Do You Own Any New gTLD Domain Names?

Elliot Silver
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44

The new gTLD domain name program continues to be one of the most polarizing topics in the domain space. It seems that there are passionate people who feel strongly for or against the new gTLD domain names.

There are now over 11 million registered new gTLD domain names. I would imagine that many of these domain names are owned by domain speculators / investors. As we close out the year, I thought I would ask if you bought and still own any new gTLD domain names.

I believe my companies own fewer than 10 new gTLD domain names. I own n.ventures, n.holdings, Silver.Ventures, Elliot.Link, ElliotSilver.Link, TeamSilver.Rocks, and maybe a couple of others I can’t think of off the top of my head.

I understand  why some companies would want to own and use new gTLD domain names. I have seen

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11 Million+ New gTLD Registrations

Elliot Silver
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13

Screen Shot 2015-12-26 at 7.42.30 AM

According to nTLDStats.com, there are now more than 11 million registered new gTLD domain names. I am not sure if the 11 million mark was passed today or yesterday, but it currently stands at 11,062,149 registered domain names.

On November 18, I reported that the 10 million new gTLD domain name registration milestone had been reached. The 9 million registration milestone had been reached just a couple of weeks prior to that on November 4th. Between 10 million and 11 million registrations, over a month passed. I am not sure if this means that the velocity of new registrations slowed, deletions of previously registered domain names increased, or if there was a combination of factors.

It does not look like much has changed in terms of the most registered new gTLD domain names. Here are the 5 most registered extensions as of today (according to nTLDStats.com):

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Daniel Negari Comments on 6 Figure 9.XYZ Sale

Elliot Silver
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According to multiple tweets yesterday, the 9.XYZ domain name sold on West.cn for 1135000 RMB. At today’s conversion rate of Chinese Yuan to US Dollars, the sale is approximately $175,000. Since the auction just ended, I do not believe the deal is officially closed yet, so keep an eye on the Whois change if you want to confirm.

This is the second notable public single number .XYZ sale, with 6.XYZ having sold in a private transaction for $125,000 in November. When 6.XYZ sold for $125,000, .XYZ registry CEO Daniel Negari told me that single number .XYZ domain names are going to be priced much higher going forward. Specifically, Daniel told me the company is “considering offers of $250K+ for the remaining numbers individually.” I asked Daniel why 9.XYZ sold for less than this figure, and he told me that this domain name was put into the no reserve auction prior to when he made the comments to me.

Both of these domain names were owned

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DonaldTrump.Sucks Registered via This.Sucks

Elliot Silver
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Kevin Murphy from DomainIncite.com wrote about  the  (brief) registration of Twitter.Sucks using the new This.Sucks platform. I was surprised to see that Twitter.Sucks had not been registered prior to Kevin’s article. A commenter mentioned another domain name that I was somewhat surprised to see hadn’t been previously registered.

Apparently, someone registered DonaldTrump.Sucks via the This.Sucks platform. Whois records show that the registrant is listed as This.sucks, Inc, and the domain name was registered on December 18th.

As you likely know, Donald Trump is an American businessman who is currently running for President of the United States in the Republican Party. Mr. Trump uses DonaldJTrump.com for his presidential campaign website.

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China is in da .CLUB

Jeff Sass
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The .CLUB team first visited China in January 2014, months before our formal launch in May of that year.   Little did we know back then that China would become one of the most significant growth and revenue drivers for our business.   We believed from the beginning that China was a very important market and we invested heavily in building relationships there, visiting at least eight more times since then, but we never imagined the record-breaking sales and registration numbers that China has delivered in the past six weeks.

As I write this, on the afternoon of December 16th, just today we’ve already sold over 2,040 premium .CLUB names, at an average price of $70-$100, primarily to Chinese buyers.   These predominantly three-letter names were part of a release of 13,000 new names that were made available to the registrar channel at 8am ET this morning as an addition to our tiered premium name inventory.   There are currently approximately 6,000 three-character .CLUB names still available.

Last month we saw more than

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Donuts Video Airs on Discovery Channel

Elliot Silver
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The video embedded below aired on The Discovery Channel yesterday at 7:30am Eastern and then again at 7:30am Pacific.

Mason Cole, Vice President of Communications and Industry Relations at Donuts, told me this was a “produced feature about what Donuts is doing with namespace expansion.” I asked him about who the company was targeting, and he told me that “[t]he target audience is primarily businesses, but really anyone who would be in the market for a relevant, meaningful domain name.”

I think general awareness about the new gTLD domain name extensions has been lacking for the most part, and getting the message out there is important for registries.

Have a look at the video and let me know what you think.

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