.Tokyo launched and taking into account the 80+ Sunrise and Landrush application I would say a first day total of less than 10,000 registrations isn’t great.
The price of a .Tokyo domain name registration was very reasonable priced at around $15,
There were no premium registration and renewal priced domains although there were certainly reserved domains.
There were no residence restrictions on registrants.
Tokyo has a population of over 13 million people in the city and over 35 Million people in the Metro area.
That’s a lot of people.
Beyond that Tokyo is a economic power house.
According to Wikipedia, Tokyo has the largest metropolitan economy in the world.
Citing a study conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Tokyo urban area (35.2 million people) had a total GDP of US$2.91 trillion in 2012 (at purchasing power parity), which topped that list.
51 of the companies listed on the Global 500 are based in Tokyo, almost twice that of the second-placed city (Paris).
The city gets an estimated 5 million tourist a year from outside Japan and 420 million from Japan.
So its a city of over 13 Million people in the city, 35 million in the metro, a very lucrative economy with a huge corporate presence coupled with a low registration price and high tourism and they can only get 9,000 registrations on the 1st day of registration.
I have to call it like I see it and the results are not impressive in my opinion.
Moreover it appears only 8,000 of the 10,000 new gTLD .Tokyo may have come from within the country as the only Japanese registrar in the top 10, logged just over 8,000 registrations including Sunrise and landrush applications with the balance some 2,000 registrations coming from those who do to live or work in Tokyo.
Of course its only day 1 but I think so far pretty disappointing results.
@Berkens,
“The city gets an estimated 5 million tourist a year from outside Japan and 420 million from Japan”.
The population of Japan is only about 127.6 million (2012), where do the other 292.4 million come from?
What do you attribute the “not good” results to? Please give us a very comprehensive assessment of this data (if you don’t, it makes it seem like you are competing with every launch outside of dot Club; I don’t accuse you of that. But I’ve seen you knock .XYZ and similar launches, without giving the reason why you say “its not good”. Is it a reflection on the gTLD program as a whole, or the Registry, or the Extension itself? Or what?).
Thanks.
420 million people from japan visit Tokyo a year, I guess some more than once a year but you can go argue with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo
Out of 35 million people who live in or near the city with the number of businesses i think 10K is a pretty poor showing.
Mike are IDN .tokyo available ? I mean if it is only ascii is that bad, although I know many Japanese speak English and other languages very well, but if it is only ascii available maybe that number ok.
The case needs to be made for the average Japanese business and consumer, I have .com and .co.jp why do I need .Tokyo ?
@Berkens,
“420 million people from japan visit Tokyo a year, I guess some more than once a year but you can go argue with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo”
If 5 people visit your blog one million times a day, how many people visited your blog a year?
Berkens, the answer is 5 people.
You see, because the unit indicated in the 420 million is “people”, not visits; so you can’t count redundant visits by same person. You always follow the unit of measure. Let’s just assume it was a typo by the source. Pointing out the facts is not arguing.
Yeah you make a good point Domenclature, I thought the same when I read it, someone has numbers off, a country with 127 million people cannot have 420 million domestic visits. Unless they are counting the same citizens visiting multiple times. Still seems like a big number unless these are all the people who go into work daily into Tokyo, but that should not be counted for tourism.
Here is where Wikipedia is getting data from http://www.metro.tokyo.jp/ENGLISH/TOPICS/2007/fth7v100.htm
In 2006, the number of foreign visitors coming to Tokyo amounted to approximately 4.81 million (up 7.1%), and the number of domestic visitors was approximately 420 million (up 3.7%). Both numbers showed strong growth.
The number of visitors to Tokyo per day in 2006 was 1,285,000 (up 3.5%), with foreign visitors accounting for 35,000 (up 6.1%) of that number.
The number of visitors using accommodation in Tokyo per day was 176,000 (up 0.6%), with the number of foreign visitors included in this figure being 29,000 (up 11.5%).
For Tokyo, the visitors’ resulting ripple effect on production of goods and services was 9.4 trillion yen (up 7.4%) with foreign visitors accounting for 744.6 billion yen (up 17.6%) of this figure. The resulting effect on employment was 530,000 jobs (up 5.6%) with the effects of foreign visitors accounting for 42,000 (up 19.2%) of this number. The figure 9.4 trillion yen accounts for 5.7% (up 0.4%) of Tokyo’s total production value.
It’s probably a typographical error, which is fine.
I wish Berkens can elaborate on why he keeps finding fault with certain extensions, but never with .CLUB.
I don’t mean to be vain, this is truly important. He says the 10,000 figure is bad, but doesn’t tell us why such a poor showing. Is it because of the extension? Because dot Tokyo should be as good as it gets; is it due to poor management? Or is it the new gTLD scheme itself? What? Why? Who? Help me ask him to clarify. Thanks.
I think and I have not discussed it with Mike, he is probably looking at the population of the city, and 10,000 regs. The biggest point about all this is the average business and consumer does not care, I am sure .co.jp works fine for the Japanese consumer and small business.
