Yesterday I read many bloggers posting the news that .me registrations, had reached 250,000 registration and that .tel reached 200,000 registrations and generally the tone was that these extension had reached some sort of impressive number.
However, today I have to ask is that number really that impressive?
Consider last June, the registry administering the the ugly stepchild of domain extensions, .biz announced, they had reach 2 Million registrations. The .biz registry had 800,000 registration by the end of their first year.
Now we know how people feel about .biz domains. We see domainers opinion on the extension, from the rare domain auction of top .biz domains like lawyers.biz which only garnished a top bid of $2,500 and Washington.biz which only got a top bid of $5K.
Consider .info, with over 5 Million registrations.
Consider that one of the best possible .info domains, sports.info just sold at auction last month, and couldn’t even break the five figure barrier, selling for $9k at TRAFFIC.
Yesterday’s numbers at first glance may look impressive, but for me, I’m not impressed.
So why is everyone so impressed over 200K and 250K registrations?
I certainly didn’t mean to give off anything but a tone of sarcasm 🙂
I’d be willing to bet 1/4 of those registrations are companies protecting themselves from cybersquatters, probably another 1/4 are domains are good domains (discounting the extension) that domainers have at least convinced themselves were worth registering and the remaining 2/4 are clueless newbies regging junk thinking the extension they chose to invest in is the next big thing..
In every sunrise/landrush in new tlds, there is a rule of thumb that 250K will be eventually registered.
TMs
3 letter
keywords
numbers
etc, etc.
It is getting over that standard hump that is the problem.
I don’t see it happening with the new tlds.
I personally havent invested in either of these ext .me or .tel – I do like the .me hacks but I just cant get my head around .tel
I think we really cant judge these ext for at least 18months to see how many drop
Im sure .asia figures shall show thousands dropped from there orginal registration number.
Regards,
Robbie
“So why is everyone so impressed over 200K and 250K registrations?”
Because they own them. 😉
I have been so severely burnt by .info, .biz, .mobi , etc.
My interest in chasing any other landrushes is ZERO.
I only have to be beaten over the head 3 or 4 times and then I learn my lesson.
The only groups that make money from new gtlds are Icann and the registry.
If domainers want to spend money on the new tlds that is ok with me.
That is less money being bid at Namejet and Snapnames.
All these 2nd Tier .tlds are either bought based on pure speculation (good lucky, you never know unless you try), or by some enduser that doesn’t “get it”, well at least doen’t get it given today’s internet.
At the same time I can’t imagine that nobody is making any money on the 2nd tier .tlds.
IMHO 1st tier = .com, .org, .net, and I think most .org & .net buys are speculative too.