190.com Chairman Daniel Chen discusses domain name investments from a Chinese perspective.
Chinese domain name investors spent a lot of money on domain names last year. In this interview courtesy of ChopChop and TLD Registry, 190.com Chairman Daniel Chen discusses his company’s $20 million in domain name investments last year. That includes 7,000 four-letter .com domain names.
In this interview, Chen discusses:
- Acquisition activity in 2015.
- Its plans to open an office in the U.S.
- What it is doing with its 4L .coms — buying or selling, and who will buy them?
- Do corporations really want pinyin names that really mean something?
- Where he sees the market going in the next year.
- Why there was a rapid run-up in domain prices driven by China last year
- How important is the top level domain name to people in China
- MIIT regulations and Internet Content Provider (ICP).
- How 190.com was named
This interview is a unique opportunity for English-speakers to get insight into the Chinese market from the leader of a Chinese domain name company.
Pinky Brand of TLD Registry Ltd. interviewed Chen with the help of Jin Wang (also of TLD Registry) for interpretation.
TLD Registry operates two top level domain names, Dot Chinese Online (.在线) and Dot Chinese Website (.中文网), which have a combined 57,000 registrations.
ChopChop is the company’s new site that lets users find and buy Chinese domain names easily, even if they don’t speak Chinese. In particular, the Premium Name search filter allows users to search English translation keywords among 42 categories, or by domain keyword in Simplified Chinese or pinyin, by popularity, and by price range.
John says
That was interesting and enjoyable. It’s just after 2 AM and I watched the whole video.
As for new investment frontiers going forward, I will mention and plug .Gold here in light of this interview, one I regard to be among the few best and a “sleeping giant” among the new TLDs now:
China + .Gold = “Perfect Together”
* China is the world’s largest gold producer
* China is usually or often the world’s largest gold consumer
* China recently joined the World Gold Council for the first time
* The Shanghai Gold Exchange is the largest physical gold bullion marketplace in the world
* China is rapidly becoming a greater and greater player in the world gold market and may become the most important voice eventually in the setting of the gold price
* The term “Gold” not only refers to literal physical gold itself, but also to a vast and limitless variety of figurative and symbolic positive and happy uses, connotations and applications which people employ in speech and writing every day – as versatile as .com itself – used to signify something positive or the best, most desirable or most valuable of something.
So if .Gold can become MIIT approved then I suspect the sleeping giant can awaken so to speak.
(The other two I openly support now are .US and .Club, although my understanding is that .US would require USA nexus. .Shop is also good and among the best in my view.)
John says
Interesting:
“China Domain Name Rules Could Hurt Business, Competition”
http://www.voanews.com/content/china-domain-name-rules-could-hurt-business-competition/3271581.html