According to the ICM Registry sponsor of the .XXX TLD, in the first 24 hours of General Availability there were 55,367 .XXX new domain name registrations.
Including the Founders Program, Sunrise and Land Rush there are a total of 159,351 .XXX domain names registered as of Noon Today.
This number of registrations for the 1st day of General Availability is well below what .Co did on its 1st day, which saw almost 200,000 registrations.
However, its appears there were some 100,000 .XXX domain names grabbed in Sunrise and Land Rush, well ahead of .Co numbers which only had around 40,000 Sunrise and Land rush Applications.
Of course the retail price of a .XXX domain name registration is generally 3X or more the cost of a .Co domain registration which generally sold for $30 on the 1st day.
Still I think the results are under expectations at this point.
And of the 159,351, how many are defensive registrations that don’t resolve??!!?? I think ICANN just handed the ANA a big talking point for tomorrow.
According to RegistrarStats.com (which is supposed to track .xxx counts soon), even .Asia, an abysmal failure, has 195,076 domains registered.
@And of the 159,351, how many are defensive registrations that don’t resolve??!!??
Great point!
Personally I think with the exception of some serious dirty xxx terms, this extension is doomed to be a bust. Adult market tanked many years ago…
Yes, early investors who grabbed all the good terms will make money, others will be left paying $100 annual fee
.BUST
Actually, I looked at some names that are “Reserved” (presumably defensive registrations) like Disney.xxx, Verizon.xxx and George.XXX, and they do resolve to a page that says “Reserved”. That means the names appear in the zone file, although it doesn’t appear that there’s any actual “WHOIS” for these domains, to see who reserved them (George.XXX might have been by Walmart, who owns the .com??).
Here’s a question — why no WHOIS for those “Reserved” names, to see who reserved them? In particular, what happens if 2 different companies put a reserve on the same name……did they end up each paying the fees (with ICM “double dipping”) or did they each pay 50%, or …… ??
BTW, the “reserved” names resolve to 130.250.4.253 and 130.250.5.253, so we’ll know soon enough (once DomainTools.com crawls the .xxx zone file) how many domains are parked on those IP addresses (or folks can count the domains using the nsb1.icmregistry.net and nsb2.icmregistry.net nameservers).
That new reg rate of $98/$99 is a mistake…and thus adding to the unimpressive reg volume stats…. ICM Registry will prolly feel the “need” to lower prices sooner rather than later
I’ll go on record that I like this extension and terms of service.
I did not buy one .co domain. I picked up about 15 .xxx domains from Snapnames/Moniker and regged a few more at GoDaddy.
I think people will type in something .xxx just to see what is there since they KNOW what to expect.
Let’s hope there are some good parking and development solutions coming.
$70+ is not a substantial fee for any registrant who can afford to maintain a trademark. They can easily afford it as an added costs to protect their mark.
Maybe the small-time domainer is not ICM’s target market?
We know the Adult content industry is not a willing buyer.
So what’s ICM really all about?
As soon as someone gets a copy of ICM’s zone file, the truth will be told.
That’s one advantage the ccTLD’s have: they can keep their zone files secret.
Wouldn’t it be educational to see .co’s zone file?
How much have they banked from defensive registrations by .com-owning trademark holders?
How much actual new, quality content is being served from .co domains?
How much do you think will be served from .xxx domains?
Why you guys so quick to judge? Of all the new extensions, .xxx makes a lot of sense to a newbie like me.
If I want to create a porn or adult oriented site, I’d use an .xxx extension. In fact, I would feel more comfortable, using .xxx than .com. I’d never want anyone to mistake my porn site as a regular site. It is rated xxx, and the extension tell you so.
The numbers are horrible and I am sure WAY below expectations. Judging from of the names that speculators have purchased (and were brave enough to have acknowledged registering here) this extension is done after one day!
“Let’s hope there are some good parking and development solutions coming.”
Huh? First of all, in case you had not noticed parking is DEAD! Hard enough to make money parking great .com names and if you think xxx will somehow better you are misinformed. PPC died in adult ages ago! There is no more big money in adult traffic.
As far as development solutions wth are you talking about? The solutions are the same as those available to develop in any other extension. Domainers speculating in marginal .xxx names are doomed.
