Two Japan-focused domains kick off the week.
It’s another busy week for new top level domain names, including a big .city domain name hitting registrar’s shelves on Tuesday.
Tuesday
Tuesday sees the launch of two Japan-focused domain names…in English.
The biggie is .Tokyo, by far the most populous city TLD to enter general availability thus far.
At least one Domain Name Wire reader thinks it will take a big shift in habits for people in Japan to promote or actually type in a .tokyo domain name…or any domain, for that matter.
We’ll have to see.
One thing is for sure…the price is right. 101domain.com has these for only $13.99 a year.
.Moe also launches on Tuesday. It’s not a domain name for people named Moe. According to its website:
The word “moe” (in Japanese: “萌え”; pronounced as “moh-ay”) is a slang word rooted deep in the Japanese Otaku culture. It has often been used to mean a particular type of “adorable” or “cute” towards fictional characters, people, animals, etc.
I’ll leave it up to someone from Japan to tell me how popular this term is. Domains are about $20 retail.
I believe that Valuetainment AG will launch .Voting on Tuesday as well. Its website is very uninformative, but 101domain.com shows the domain becoming available on Tuesday. It is charging $69.99 per year.
Wednesday
Rightside launches two domain names on Wednesday: .Kaufen (“Buy” in German) and .consulting. The latter should do quite well over time despite its length. Lots of consulting companies use “Consulting” in their names.
Donuts has four domain names coming off EAP and four more entering.
.Media, .pictures, .associates and .lease all revert to regular pricing Wednesday.
.Reisen, .toys, .university and .town enter EAP.
I think University will be interesting. Universities rushed to protect their domain names when .xxx came out several years ago as new of the domain name made the rounds with IT administrators. Will the same thing happen with .university?
(Thanks to Calzone for much of the information used in this post.)
Kassey says
I said I decided not to get any .tokyo.
Well, I had to take it back. When .tokyo registration started today, I just couldn’t resist. Having lived in Tokyo for many years, I thought I would just get one .tokyo domain name for sentimental reason. So I did a quick search and settled on the word “yokoso” (meaning “welcome”). I went to Godaddy and tried yokoso.tokyo. It said it’s available but at the checkout page when I confirmed the transaction it just went back to the top page with the search box cleared. Then I tried to register it again and it said it’s not available. I started over again and it said yes, then I got the same result at the check out page. Next, I tried to include a renewal and finally the transaction went through. However, then I received an email informing me “Error: Domain failed availability check: Domain cannot be registered because another domain was found in a restricted status”
Then I tried 101domain and also http://hello.tokyo/ and they both said the domain is not available.
It appears GD is not ready and cannot tell me if a .tokyo domain name is really available. Oh well, this is the first and may be the last time I’ll register a new gTLD.
Sovichea Cheth says
So .moe is cute. Willing to get it one day.