A slow start, but some of these domains have long term potential.
Five new top level domain names launched yesterday, and they combined for a total registration base of just 2,500 after the end of the “zone day”. This includes sunrise and landrush, plus the initial hours of general availability.
Donuts’ .healthcare ended the day with about 1,400 registrations (all stats from nTLDstats).
I’m a bit curious about .healthcare. There’s a growing chorus of concern about the future .health domain and how people will falsely believe that information on it is authoritative. I personally thing this is silly, but if people do give authority to .health, won’t they also give it to .healthcare?
The other domains yesterday were all from Rightside. Its four military-related domain names struggled out of the gate:
- .vet 649
- .army 202
- .navy 122
- .airforce
A couple observations on these domains.
First, it’s no surprise that .vet is outperforming the others. There are two reasons for this: a) .vet can be used for veterans and veterinarians and b) the other three domains can be considered a subset of .vet when it comes to who will register them. If you’re an army veteran, will you register .army or .vet?
Second, I think the biggest market by volume for these domains are individuals, either in the respective military branches or retired. These would be for personal sites or vanity email. Anything Rightside can do to make it easy for people to register the domains and attach them to a personal site or email address will boost registrations.
Although the first day was slow for these military-themed domains, I can see them going “viral” as people in the armed forces start using them. When someone in the navy sends and email to someone else using his or her .navy address, there will likely be a “hey, how did you do that?” conversation.
Joseph Peterson says
Part of the problem with vanity use of .ARMY, .AIRFORCE, or .NAVY is that military personnel are required to constrain their behavior while wearing the uniform or speaking in public. The U.S. military is acutely sensitive to the risk of bad PR, and private opinions are easily misconstrued as official.
How would the public perceive emails from [email protected]? And how would the Army regulate those emails or respond to the inevitable ongoing misunderstandings and backlash?
Civilians can do or say whatever they please, but the U.S. military generates pages upon pages of regulations that interfere with civilian-style free speech for its personnel. Take political participation as an example:
http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/134410p.pdf
Here are some of the activities “[a] member of the Armed Forces on active duty shall not” engage in:
“4.1.2.4. Serve in any official capacity with or be listed as a sponsor of a partisan political club.
4.1.2.5. Speak before a partisan political gathering, including any gathering that promotes a partisan political party, candidate, or cause.
4.1.2.6. Participate in any radio, television, or other program or group discussion as an advocate for or against a partisan political party, candidate, or cause.”
“4.1.2.10. March or ride in a partisan political parade.
4.1.2.11. Display a large political sign, banner, or poster (as distinguished from a bumper sticker) on a private vehicle.”
“4.1.2.13. Participate in any organized effort to provide voters with transportation to the polls if the effort is organized by or associated with a partisan political party, cause, or
candidate.”
“4.1.3. Commissioned officers shall not use contemptuous words”
And so forth.
I cannot imagine that the DoD wants its service members seeming to speak in an official capacity at all times. All the jokes in bad taste? All the partisan political comments? All the normally private and clearly unofficial activity now ineluctably stamped with the names of the armed forces themselves? But that’s what vanity email addresses or blogs built on .ARMY, .AIRFORCE, or .NAVY would do.