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New TLD marketing with Mina Neuberg – DNW Podcast #313

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Mina Neuberg, Chief Marketing Officer of Donuts, talks about marketing new top level domains to registrants.

Picture of Mina Neuberg with the words "New TLD marketing" and Domain Name Wire Podcsat #313

Last week, Donuts announced it was acquiring Afilias in a blockbuster deal. My guest this week is Mina Neuberg, Chief Marketing Officer of Donuts. Mina discusses branding, whether Donuts should market individual TLDs, and her view of the domain industry so far coming from the outside.

Also: Donuts acquires Afilias, two reverse domain name hijacking cases, GoDaddy launches new product, and more.

Sponsor: DAN.com

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:57 — 22.4MB) | Embed

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UNR acquires .Trust and .LLP top level domains

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Company now runs 25 top level domains.

Graphic that states "top level domains" on a white circle inside a blue background

Frank Schilling’s top level domain registry UNR has added two domain names to its stable: .Trust and .LLP.

This is the third home for .Trust, as Kevin Murphy reported last week. UNR says that MarkMonitor, CSC and Safenames are currently accepting pre-orders for .Trust domains.

The .LLP transaction was finalized in April, according to ICANN records. DotRegistry, LLC was the seller.

.LLP is a “corporate identifier” domain similar to .LLC and .Inc.

These domains have seen mixed results. .Ltd leads the pack with over 100,000 registrations. Over half of these are at Alibaba, and price seems to be a significant factor with first-year registrations at about $7. .Llc has 17,000 names in the zone. .Inc, which costs over $2,000 per year to register, has about 3,200 names in the zone.

Some corporate identifiers have restrictions, and my understanding is .LLP is currently set up to be restricted.

After divesting its share of .car, .cars and .auto, the two acquisitions bring UNR’s portfolio up to 25 names. There are 250,000 domains registered across its namespaces.

3-2-1 .Contact

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Donuts readies another top level domain for launch.

Picture of Donuts with the word ".contact" overlaying the photo

Donuts, the largest domain registry in terms of number of top level domains, is gearing up to launch the .contact top level domain name.

The company acquired the top level domain name from Jay Westerdal’s Top Level Spectrum, Inc. last year.

Donuts is positioning the domain for many types of users:

As uncertainty grows with connection on social media platforms, there’s more reason than ever to have a personal contact page that an individual can maintain independently of a platform. .Contact is also ideal for freelancers and consultants who want to attract more leads and give clients an easy way to contact them. Plus, businesses of all sizes can benefit from a designated contact page and URL to help customers know their trustworthy channels for communication.

The first two examples fall into the “business card on the web” idea and make sense. For the last example, I’ll be curious to see if businesses decide they need a separate website for their contact page.

.Contact has two things going for it from an investor standpoint.

First, it’s inexpensive; Donuts says the domains cost less than .com. (Of course, it’s up to registrars to set retail prices. Donuts’ own registrar, Name.com, is charging $8.99 for the first year and $10.99 for renewals.)

Second, Donuts is sending almost all domains to the market without premiums. Only about 50 names will have premium prices.

Early Access runs December 2-9 and General Availability begins December 9.

 

MMX to launch pricey .Forum top level domain name

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The company plans to acquire rights .Forum rights from Jay Westerdal.

.Forum top level domain logo

Top level domain name company MMX (AIM: MMX) has laid out plans for the upcoming launch of the .forum top level domain name.

Sunrise will run from November 16 through December 16 of this year. General availability won’t begin until March 2, 2021.

You’ll need to open up your pocketbook if you wish to start a website on .forum. Wholesale pricing has apparently been set at $1,000 per year, although there will be a first-year promotion for half of the normal price.

The pricing might make sense because this likely isn’t a high volume domain name. Internet forums aren’t as popular as they used to be, but popular forums attract a large crowd. This might be one of those domains that needs a high price to make up for lower volume.

ICANN records show that Jay Westerdal’s Fegistry, LLC is still the owner of this top level domain name. Fegistry, LLC was administratively dissolved by the State of Washington earlier this year for failing to file its annual report. (This is somewhat typical for small businesses, and the business can easily be reinstated.)

The website at nic.forum recently changed from Westerdal’s site to one created by MMX.

I’ve reached out to representatives of MMX and to Jay Westerdal for comment and will update this story when I hear back. Update: MMX said that it is providing RSP services for the Dot Forum launch and intends to become the Registry Operator later in 2021.

Nobel Prize winner has connection to new top level domains

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Nobel Prize winner in economics helped create the private auction format for new top level domain name contention sets.

A screenshot of Nobel Prize winner Robert Wilson waking up his neighbor to tell him he won the Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize winner Robert Wilson wakes up his neighbor to tell him they had both won the Nobel Prize in economics. Wilson had a hand in designing an auction model used for new top level domains.

Did you see that video this week of a man and his wife trying to wake up his neighbor to tell him he won the Nobel Prize in economics?

The man in the video, Robert Wilson, won the prize along with the man he was trying to wake up, Paul Milgrom. The pair were awarded the prize for their work related to auction theory.

Wilson had a hand in designing auctions that were used by many new top level domain name auction applicants to resolve contention sets. The applicants held an auction where the losers split the winner’s payment so they didn’t walk away empty-handed.

The auction format became a key story to how new top level domain name expansion worked out. Some applicants banked tens of millions of dollars by giving up their applications for domains.

Applicant Auction organized most of these private auctions, and it based the format on a model (pdf) created by Peter Cramton and three other economists, including Wilson.

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