Plus Japanese businesses promote search a lot instead of their business domain name.
This is five years old but a good read on Japan
STEPHEN DOUGLAS: It’s been very interesting in researching the values on your domains, trying to understand the now-outdated Japanese marketing technique of promoting their companies by using “search terms” in their advertisements, instead of a owning a great generic domain name. This was something I wasn’t aware of, and was startled by how illogical this marketing process was, both online and offline. Why promote “search terms” in your advertisements that will ultimately bring up your competitors in the search results, instead of owning the generic descriptive domain name of the search term which can point users straight to your website? This intrigued me, but not enough to ask “why”. Many Japanese companies are quickly moving away from this misguided “strategy”
GLENN SHERMAN: Yes, when we first started investing in these domains, we anticipated that this internet navigation single-mindedness in Japanese internet access would evolve to using more name direction, or typeins, as more commonly known.
http://www.successclick.com/japanese-com-domains-are-changing-a-marketing-culture_2009_07_03/
Domen
. He says the 10,000 figure is bad, but doesn’t tell us why such a poor showing. Is it because of the extension?
No Tokyo is a great city and its a great extension.
Because dot Tokyo should be as good as it gets;
I agree
is it due to poor management? Or is it the new gTLD scheme itself?
Have no idea, don’t live there hasn’t visited in many years before the new gTLD were even approved
have no idea what the marketing was, don’t know how the government embraced the extension.
Without being on the ground have no idea of what is going on with the city and he promotion of the extension
I believe IDN’s are allowed,.Moe has them
At this point in time there seems to be particularly low interest in geographic new tlds. Take .berlin for example. Adding maybe 20 registrations a day.
How much of their current registrations were free, there is all the Sedo names, but I think they were also given away free to residents from day 1? So what is the real number where people have actually paid reg fee? I suspect very very low.
.Berlin had around 40K registrations before the two free days.
Not much added since.
Berlin was free from day 1 to local residents of a few geo regions… that is why it flew out of the gate.
Free gtld’s is the way to go, nobody values anything as free as being worthwhile, that is why it is free. Their is no respect for gtld’s, and I doubt they will ever earn any. I know some key guys can afford to play, and hold, but don’t be fooled people, if you get an offer, try, and up the price, and close the deal.
I registered Gemu.Tokyo (Games in Japanese) and Oto.Tokyo (Auto in Japanese)
Do you really think it means that?
According to Google English to Japanese translation it does. I also did more due diligence on this before I bought it by going to Google.jp and typing in Gemu. Everything that comes up is games or game related.
If you don’t actually speak the language then you are at a massive disadvantage. Native speakers left these on the shelf.
Many native speakers may not have known they were available yet. I registered these two on opening day, and another one I was eyeing Kuruma.Tokyo (Car in Japanese) was gone when I went back to check and buy it an hour later.
Of course they did. You are wasting your money.
The hype is over, people keep saying wait for this extension or that extension, as it will be more popular, overall this is an entire shift on how domains are presented, and marketed.
Man made demand, cannot overtake organic demand for .com. The guys that put all this money into premium domains are already squirming on the upcoming renewals they have coming up in 6 months, and are trying to figure out how to cover $250-500 renewals on a single domain, with no parking revenue, and no end user interest.
The low number of this launch is no surprise to anyone, and they will just continue to happen, either they all work, or none work at all, one extension will not create an industry. There is just way to much supply for anyone to care, other than our small online community, people really do not care about domains name to a point of eat, sleep, breathing them. They find ways to make their .com work by adding their state, llc, inc, or another abbreviation. I see many KeywordClub.com’s sitting parked with less than $5K asking prices, then I see .club with $5K and over min. offers on sedo… You can only sustain a marketplace with hype, and big dreams for so long, all but a few domainers are still active in gtld’s, many have seen the writing on the wall, and know what this is all about. Sorry, but it is the truth, agree or not.
Good post. The whole ntld scene seems to be getting uglier with each passing week. There hasn’t been a “successful” new launch in a couple of months. I think .xyz was a real confidence killer with the amount of smoke and mirrors and then .berlin with a whole lot of dodgy reges at much the same time.
Domen
Ok i agree the language in Wikipedia on tourist is probably inaccurate or misleading.
Bottom line 34 million people and millions of businesses, 10K registrations is not impressive
We agree, and settle this one.
As I said in a comment on DNW (http://domainnamewire.com/2014/07/16/city-domain-name-launches-4000-registrations/comment-page-1/#comment-2202345), my recent trip to Tokyo convinced me it’s unlikely there will be wide adoption of .tokyo or other new gTLDs in Japan. If most Japanese are still relying on the search box to find their destinations, what’s the use of a good domain name?
Kassey
Well good call, unfortunately I don’t read all the comments left on this blog much less on domainnamewire.com
BTW, I finally managed to log in when I switched from Firefox to Chrome and reset my password, after months of trying to get in.