The new gTLD .Guru added over 6,000 registration yesterday giving the extension almost 21,000 registered domain names.
.Guru yesterday also passed .Travel and .Aero two Top Level Domains (TLD’s) that have been around for many years.
.Travel launched back on October 2005
.Aero launched back on December 1, 2008
However unlike .Guru both .travel and .aero are restrcted meaning not everyone can register and own one.
As for .Travel the extension is restricted for registration to “people, organizations, associations, and private, governmental and non-governmental agencies in the travel and tourism industry.”
It also does not offer “live” registrations.
Registrants must be approved as being in the applicable community there attempted registration throguh a registrar is approved by the registry which can take up to several days.
As for .Aero registrants are limited to “Airlines, airports, and other parts of the air-travel industry.”
I’ve been asked over the blog what is different about this new round of TLD’s as opposed to previous rounds which included .travel and .Aero and I think you can now see the difference between a restricted and unrestricted.
At what we estimate is a whole price of $25 a registration, Donuts the registry behind .Guru made we estimated some $150,000 yesterday or almost its entire $185,000 application fee.
185K is just the application fee. It’s the tip of the iceberg.
There are infrastructure costs, employees to pay, marketing budget etc
Personally I doubt ever TLD run by Donuts will do well.
Of course it will be interesting to see the drops next year.
.Travel – “people, organizations, associations, and private, governmental and non-governmental agencies in the travel and tourism industry.”
why restrict it – who else would want it ?
Darn….these are already taken
Porn.guru
Wanking.guru
Masturbation.guru
But these are still available:
JerkOff.guru
JerkingOff.guru
You had a survey on which new tld would have the most success and I believe .guru was the clear winner. This is not surprising to domainers. I didn’t register any .gurus.
BrianWick–
F**&&^my.guru
and f**^.me
people are going to be all spent out by the time the actual decent new gtlds come out, lol. i think guru is horrible…
i see this as the biggest money shredder in the domain business history.
i could bet that most of the people entering this game of gTLDs is just for the opportunity given by the initial momentum which is obviously huge after all the hype that has been made over the last two years. the majority don’t have a strong opinion as what the outcome will be of this wave and a good part are just for the new get rich quick money scheme.
compare this with the early days of the business in the 90’s where people truly believe in this and jump on with a great leap of faith.
only a bunch of domains will be good hacks or have strong meaning when connected with these new gTLDs. these will be good investments. on the registry side only the most focused and suited to a market niche will ever succeed after a couple of years.
most domainers and registries are just set to burn dollar after dollar after this fools gold…
funny thing is we can already know for sure some of the few winners of this game no matter the outcome. ICANN for once…
At EnCirca, both .travel and .aero are real-time registrations. The registrant does need to become authenticated first though and provide their authentication token at the time of registration.
So, there is some friction to the sales process.
DotGuru’s early sales are indeed impressive. Could it be that the world has been lusting all this time for a dotGuru address or is this imply an initial rush by domainers and those who missed out on the domain gold rushes of the past? Only time will tell, but I already see a smoking gun. For these names to truly be successful the general public will have to embrace most of them. Not all, but definitely most of them. And judging by the available figures for those released that is not happening. Yes, dotGuru is doing well, but dotEquipment, dotLighting, dotEstate, dotPhotography, dotGraphics, dotCamera and dotGallery are doing poorly. This strongly points to domainers and neophytes betting on dotGuru – not potential endusers.
maybe, because … these days … everyone believes to be an .GURU … 🙂
however, remember that (both) .Travel and .Aero (and many other TLDs) have been killed by (better known) .com
“maybe, because … these days … everyone believes to be an .GURU … :)”
Republican.guru
lib.guru
democrate.guru
political.guru
@David
but what would people say if all these TLD’s were doing as “well” as .GURU? lets pretend 150 gTLD are out and they all have the same registration numbers or more as .GURU…
im guessing people would say “welp, told you… its all domainers..hardy har har told ya’ll no real end users will ever be able to register these cause domainers snatch them up”
and if they all have low numbers it suddenly becomes…. “gee, i dont know how the registries are going to survive… hey look, not even domainers are interested hardy har har”
damned if they do and damned if they dont. there is no situation where domainers on the other side of the situation are going to say “well shit this may not be so bad after all lets see….”
@ontheinterweb
I would be over the moon if 150 of these gTLDs were doing as well as dotGuru because a lot of my friends are banking on it. The bottom line is that I’m pro gTLD because it will bring a lot of newbies into the domain world and that’s good for all of us, but like Frank said on another post, “This is a marathon.” And he’s right because it will take a while for many of these to gain traction with the general public. The problem I have is with the snake oil salesmen who tell the world that the public is literally screaming with anticipation for these names. That is total BS and will do no good for our industry. And why should I care? Simple – the better the public perceives us the better we all make out.
.guru is getting so many probably because domainers are anxious… i thought it was odd too. it’ll thin out..
i dont think the public are going to get their feelings hurt for being lied to that people screaming with anticipation waiting for the new gTLD… thats a pretty innocent lie as far as drumming up hype and advertising stuff. by the way, who is actually saying stuff like that?
if they do get their feelings hurt i doubt itll be any setback in the grand scheme of things. a whole lot of advertising is downright dishonest and people still buy and think highly of some of these products. i dont know… dont even think the public are paying attention yet…. but why would they be? most arnt geeks like us following this thing as it unfolds.. i was surprised to learn someone i know who doesnt follow domains said to me “theres a .bike now,” but shes in advertising.
anyway, zero gTLD for me so far… the .guru rush was unexpected
@ontheinterweb
The people saying the public is clamoring for the new gTLDs are the same people promoting the “DotCom is Dead” propaganda. Kind of logical if you think about it 🙂
And, yes, the dotGuru rush also totally caught me off guard. Would be curious to know how many people did multiple purchases.
I have only entered my 16th calendar year in the domain space,
be a student – not a teacher – read some of these comments from folks that look at domains as a business model – not just speculating or gambling.
20K .guru domains is nothing. A drop in the ocean.
.com gets more registration in one single day.
And remember we are still in the launch ( = hype :D) period.
Hundreds of TLDs are about to be released soon.
Nobody cares about domain hacks.
The only reason why it got 20K regs is because of the novelty and it’s the least worst among the first batch.
Kate –
Just in case anyone with common business sense is still on this thread…
used to own Ci.gs as an investment – then it was a conversation piece that I put on the “fireplace” mantle – then I realized it was a joke and an embarrasmernt of sorts – so I let it drop.
I wonder if the same folks that owned Min.us eventually came to the same conclusion and bought Minus.com from me.for $115K ?
http://dnjournal.com/archive/domainsales/2011/20110720.htm