June 13 was a big day for the domain name industry.
It’s the time of year to review what has transpired in the domain name industry over the past year and look forward to 2012.
We’ll start with one of the most anticipated dates in the domain industry this year: June 13, 2012.
That was the day ICANN officially revealed the 1,930 applications for new top level domain names covering 1,409 unique strings.
This is more than many industry players — including the registries that were helping applicants — predicted.
One of the reasons the number may have come in higher was that Donuts applied for 307 domains. In addition to being a shockingly high number in itself, it chose Demand Media as its backend partner. That would have kept it somewhat under the radar with the big registries.
Here were some of the big stories to come out of reveal day:
1. Google and Amazon went long. Google applied for 101 domains and Amazon applied for 76 domains, but surprisingly Amazon doesn’t plan to offer any of them to the public.
2. Facebook, Twitter, and eBay all sat on the sideline. While new TLD backers say “they just don’t get it”, others say they wisely saved their money.
3. Frank Schilling applied for 54 domains through his registry Uniregistry.
4. Donuts, donuts, donuts. Over 25 dozen of them.
5. You applied for dot what? A lot of applicants made mistakes, from applying for .dotafrica instead of .africa to misspelling “logistics” to messing up an IDN.
6. There were over 100 internationalized domain name applications. Applicants later found out they’ll get priority in the process.
iain roache says
Domain Venture Partners applied for 60 domains through his registry Famous Four Media.