Punto 2012 enters the race, a city TLD launches, and Rightside tries to be fashionable.
The weekly deluge of new top level domain names hitting the market continues this week. This week is notable because a new entrant is finally launching two of its domain names.
Monday
Punto 2012 launched .bar and .rest today. The company’s nic.bar and nic.rest sites don’t have much information, but the domains appears to have broad registrar adoption.
The domains aren’t cheap. Expect to pay about $75-$100 for .bar domain names and $35-50 for .rest, which is targeted to restaurants.
I like .bar but the price is rather steep, which could limit adoption. .Rest is an interesting one. I think .restaurant is too long (and people misspell it), but I’m not sure a shorter .rest is better (even though it’s the start of the word “restaurant” translated in many languages). I personally prefer .food or .eat for restaurants.
Punto 2012, based in Mexico City, is also in the running for the .cafe domain name.
Tuesday
.Wien (the German word for Vienna) launches with solid registrar coverage in Europe. Pricing ranges from $35-60 at the registrars I checked.
Wednesday
Rightside launches .moda (Spanish for Fashion) on Wednesday. Pricing is around $30-$40.
Donuts releases its usual crop as well.
.Capital, .engineering, .exchange and .gripe finishing EAP and release at normal prices.
.Associates, .lease, .media, .pictures enter the more expensive Early Access Phase.
Travis says
I hear you. I wanted a .bar, but at that price, can’t justify picking up any of the leftovers. .Moda is an interesting one, but doesn’t immediately peg me as one geared towards fashion. Guess I should brush up on my spanish 😉 Dot pictures? We have enough of those already.
David Oberting says
Hi Andrew..Any idea who is likely to win the .WEB bid and when it may go into the sunrise period?
Thanks!
Andrew Allemann says
I have no idea who will win it. I expect it to take a long time before the contention set is resolved, though.
Rubens Kuhl says
.web is one of the partial contention sets where ICANN still doesn’t know how to handle, so it will take a really long time to settle.
JZ says
i really think these new gtlds would be better suited to release a few every 6 months. there are just too many to keep up with and as a result, i’ve just decided to pass on even spending time looking at them.
Gordon says
Hi Andrew: A sincere thanks for the updates, but make it stop! I am suffering from gtld fatigue. These new gtld’s are getting really dumb. None seem to be selling, none seem to be in demand, all seem to be obviously dying on the vine. This entire gtld program is clearly a loser and it is actually painful watching all these new really dumb gtlds come out and fizzle out with little or no demand.
Attention all domain shoppers: you may now proceed to safely resume your .com renewals.