The domain business is a great example of why the Nigerian scam just keeps on working. Not only is there a new sucker born every minute but some remain suckers their entire lives jumping from one scam to another never realizing they are being duped. .info, .biz, ,mobi, .ca and now .xxx. They keep riding the same train everyday and wonder why they end up at the wrong station.
Good luck with those webdeveloper.xxx names lololololololololololol
Maybe it’s time ICM hired a good PR firm, drop their arrogance, work hand in hand
with the adult web community and address their concerns.
This extension can still be saved.
I wonder why all the hostility?
I don’t think .xxx needs quantity of registrations to be successful. I was a big believer in .mobi and I think that extension would have taken off if the iphone didn’t kill it.
In other words, niche domain extensions have the chance to do just fine if they are rolled out and managed properly… unlike .jobs and .travel.
.co was all about the hype and a “replacement” for .com which was a ridiculous marketing ploy.
I liked .mobi because visitors knew what type of content to expect if/when they typed in a .mobi domain, same goes for .xxx.
They need to get the word out to end users so they know there is a .xxx extension out there and they are already on television in appropriate places.
i am with Rob on this one.
And i am still banking on the fact that porn wilbe forced to .XXX in the year to come.
The amount of registrations of the 24 hours of GA was a let down however.
I expected 500k
On the otherhand this means still alot of good domains are available.
@rob sequin
Once I read some blogs back to 2008 maybe further. I came across you many times and remembered you well because you were all the time wrong saying something what later was obvious. I even thought why that guy did not stop commenting, how many proofs he needs. He just humiliates himself. Now when I see your comment I simply ignore and recommend this to anyone.
Sorry for being so honest.
Adam,
No problem. I can handle the truth 🙂
I was a big fan of .mobi then a friend got an iphone and my reaction was that this perfect mobile device could and possibly would kill .mobi.
Then I got an iphone and I knew .mobi was dead. .mobi couldn’t stand up to Apple, the iphone and apps.
Sorry I didn’t foresee the iphone. I would assume the .mobi registry is also sorry they did not foresee the iphone.
I don’t see a .xxx killer at this time.
Hi,
” .Co did on its 1st day, which saw almost 200,000 registrations.”
The “Super Hype Machine” pushed it 200K.
And I bet a lot would trade in 10 of their “.co domains” for enough money for one ‘reg fee’ for one .XXX …IMHO ( as always) 😉
BTW: Has Overstock Reg ‘O .xxx’ yet?… 😉
Cheers!
‘D’
the problem with the idea of associating a type of content with an extension is that it has historically failed. registries realised they could make more money by opening up. the most successful resgistries are all OPEN.
so, e.g., .org is certainly not going to prevent anyone from registering a domain that they will use for a commercial porn site.
nor is .com going to prevent anyone from registering a domain that they will use for a non-commercial organisation.
but the way these new, “closed”, subject-matter-restricted registries make money is, alas, as someone else pointed out, through selling to “suckers” (perhaps too harsh a term but it conveys the point).
trademarks holders register out of fear.
and inexperienced speculators register out of ignorance.
nothing is gained for these registrants.
the gains go to the registry, ICANN and the registrars.
harsh, but true.
This simply makes no sense to me. Stuart told ICANN that he had support from the sponsorship community and that opposition from within the industry was around 20%–an insignificant minority. Stuart told the domainers that .xxx is the goose that lays golden eggs. Stuart told producers and webmasters that he was single-handedly creating “the new adult industry.” So how could these numbers possibly be true?
@ Rob.
Sorry man but you exemplify everything I said earlier. If you seriously believe that the iphone killed .mobi you are…
Sorry!
You don’t see a xxx killer? First it has to make it and so far, .co has proven more ultilitarian to the masses and thats telling since a huge demographic loves and frequents porn!
@ Adam
Whether Rob WAS right or wrong in the PAST , I can assure his statemnet above makes a lot of sense, that is, .xxx is about QUALITY NOT QUANTITY. mark my word and remember my name.
the iphone killed .mobi! GLOTCentury!
I think it’s unfair to compare .xxx to .co as it’s totally different. That’s like saying because .co has 1 million names registered that it’s a failure if you compared it to .com or another ccTLD like .eu or .de. The .co is for the whole world and the .xxx is for a specific market. Plus it was priced quite high so I think they did quite well considering all that.
