.Design Registry Shares 2017 Brand Report

Elliot Silver
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In advance of NamesCon, Andrew Merriam, Director of Business Development at the company that operates the .Design registry (Top Level Design), shared his company’s 2017 Brand Report (pdf file) pertaining to .Design domain names. The report sheds some light on the usage of .Design domain names by some major companies in various business sectors and industries.

Highlighted in the brand report are the following domain names operated by major brands we all know and use:

I checked all of the links above, and these companies are actually using their .Design domain names for websites rather than simply forwarding the domain names to other websites. Many registries tout

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50 Year Old Company Rebrands With a .Health Domain Name

Elliot Silver
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A company called Sound Mental Health announced (via press release) that it was undergoing a rebrand. The company will now be known simply as “Sound.” To enable this rebranding effort, the company is now using the Sound.Health new gTLD domain name for its website. The press release noted that the company has been in business for 50 years.

A Whois search shows that this company is the first registrant of the domain name. It is unclear to me if this domain name is classified as a premium domain name (ie the buyer had to work out a deal with the .Health domain registry) or if this was simply a hand-registered domain name with a normal renewal rate. It looks like .Health domain names cost $69.99/year at GoDaddy and other registrars seem to be in the same ballpark. Sound.Health is registered at MarkMonitor, a brand protection and domain name management company.

If you visit Sound.Health, you will notice the company’s logo does not reference the .Health aspect of the domain name. In addition, it does not appear that the company referenced the .Health domain name in its page title or description. It will be interesting to see how the company lets its customers and partners know it is using a .Health domain name.

If there is any confusion and people visit

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Radix Shares Some Financial Info

Elliot Silver
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Most private companies do not share revenue figures and other internal financial benchmarks. I think many look at the privacy aspect as an advantage of running a privately held business.

This morning, Radix published a press release with some of its financial data. I don’t recall seeing other private companies in the domain space share their numbers, so it is a unique bit of insight. As you know, Radix is a privately owned domain registry operator. The company operates nine new gTLD domain extensions, including .Website, .Online, .Host, .Tech, and several others. Here is some of the data Radix shared:

  • $11.7 million in annual revenue, not including December (expected to surpass $12 million)
  • More than 50% of total revenue was contributed by non-premium domain renewals
  • $1.76 million in revenue attributed to premium domains sold and renewed (both via registrar channel and direct)
  • 49.6% of revenue from the US, 14.4% of revenue from Germany, and 7.7% of revenue from China

Interestingly, when Donuts was named a Deloitte Technology Fast 500 award winner, the company shared its revenue growth but was not required to share its actual revenue figures. It would be neat to see how Donuts’ revenue compares to the $12m revenue figures shared by Radix.

Here’s the press release Radix shared with me this morning:

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Will Cryptocurrency New gTLD Domain Names be Valuable?

Elliot Silver
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It seems that many new gTLD registries would like a second round of new gTLD applications. ICANN has not said when (or if) it will happen. It seems that there will be subsequent application rounds, but it is anybody’s guess when that will occur.

One of the biggest trends in domain names right now is cryptocurrency related domain names. I am not involved in that space, but there has been quite a bit of investment made there. Bloomberg covered the crypto domain trend, and anyone who has been on NamePros and monitors auctions and sales reports has noticed that cryptocurrency domain names have been selling regularly.

If companies could apply for new gTLD extensions now, I think cryptocurrency domain names would be very popular. Some of the extensions I can imagine would have applicants:

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NYC Encourages Voting with Voting.NYC Domain Name

Elliot Silver
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The City of New York has been using a .NYC domain name to promote the local election which happened today. Domain investor Larry Fischer, a New York City resident who has been in the domain business for many years, shared the photograph of this bus advertisement that is encouraging people to visit Voting.NYC.

When you visit Voting.NYC, you can see a sleek looking website that has information about the current election. It also serves as a resource to send people to other websites for further information about the election and voting. Essentially, it looks like

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Vegas Amazon Pitch Uses a .Vegas Domain Name

Elliot Silver
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Amazon will be building a multi-billion dollar second headquarters, dubbed HQ2, and cities across the United States have submitted proposals to the company highlighting why Amazon should consider their city. TechCrunch posted an article with videos from seven of the perceived front-running cities.

Out of the 7 videos shared by TechCrunch, Las Vegas appears to be the only city to have added a URL to its proposal, and they city used a .Vegas domain name for it: HQ2.Vegas. Some of the other videos used hashtags, and some did not have any further call to action (beyond their full presentations).

Unfortunately for the peanut gallery, HQ2.Vegas seems to require authentication to see the website:

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