Donuts rolls in a lot of dough, but you’ll have to wait another week to see which domains they applied for.
This morning Donuts, a new TLD applicant founded by eNom founder Paul Stahura, announced the most ambitious public new TLD plans to date: a $100 investment and 307 applications.
The company also hired Mason Cole as Vice President, Communications and Industry Relations. I had the chance to connect with him this morning to understand more about Donuts’ plans.
Cole told me the company looked at thousands of possible strings, ultimately settling on the 307 it has applied for. Back in January Bloomberg reported that Donuts was applying for 10 strings, but Cole says that may have been a miscommunication between Stahura and the Bloomberg reporter.
“At the time the final number hadn’t been settled on,” said Cole.
Cole isn’t sure how many of the 307 strings will be contested by other applicants. The company is prepared to bring all 307 to market.
“I can tell you we’ve made sure to resource the company in a way that would allow us to get all 307 strings if we decide to,” he said.
Cole was tight-lipped on what the company is doing in the digital archery process for batching. He also said the company does not plan to reveal its applications until ICANN makes them public on June 13.
The company announced today that it will use Demand Media as its backend registry provider. Stahura sold eNom to Demand Media in 2006. Demand Media has announced its own $18 million investment in new top level domains, but it has not invested in Donuts. Assuming Demand Media is applying for its own TLDs, it will be interesting to see if there’s any contention between Demand Media’s domains and those of Donuts. Cole said he can’t comment on Demand Media’s business.
For now, Donuts is engaged in a high stakes game of digital archery and is preparing for whatever roadblocks that may occur — but hoping for no more delays.
“I’d hope that after six years in the entire process there wouldn’t be any additional delays,” said Cole. “The process is nothing if not thorough.”
Oh, and if you’re wondering why the business is called Donuts:
“The name evokes choice, which is what this program is all about.”
I wonder what TLD equates to a maple frosted krispy kreme? I’ll take a dozen of those.
Tom Gilles says
maple frosted is my favorite too
Patricia Kaehler says
Someone please explain to me what’s meant by the term “string” …
Honest question – I really don’t understand the term…
Does this mean this person is applying
for: .donuts
~Patricia – Ohio USA
Tom Gilles says
Hi Patricia,
‘string’ is synonomous with ‘top level domain’,’tld’,’gtld’, ‘extension’, ‘domain extension’, ‘web extension’.
They all mean the same thing – what comes to the Right of the Dot.
Yes, they are most likely applying for ‘.donuts’ – and 306 other ‘extensions’, ‘tlds’ in many categories, topics, languages.
The organizational architecture of information on the web is about to undergo a major shift.
DRAKE says
waste of cash if u ask me
RaTHeaD says
ummmmm…
i want homer-simpson.donuts.
Volker says
dunkin.donuts
Dan says
JP says
Ever have a cool business idea for yourself but it seemed so expensive it was clearly just daydreaming or visions of grandeur like get hundreds of tlds and sell them like donuts? Well these guys did and they are actually gonna have a go at it.
My biggest curiosity is are they planning on operating the registries and selling domains or are they going to just sit on the tlds in hopes to resell them?