.CO had that many registrations due to speculators snatching up lots of names for cheap and because people registered every kind of .CO name under the sun. .XXX was over three times the price of .CO and reserved for adult content. 160,000 is a tremendous success by any measure. 160,000 .XXX registrations represents far more spending on the part of domain owners than 200,000 .CO registrations did.
For those that did buy .XXX names, good luck to you! If you bought a good name, I think you made a very wise investment. It will be good for the entire industry when you succeed. Also, thanks to ICM for spending all of this money to pump up a domain extension.
One more thing: if you don’t want an .XXX domain name, don’t buy one. There is no need for all of this drama.
.co could very easily have placed restrictions on who can register .co domains. They could restrict registrants to, e.g., persons/organisations who have a Colombian street address. Other cctld’s have such restrictions.
But .co did not do this. They opened the registry up to everyone; to use for any content.
We will soon enough see the actual .xxx zone data.
My prediction is that if we subtract the number of registered domains attributable to defensive registrations (domains that will have *no content*), .xxx’s numbers are quite modest.
But we will see.
The domain I attempted to register is showing up in my gd account as “pre registration” and in the who is service it is showing up as registered but unavailable. Anyone have experience with this? How will I know if I got it or not?
One word TLDs are worth it not matter what. There will always be fetish-minded people that hate surfing and would rather type in the keyword (direct navigation). Once developed, links hopefully will follow. But isn’t that why we buy one word or two word domains?
How many adult/sex/dating related terms and phrases are there? 500? 1000 max?
The top 100 were already reserved by the big boys. You’ll be lucky if you get the other 500-900 relevant leftovers. Even those would be debatably worth their $75 renewal fees.
160K registrations equals 159k wasted.
I enjoy every new TLD getting launched. There’s less competition for the dotcom’s at least temporarily each time.
We’ve seen many TLD’s get hyped up followed by a slow death. It just amazes me how people get fooled by the next pump-n-dump.
Hi,
As I predicted, out of the many colleges and universities…that defensively registered a BUNCH of .XXX domain names, ALL, if almost NONE of them thought about what their schools are most known for and recognised for: Their ‘Generic Team Names”.
How long do you think it is going to take the owners of these ‘generic’ XXX domains to get current and former (girls) of the schools or teams (Pro teams included)…Ex Cheerleaders etc…to provide, lets say ‘content’ for these domains…the schools, universities & Pro teams are not going to be exactly happy about at all?
The 12 most used names of four-year college teams: Eagles (76), Tigers (46), Bulldogs (39), Panthers (33), Knights (32), Lions (32), Bears (30), Hawks (28), Cougars (27), Pioneers (28), Warriors (27) and Wildcats (27
Taken:
Eagles
Tigers
Bulldogs
Panthers
Knights
Lions
Bears
Hawks
Pioneers
Warriors
Wildcats
Chargers
Ravens
beavers
Hornets
Saints
Bearcats
Huskies
Broncos
Rams
* A lot of places to “go with” with these two 😉
*Cougars
*Beavers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_college_team_nicknames_in_the_United_States
Best,
‘D’
If ‘dotMOBI has been killed by the iPphone’ – what do you learned sages make of this?
DotMobi has discussed the iPhone and Apple on http://blog.mobi – here is the opportunity to get informed if you would like to really understand this issue.
Further, from what I can see, the goal for Apple is to make money. Apple can easily monetize apps since it controls the curated, walled garden in which they exist. Mobile websites do not allow them to make money, so they choose not to feature easy ways to access mobile websites (in this case, a .mobi choice on the keypad).
And, as more and more brands tire of paying Apple fees to be in the App Store – and as HTML5 becomes commonplace for mobile website developers – you will see a shift to mobile websites with a .Mobi extension rather than app-based implementations.
@Gary Dell
If the domain does not show in YOUR account at your Reistrar’s page as registered /success/completed…etc under YOUR name then someone else has registered it.
Hi,
UA tries to buy UA .XXX’ domain name (NOT)
http://cw.ua.edu/2011/12/08/ua-tries-to-buy-xxx-domain-name/
Peace!
