Non-profit plans to continue hiring in all departments.

ICANN expects to end FY 2013 this June with nearly 50% more employees than it began the year with.

That’s according to the non-profit’s FY 2014 draft operating plan, which shows an expected 233 employees by the end of June. It ended June 2012 with 158 employees. That’s nearly 50% growth in just one year.

The forecast shows that ICANN expects to hire 47 people in this quarter alone. 19 of those are allocated to the new top level domain program.

The non-profit is planning to grow its headcount to 284 by the end of FY 2014, which concludes in June 2014.

The Global Stakeholder Engagement Group and Operations team will see the biggest headcount growth during FY 2014 under the draft plan, going from 23 to 29 and 11 to 17 projected employees, respectively.

DNS Industry and the technical functions team will both get five new employees under the draft FY 2014 plan.

No “permanent” department plans to shed employees in the coming fiscal year, although headcount dedicated to the new TLD program is expected to decrease from 35 at the beginning of FY 2014 to 21 by the end of the fiscal year. However, only 16 people were allocated to new TLDs as of March, so the number of employees will still be higher at the end of the fiscal year than it was at last count in March.

I expect much of the hiring to occur outside the United States.

ICANN forecasts 646 applications will be withdrawn, mostly after the initial evaluation period.

66 applications for new top level domain names have been withdrawn as of today. For budgeting purposes, ICANN projects that number will explode to 646 before everything is said and done.

The number was disclosed in ICANN’s proposed operating plan and budget for the 2014 financial year, which begins in July 2013. The number is up from a previously budgeted 545 applications withdrawn.

ICANN expects 105 applications will be withdrawn before they pass through the initial evaluation phase. Applicants get a 70% refund of their $185,000 application fee in this case.

A further 390 applications are projected to be withdrawn after initial evaluation but before string contention resolutions, dispute resolution is completed, or extended evaluation. ICANN is betting that many applicants in contention sets will withdraw as applicants strike deals with each other. These applicants will get a 35% refund.

The forecast shows a further 150 applications withdrawn after string contention resolution, dispute resolution, and extended evaluation. These applicants will get 20% of their money back.

This is a reverse of the prior forecast, which predicted most withdraws would come only after final contention resolution. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if more companies settle their contention sets privately before initial evaluation results are posted.

One application was withdrawn within 21 days of getting a GAC Early Warning. That applicant received an 80% refund.

Largest new TLD applicant commits to resolve up to 63 new TLD contention sets through first private auction.

Donuts, the company that applied for the most top level domain names, announced today that it will commit to private auctions for 63 of the 307 strings that it applied for in the first auction to be held by Applicant Auction.

Private auctions allow new TLD applicants to settle contention sets faster than waiting for ICANN’s “auction of last resort”. They also allow the proceeds to be distributed to the losing bidders rather than to ICANN.

For the Applicant Auction designed by Peter Cramton, the law firm of Morrison & Foerster will act as a “neutral” for legal and settlement functions and JP Morgan Escrow Services will provide escrow. The Applicant Auction web site says the first auction is scheduled for May 28, although Donuts’ press release says it will be June 3.

Some new TLD applicants claim that private auctions may violate antitrust rules, although other applicants have said these claims are just a PR stunt by companies that don’t want to participate in private auctions.

In order for a private auction to work, all applicants for the string must voluntarily participate in the auction. So applicants that don’t like private auctions simply don’t have to participate. However, some applicants may worry that competitors will be enriched through private auctions, giving them more money to compete on other strings.

There will be a lot of strategic thinking by all applicants as to which domains they want to have private auctions for.

Donuts’ press release and list of 63 strings is available here.

[This story was updated to reflect that the 63 strings committed refer to the "first" auction held by Applicant Auction.]

Company registered domains for new stadium in April.

Back in March Domain Name Wire’s crystal ball picked up on Levi Strauss’ plans to buy naming rights to a stadium.

But which stadium?

Domain Name Wire’s crystal ball couldn’t figure that out, but reader Page Howe did. Howe suggested that the San Francisco company would buy naming rights to the 49ers new stadium in Santa Clara, and recently the naming announcement was made.

The crystal ball has been hard at work lately. Last month it predicted that 20th Century Fox was going to be renamed to 21st Century Fox.

What major business announcement is next? Pay close attention to the crystal ball of domain registrations and you might find out.

Responsive web design is a much more efficient approach to mobile browsing than a separate domain name.

I really liked the idea of .mobi before it was launched. It was the only “new” top level domain that made sense to me.

The idea of creating a domain solely for mobile devices made a lot of sense because it served a function; it wasn’t just a label of the site’s content like many other top level domains. In many ways .mobi was prescient; mobile browsing was just about to take off when .mobi came out.

But there was a much simpler solution that offered a good browsing experience to mobile visitors without the need to remember a separate domain name. Automatic device and operating system recognition enables web publishers to easily shift a visitor to a mobile site. Let’s face it: .Mobi isn’t needed. Site visitors don’t need to know the URL of a company’s mobile site; they will be forwarded there when they type in the .com URL.

We’re currently experiencing the next phase of cross-browser web browsing…

A number of big sites are embracing responsive design. In a nut shell, a responsive web site automatically reshapes itself to display well in a browser window of any size. A good example is Mashable. If you go to Mashable and start resizing your web browser, you won’t see any horizontal scroll bars. Instead, the content will reformat to fit the screen.

It’s the same URL, you’re not even forwarded to a subdomain. It works in browsers of any size.

High quality responsive web design is now available to the masses. There are hundreds of responsive WordPress themes available for under $100 (or even free). I’m working on a responsive design for Domain Name Wire as we speak.

Responsive design makes the idea of a separate domain for a mobile site an even more antiquated idea than it already was.

Still, .mobi has been going strong. As of the end of January it had over a million registered domains.

Outside of GoDaddy, the biggest .mobi registrar is GMO Internet, which focuses on the Japanese market. A couple Chinese registrars are also in the top 10. There’s clearly still a market for .mobi, and perhaps it’s for the mobile-only market.

Yet I think it’s fair to say that a different domain name is not the most effective way of handling cross-browser web publishing.