Easyspace, one of registrar’s taking pre-reservations for .XXX domains said today that 8 out 10 businesses pre-registering their interest in the new .XXX domain name extension are not part of the adult industry.
“Out of the hundreds of businesses that have rushed to pre-register with Easyspace ahead of the opening of the Sunrise phase for .XXX domains on 7 September 2011, only 20% of them are from the adult industry” said Sarah Haran, managing director of Easyspace.
Ms. Haran went on to say:
“As we expected, the early indications are that non-adult industry businesses have realized the need to protect trademarks and brands in dot XXX.”
Since the majority are defensive, that means the extension will never gain critical mass and be successful.
The same would be true if the majority were for parked pages.
“ahead of the opening of the Sunrise phase for .XXX domains”
If they are queuing up sunrise reservations, then the surprise would seem to be that 100% of them are not defensive. That’s primarily what the sunrise is for.
ICM has three classes of sunrise reservations/registrations:
1. Non-adult TM businesses – these TM holders can lock up a name to a non-resolving status permanently for a one-time fee.
2. Adult TM businesses – these TM holders can register a name during sunrise which will resolve
3. Existing adult domain names – these domain operators can register a name during sunrise which will resolve
One might expect that registrars such as Markmonitor will account for a sizeable portion of the first category listed above. I’m not familiar with Easyspace, but their results may be a function of to whom they promoted their advance application service.
It will be interesting to see the relative rates of registration after general launch, but the fact that advance sunrise applications are primarily defensive doesn’t strike me as surprising. That is what is supposed to happen during a sunrise phase.
John
Nice try but Easyspace.com is taking pre-resevations for all phases not just trademark sunrise, they are taking pre-reservations for land rush and even GA:
http://www.easyspace.com/domain_names/xxx-prereg
. . . meaning that at least 20% of registrations are offensive; offensive indeed.
This is just one registrar. If another medium size registrar reports that 80% of it’s sales are from the porn industry, how would you interpret that?
Like John said, it also depends how they’ve marketing the extension to their clients- this also reeks of an attempt to induce the Bandwagon Effect on other customers.
This means zilch.
Pipe
“”If another medium size registrar reports that 80% of it’s sales are from the porn industry, how would you interpret that?””
I think that is a pretty silly comment.
WHAT IF
The fact is only one registrar is reporting anything and that one says 80% are defensive registrations.
That’s the facts we have right now.
John’s comment was that well that registrar is only accepting pre-reservations for Sunrise (trademarks) now that we know the registrar is accepting pre-reservations for all phases we know the underlying premise of John statement was incorrect, so how can you agree with it?
“I think that is a pretty silly comment.” – I agree
but the converse is not?
“so how can you agree with it?” – Was referring to when John said “I’m not familiar with Easyspace, but their results may be a function of to whom they promoted their advance application service. ”
Easyspace works with many corporate clients and that given that you can buy a .COM for only $20.35/year, they likely form a large part of their (.XXX aware) client base (for the moment). Hence the skew.
I also imagine every registrar has their own interest in publishing a PR and I’d bet my bottom dollar that the intention is to encourage their other clients to act defensively. (nothing wrong in that). It just seemed unusual that you would draw a hypothesis from this particular information.
The way I see it is absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence.
“John’s comment was that well that registrar is only accepting pre-reservations for Sunrise”
Don’t misquote me when what I wrote is on the same page.
The only sure thing here is that if a name falls into one of the three categories I mentioned, then it won’t be available at the launch of general registration. Given the history of pre-registration schemes, if I were inclined to register a name and was not qualified to register during sunrise, I doubt I’d be paying anyone in August for a “maybe in December”.
“The fact is only one registrar is reporting anything and that one says 80% are defensive registrations.”
What was the composition of the audience to whom they promoted their pre-registration service?
If I sold condoms in Italy, most of my customers would be Catholic.
However, if you are selling seats on two flights from NY to LA, with one flight leaving on September 1 and another flight leaving on November 1, which flight do you think will fill up first?