‘D’
not bad but much LESS than expected
@Ben Elza & @Gary Dell,
Ben’s comment is only partially correct. I registered several domain names at multiple registrars and it took a couple of days to sort out which registrars beat out the others. This was the reason for pending statuses. Some registrars were either more proactive than others in recognizing this, claiming awarded domains and retracting that status later. About 1/3 of the domains I purchased had a pending status as of 12/8 12:00am. Most were taken by someone else and were eventually removed from my accounts. Some, however, were awarded to me, and my information is in the WHOIS.
The WHOIS information has since been published, and the individual published in WHOIS is the final winner.
http://www.icmregistry.xxx/whois/
Sorry about the confusion…
“Some registrars were either more proactive than others in recognizing this, claiming awarded domains and retracting that status later.”
Better:
“Some registrars were more proactive than others in recognizing this; others mistakenly declared awarded domains and retracted the claims afterwards.”
When comparing .XXX to the ccTLDs that have failed, I think what many are missing is that– becuase the “XXX” extension already ostensibly identified the type of type or products one can expect, simple, non-sexual terms like “Gift Baskets” can be used for someone who wishes to set up an online store for sexually oriented gift baskets (erotic toys, sexually shaped soap, candy, etc.) and associated gag gift items. You don’t get that that with any other ccTLD extension. What I DON’T like is that I do believe that ICM Registry blocked certain registrations from taking place during the beginning hours of the general availability period as a means of snatching up particularly good names (which were submitted during the pre-registration period just before the GA period). I “pre-registered” MFM.XXX a day or two before the GA period, and not only was I not given the registration, but it’s been put on hold by ICM Registry– on a GoDaddy server, although it’s still listed as being “registered.” WTF? I’ve emailed them about it but, so far, no response. If Gay.xxx can sell for $500,000, I supposed they figure MFM.XXX will fetch at least $100,000 so they weren’t going to let me or anybody else register it. That’s seems to be a dishonest way of doing busines.
I agree David. I had much the same experience with certain names and I’m sure they were premium enough to have ICM claim them. That’s not free market, no doubt.
@ David @ ORM 101
Valid concerns but I would suggest taking a minute and finding out what actually happened. Some names that had landrush applications also had general availability applications which is probably what accounts for what both of you are describing. If ICM had a name reserved for themselves it would not be registered to anybody or on a GoDaddy server. It sounds like somebody put in an application for the name you wanted in the landrush phase, which closed before general availability began. Also, some registrars didn’t even update their own sites to reflect up-to-date whois information from Sunrise Applications or EVEN names that were reserved by ICM months ago (Network solutions). This means they were taking applications for names that had ZERO chance of ever being registered.
Sucks I know, but not ICM’s fault.
Think about it as a surfer does, if you want adult content, where are you going to go breasts dot com or breasts dot xxx?
It will take a little while but the transition will happen IMHO.
What could kill the goose is if it takes too long for interesting and unique adult content to appear on all those new .xxx sites.
Then .xxx will be known as a dead zone and noone will waste their time typing in the extension.
@ Asher and @ ORM,
Update…it took 6 days after the G.A. period opened, but, I received the email today from GoDaddy.com infomring me that I am now the registrant for MFM.XXX
Must say I was surprised. The whole thing was odd, but to your point, Asher, I suppose I may be spouted off a bit prematurely.
I had sent emails to both GoDaddy.com and to ICM Registry. I don’t know if that had anything to do with it or not.
But I’m quite happy because I do believe the name is valuable and may prompt me to create a site for it rather than sell the name.
But thanks for both of your comments.
In answer to the firsts posts above I have compiled a zone survey for .xxx with interesting figures.
http://www.namenewsletter.com/index.php?post/2011/12/21/A-survey-of-the-.xxx-zone-file%3A-the-aftermath
Kate
Interesting but I will say that just because the servers are listed as ICM servers doesn’t mean the domains are only defensive
For example some of the domain we acquired at the TRAFFIC auction like orgy.xxx have still not been allocated and have ICM servers.
Of course there were also 20,000 Sunrise apps many of which are the subject of auctions to be held in January and they might show up as having ICM servers
Michael,
Good point thanks.
I will add an update with your remarks.