy is from London.)
Like those applying for new TLDs, ICANN’s TAS snafu and subsequent timeline delay is forcing .Nxt to constantly shake up its programming. It had hoped to have a list of all new TLD applicants by now. But that list is at least a couple weeks away from being published. It’s possible it won’t even be out by the time .Nxt takes place.
“ICANN’s issue has made life a little bit more difficult,” explained McCarthy. “But that’s ICANN. We should have known better.”
The conference includes tracks about new gTLDs themselves as well as about internet governance.
“All of these companies that are about to become registries, whether they know it or not, need to become aware of the internet governance world,” said McCarthy. He said that decisions being made by people and groups they don’t know yet will have a huge impact on their businesses.
“People just seem to think the internet will go along as it has always gone along,” he said.
McCarthy thinks the session “SOPA and What it Means for the Future of Internet Policy” will be particularly interesting. A session on “Why We Love (and Hate) the Multi-stakeholder Model” should also attract some spirited discussion.
A session about .brand should be well attended if, as many consultants predict, 60% or so of applications are from brands.
McCarthy also says he has a great keynote lined up that will hopefully be revealed in the next week.
McCarthy expects 175-200 people to attend. He was expecting more until the ICANN timeline got pushed back, but pitches five reasons people should attend.
3-day passes are £599.00 through June 12.
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Interesting posts from the perspective of new TLD applicants.
The new TLD delay continues and ICANN just released the total number of applications received so far (over 2,000).
So what does this mean for new TLD applicants?
Two of the largest recently published blog posts that shed some light on it.
First, eNom founder Paul Stahura (now with new TLD applicant Donuts Inc) wrote about the application glitch and how it could affect applications. Donuts saw one other applicant’s filename i the application system but could not determine either the applicant name nor top level domain it was related to.
Nevertheless, Donuts suggests that no “new” applications be allowed when the system reopens. After all, there were just 12 hours to go when the system was shut down. Had anyone really planned on starting a new application with less than 12 hours to go? I’m sure there could be some debate about that.
Second, Minds + Machines founder Antony Van Couvering tries to break down what 2,100 applications will look like. He guesstimates roughly 50 geo TLDs, 200 IDNs, 150 niche TLDs, 500 applications from “portfolio” applicants (such as Minds + Machines), and 1,200 .brand domains.
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Given the latest data, ICANN should consider changing how it batches new TLDs.
With 1,268 registered users for ICANN’s new top level domain application system, it’s clear there will be over 1,000 unique top level domains going through the new TLD process. That means we’ll have “batching“, where approximately 500 domains at a time go through the full evaluation and addition to the root.
The current plan for determining which 500 applications go into each batch is called digital archery. Applicants will pick a target time and then try to click a button as close to that target time as possible.
Given ICANN’s failure to run the new TLD application system effectively and securely, a lot of doubt will be cast on the accuracy of a digital archery system.
This, in combination with the expectation that ICANN is going to make a lot more money off of applications than originally forecast, is renewing calls for coming up with a different solution. Here’s what Jeff Neuman, Vice President, Business Affairs at Neustar, Inc. tweeted yesterday:
I wouldn’t be surprised to have an applicant who misses the first batch sue ICANN over its digital archery system. That could delay the entire process.
The problem with putting all domains into one batch isn’t necessarily the evaluation process. The problem is adding more than 500 domains to the root at a time. ICANN has said it wants to limit batch sizes to monitor new TLD effects on the root.
If I were ICANN, here’s how I’d look at it. The non-profit is looking at a windfall of $30 million if it gets 2,000 applications. And that assumes a whopping $120 million is spent on “risk” costs such as lawsuits. Why not use some of this money to “buy off” applicants? Offer a substantial refund to applicants who agree to be slotted in later batches. I suspect that at least half of new TLD applications are for .brand domains. Many of the applicants have no idea what they’ll do with their .brand or when they’ll do it. Offer them a nice refund and many will opt for later batches.
ICANN could even hold a “reverse refund auction” to figure out the market cost of being in a later batch.
This volunteer program would save ICANN from more legal risks. It would also prevent the likely scenario of a bunch of the new TLDs being “dead” when they are added to the root. (Basically, .brands added to the root that aren’t actively used yet.) This would kill two birds with one stone.
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ICANN releases data about new top level domain application system bug.
105 applicants for new top level domains might have had the filenames of some of their application documents and their username exposed, ICANN revealed today.
The non-profit also revealed that 50 applicants might have been able to view these details.
Of course, just because filenames or usernames were exposed doesn’t mean that someone actually saw them or knew what they were seeing. And even if they realized what they were viewing, that doesn’t mean that the filename or username gave away any competitive intelligence.
ICANN is in the process of notifying the 105 applicants that they may have been victims of the programming bug. It hopes to complete notifications by May 8.
There were 1,268 registered users of the TLD Application System, or TAS, when the system was pulled offline due to concerns about the bug.
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How do you describe an uneventful congressional hearing?
Yesterday the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing about the introduction of new top level domains. The session, lightly attended by senators, was a bit bland. But here are 8 possible headlines I could think of after watching yesterday.
Cybersquatters: they’re like pedophiles
Disney sues Congress over use of Mickey Mouse image in congressional hearing
New TLD hearing confused with whois policy discussion
ICANN speaks in threes
ICANN conveniently passes board resolutions in anticipation of congressional hearing
Senators have more important things to do than discuss new top level domains
ICANN really pissed at Peter Dengate-Thrush for making it answer questions about conflicts of interest
Congress appeases lobbyists by holding farce of a hearing
Any others?
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New TLD consultant won’t charge application consulting fees to .brand owners that use its other services.
Instra is the latest company to court potential new top level domain name applicants with a services and registry suite.
The company, which owns a domain name registrar that caters to brand holders, is putting continued price pressure on services offered to .brand applicants. Instra will offer free application consulting to .brand applicants that manage their domain portfolios at the registrar.
Instra discloses detailed pricing for its new TLD services at the company’s NewTLDs.com site. There are some caveats with the pricing, which isn’t surprising given the complexity of individual applications.
Domain name registry Neustar turned heads in June when it announced $10,000 annual registry fees to .brand applicants that don’t plan to actively use their TLDs.
Given the lucrative business of managing brand holders’ domain assets, I expect fierce competition for these services.
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