New domain extension tops 100,000 registrations.

The new .tel top level domain name now has 100,000 registrations, just one day after launching in general availability, registry operator Telnic announced. That’s certainly a good start, but the true test will be if Telnic’s non-domain registrar channels can deliver.

If we assume an annual ongoing registration fee of $15 and that Telnic gets about half of that, 100,000 domains means $750,000 in revenue. With $35M invested in the company and a pretty hefty annual expense, .tel will have to rev up that number to at least a million registered domain names in short order to create a meaningful return. .Asia, by comparison, had about 250,000 domains registered as of the end of November.

But let’s be honest, .tel is nothing like .asia. In fact, I wouldn’t really call .tel a domain name. It’s technically a domain name, but Telnic is essentially offering a service. It’s an online yellow and white pages on steroids. It needs to get to critical mass soon, or find a way to shoot up individual domain names in Google (which is a distinct possibility). If the latter happens, search marketers will be all over .tel.

Tom Conlon understands what new TLDs are all about: nothing.

Popular Science author Tom Conlon published an article today about .eco specifically, but mostly about the challenges any new top level domain faces. The headline of his article is appropriately named “A New Type of Domain Name, A New Waste of Money”.

And for domain names not associated with a trademark, who really cares about anything except “.com”? Sure, a few sites like del.icio.us and last.fm have done OK without it, but more often than not, a site without “.com” on the end has to be repeated a few times before a person understands it. You tack “.com” onto something in an ad, a movie trailer, or a box of cereal, and the public knows what to do with it — no need to muck things up with that ghastly-looking “http://”. And, though not necessarily true, I think there’s this general sense that whoever lays claim to the “.com” version of a domain is the legit owner and everything else is suspect or secondary. How else can you explain all of those cutesy Web 2.0 misspellings of words like “Flicker”? I always kind of figured a company would rather misspell for the sake of a “.com” address than get stuck with the indignity of a “.biz” or “.info” URL

Conlon then gives examples of failing TLDs such as .travel and .museum. Because there’s little chance that typing in company.travel or museumname.meseum will resolve, they have little value.

But his last sentence sums up my point about new TLDs well:

Website owners should simply employ one of the two URL naming conventions the public is already conditioned to recognize: the backslash and subdomain. Why pay money for “yoursite.eco” when you’ve already got “eco.yoursite.com” and “yoursite.com/eco” for free?

After all, why should GE maintain two web sites, one for its company and also GE.eco? That’s redundant, inefficient, and not so great for search rankings, either. It’s the same reason .mobi is being rendered pointless; no one wants to maintain two separate web sites.

But I’m beginning to think two or three new TLDs may be successful. New TLD proponents point out that, by opening up the TLD landscape, someone can come up with an innovative new approach to using domain names. This may well happen, but I haven’t seen this new approach yet. So far people clamoring for new TLDs are just using the TLD as a descriptor, such as .eco and .nyc. That’s not innovative and it’s not necessary. If someone has a truly novel approach to domain names, I’d like to see it.

Auction underway at Aftermarket.com.

Domain Consultant’s Domain Madness auction is off and running at aftermarket.com. The auction features a wide range of domain names starting at $0 and going up to $1.65M. The auction concludes March 31.

Domain Madness took a creative marketing approach to generate buzz for the auction. Going with the basketball March Madness theme, you could predict which domain names you expect to sell. The person who correctly predicts the most domains (some domains are worth more points than others) wins $1,000. Now that the contest entry period has concluded, here are my picks:

Antidepressant.net $750
BlockAds.com $250
Cutout.com $2300
Demetrius.com $1900
Doodling.com $3500
ePills.com $3600
FinancialGrowth.com $1000
GJR.com $4200
Groomed.com $2400
IceSkating.net $0
InsectControl.com $3800
LawClass.com $2500
Loco.com $28,000
PrescriptionBenefits.com $2200
StayThin.com $0
StudentOffers.com $2500
Tale.com $8000
ToyFest.com $350

I found it more difficult to pick in this auction than the Domainer Mardi Gras auction since this is a first time auction and online only. So far IceSkating.net has a bid, but with no reserve that was an easy pick. Loco.com may be a stretch at $28,000, but it’s a great domain with so many potential uses.

And in a typical domainer nod to Domain Consultant, the group recently bought DomainMadness.com.

Arbitration panel determines Marchex can keep domain name FrontRunners.com.

If there ever was a frontrunner for “dubious UDRP domain arbitration case”, FrontRunners.com may be it.

Bradley D Mittman MD dba FRONTRUNNERS has a trademark to the term FrontRunners for use in connection with educational conferences and services in the field of medicine, including tutorial sessions and correspondence courses. But you’ve probably never heard of the company or any of the other companies laying claim to a similar trademark.

Nonetheless, Mittman filed a UDRP against Marchex (NASDAQ: MCHX) subsidiary MDNH, Inc to try to get the domain name. With domain attorney John Berryhill on the defense, MDNH quashed the attempt. (See case).

Mittman’s claim that Frontrunners.com showed links related to his products was a bit of a stretch. The site apparently had links to Amazon, BizRate, and other major online stores and comparison shopping sites. His products are sold on these sites, so he claimed that MDNH was trying to take advantage of his not-so-famous trademark.

We observe that the Wayback Machine (“www.archive.org”) has cached six versions of the site to which the disputed domain resolved between October 18, 2000 and January 9, 2007. In none of those versions is there any apparent link to a product or services of the Complainant or any product or service competitive with that of the Complainant.

Marchex acquired FrontRunners.com through the aquisition of Yun Ye’s UltSearch portfolio.

Telnic inks deal with MySpace and directory companies.

When I last saw Telnic’s Justin Hayword, he told me the company had something in the works that would address one of my chief concerns about .tel: getting to critical mass quickly.

Telnic has signed a deal with MySpace and British Telecom (BT) to sell the domain names, and also with a German directory provider, which should give the domain a boost.

The truth is the typical domain channel for selling domains isn’t as applicable to .tel. GoDaddy isn’t offering it, perhaps because it can’t sell add-ons like web hosting and domain privacy for the domain. And few domainers are buying in because they don’t understand how to make money with the domains (which can’t have parked pages or web sites).

I coughed up $15 to get Allemann.tel so I can test it out. I bought the domain and have yet to receive any instructions on setting up my .tel domain. Although I can figure it out, I hope Telnic is aggressively pushing out instructions to new customers.