Color me surprised.
Afilias launched its first six new top level domain names yesterday, and I’d rate it as the worst first day performance of any portfolio applicant.
I’m basing this on changes to the zone files. Here are the six domains Afilias’ launched in general availability yesterday with how many domains they added to the zone and the current total:
.red 289 to 341
.blue 205 to 270
.移动 142 to 231 (Chinese simplified for Mobile Phone)
.pink 156 to 202
.kim 112 to 135
.shiksha 31 to 63 (Hindi for Education)
The poor initial performance wasn’t due to price, as the domains retailed for about $17 to $26. It’s fair to blame poor registrar distribution in part. GoDaddy was absent. But I also think the overall market opportunity for the color domains is quite limited.
Perhaps the projections in Afilias’ applications weren’t so much sandbagging after all.
I would think for one of the color domains to take off they’ll need to get a few key celebrities, star brands, or startups on board. They’ll have to make the domains mean something when they don’t mean much on their own.
I-Registry also launched a domain yesterday, .onl. It’s apparently short for “online”. The domain’s zone file grew by 303 domains to 379. That’s not bad given that the registry’s dated website made me question if the domain was even coming out yesterday.
Trent says
The colors had many reservations, along with the big registar not carrying them, probably due to the fact they don’t want their cs staff to be bombarded with why majority of stuff across the board is reserved. Well they had their 1 day of fame, now onto the next batch. .buzz had some very weak numbers as well. Launch days are supposed to be about hype, and excitement these companies are bring very passive, and missing the mark. Or maybe we are seeing that people do not want to deal with the politics of a registar holding their name.
Either you know you can get it, buyit, or move on to .com. Developers don’t want to pay $16,800 for unproven.buzz day 1 out of the gates. I can get a brandable 4/5L .com for that price, and have some liquidity with it if all else fails.
I think the gtld registries are doing more harm than good at this stage.
Andrew Allemann says
It’s very difficult to get hype when so many domains are launching at once. The good news for new TLD registries is that growth after day one is pretty steady and good.
I figure day one is for domain investors and brand protectors, with a few people that plan to actually build the sites. Then over the next year(s) they get a small fraction of people looking to start new sites only to be disappointed by available .coms.
Robbie says
With blue red pink as many have said before the terms work better on the other side of the DOT. So navigating along the means of meaningful terms, tie that in with collision, and the reservation list, could have made it hard to find workable terms. The price being as low as $14 on this one could not have been a factor, as they was a low range compared to many other launches.
There is still plenty of solid 500 – 2500 priced inventory in the .com space from the millions of domains parked.
brand says
pure.blue
mega.blue
brilliant.blue
Indian.red
strong.buzz
monster.buzz, this one may have an issue with monster.com
RaTHeaD says
are subdomains for sale yet? i’d like to get pink.buzz.pink. when i think pink i get a buzz… if that makes any sense.