Nearly 15,000 domains in zone file and over half of them are at NetworkSolutions. 30,000+ domains registered after 24 hours.
The latest batch of zone files has been published, and .xyz had what looks to be a good first day.
The zone file includes nearly 15,000 domain names after the initial hours of launch. Zone files only include registered domains that have nameservers, so it usually undercounts domains by a bit.
.XYZ’s Daniel Negari told Domain Name Wire that registration numbers after 24 hours were 31,126.
I spot checked a couple of .xyz’s reserved domain names and didn’t see them in the zone file. The registry reserved domain names don’t appear to have nameservers.
The most interesting thing about the zone file is that 8,160 domain names have register.com’s nameservers. I checked a dozen of these domains and found all were registered using NetworkSolution’s Whois privacy (NetSol and Register are both owned by Web.com). NetworkSolutions charges $40 per domain, which is 3-4 times what competitors charge for .xyz. This doesn’t make much sense to me, barring some kind of bulk deal.
I know that .xyz did outreach to a number of companies ahead of launch, so it’s possible they coordinated with Network Solutions to register the domains. UPDATE: most of the Network Solutions registrations were part of a free promotion.
[This post was updated to include the numbers directly from the registry and to reflect new information about the Network Solutions numbers.]
This is an essential marketikg budget wink wink
…sounds like a good start, indeed.
One will see how it plays out after a year when those endusers who can’t touch a .com may be able to afford the .xyz, unless that branch becomes too high financially for them as well…
Network Solutions on average has around 86 registrations of any of the new gTLDs (25684 domains/296 new gTLD extensions = 86) . To jump from that low average to 9,000 sounds strange to me. Also, Network Solutions has almost 3 times more registrations compared to Godaddy for this particular gTLD. On average Network Solutions has around 30 X less registrations than Godaddy per new gTLD, not 3X more.
Would love for someone to investigate… I’m not saying Daniel or someone from his team anonymously registered 9,000 domains to make his extension appear more popular but it sure looks like it.
Maybe it is like the .link deal where there were a ton registered by an unaffiliated (or was it affiliated… or was it unaffiliated… or was it owned by) the owner of the .link registry?
These gTLDs are all games, smoke and mirrors, meant to deceive the one group of people (domainers) who would actually purchase them today.
So at $30 a pop and 8,000 registered we are to believe that someone dropped a quarter million bucks on .xyz domains? Yeah, I’m not buying it (or them).
One scenario, setup a side company, register 9000 domains to it, supply, and demand shift.
Who would want to spend 100K on .xyz, for 185K you could have applied for your own .whatever, so I am
Sorry to say this scenario is highly misleading, and to use Netsol, other than godaddy was to fly under the radar, or so they thought.
Let’s see how many get renewed… RIP.XYZ Funny fact that domain is owned, and registered to xyz.
Oops my bad I forgot Netsol charges 3x more, so only a serious end user would spend over $200K to purchases .xyz, more than your own gtld cost now… Lol what a joke… This should have launched on April 1st
One explanation is that .xyz steered prospects to NetSol. They did outreach ahead of launch to various end users. Perhaps they registered through a partnership with NetSol.
That theory is laid to rest with the use of active privacy which is pricey at Netsol, and would have to be a insider deal…
Why the big secret, you should be proud to own the greatest extension ever, why be shamed into hiding behind privacy.
@Andrew
Your explanation would imply that more than 50% of all .xyz registrations are end-users and they all registered through netsol (avoiding all lower priced registrars in the process).
Seriously? I highly doubt any marketing campaign can be THAT effective.
I think I’ll stick with the more logical explanation that they registered 9,000 domains themselves anonymously to boost their own numbers.
“One explanation is that .xyz steered prospects to NetSol”
Why would a company who’s biggest sales pitch is the low cost to register their extension direct customers to NetSol that charges 5 times what everyone else does?
The bottom line is they registered these names themselves. If they show that only 9,000 names were registered on day 1 then it show instant failure. If they show they registered 18,000 on day 1 it shows instant success.
Big difference.
Because netsol might not have charged them that amount. Could even be a whitelabel sort of thing.
9000+ registered domains with Netsol is a far cry to reach their million domain registration.
1,000,000 registration on it’s first year. A very bold statement from the CEO.xyz (as of writing this post, I can’t even type xyz correctly 🙂 )
I must admire his vision.
According to what I read on another domaining blog it seems that netsol users got an email from Netsol offering a complementary .xyz for their .com FREE for 1 year. In order to decline such an offer those netsol users actually had to visit a link and click decline, otherwise the domain would be theirs automatically.
If this is true than the actual paid .xyz registrations are around 50% less than the total .xyz registration numbers.
It’s a way of marketing I guess, but it does make the extension appear much more popular than it actually is.
Ah, interesting. I didn’t get that email from NetSol.
And I read on another blog that it was ancient extraterrestrial beings.
Daniel Negari told us to “BELIEVE IT”:
https://ceo.xyz/believe/
That should be good enough for you people. I don’t understand what all the fuss is about.
Email proof that netsol gave away free domains:
http://www.thedomains.com/2014/06/04/network-solutions-has-no-idea-what-i-am-talking-about/
So the numbers are definitely boosted. Netsol currently has over 70% of all .xyz registrations (27K free .xyz registrations?).
I don’t get it. Where I come from all “xyz” means is “examine your zipper.” Someone’s fly is down on this tld.