• Home
  • Categories
    • Domain Sales
    • Services
    • Domain Registrars
    • Domain Parking
    • Expired Domains
    • We Get It
    • Policy & Law
    • Uncategorized
    • Podcasts
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Disclosures
    • Facebook
    • RSS
    • Twitter
    • YouTube

Domain Name Wire | Domain Name News

Domain Name Industry News

Featured Domains

New TLDs, five years in

by Andrew Allemann — February 28, 2019 Uncategorized 39 Comments

Picture of birthday cake with five candles

 

It was five years ago this month that the first domains under the new top level domain (nTLD) program started rolling out to consumers. The first Latin script general availability domains came out in early February 2014.

Remember .guru? .Plumbing? Yeah, that was a long time ago.

Here’s how I’d sum up the first five years of new top level domains.

Demand and artificial demand

Registration numbers for new TLDs have not met expectations for just about anyone who put money into it. That includes the many registries that spent millions acquiring strings as well as ICANN.

I thought new TLD applicants were very bullish, but even I was surprised when the first sunrises got only a couple hundred registrations.

Applicants should have understood the market size better. People were looking at registrations in .com and predicting market size for new TLD strings but many applicants expected some magic demand to come out of nowhere. The reality is that there are only so many people creating a website at a given time. They’re going to look for a .com or ccTLD name. If they don’t get that then they might consider a new TLD. So new TLD demand for people creating websites is a subset of total site creator demand. Without a catalyst for more people to create websites, demand won’t shoot up. Click here to continue reading…

  • Tweet
  • Email

39 Comments Tags: .guru, .xxx, .xyz, amazon, domain registry, donuts, idns, new top level domains, ntlds, topstory, VeriSign

Get the DNW Newsletter – sign up here.

Archives

Partners & Sponsors

HostingFacts.com



Top Stories

  • 01.

    Ethos paid $1.135 billion for .Org

    POSTED UNDER Policy & Law

  • 02.

    ISOC chapter breaks ranks, criticizes deal to sell .Org

    POSTED UNDER Policy & Law

  • 03.

    CBD company pays $160,000 for GreenRoads.com after losing UDRP

    POSTED UNDER Domain Sales

  • Privacy Policy & Terms of Service
  • Disclosures
  • Advertising
© 2005–2019 Domain Name Wire • DNW and Domain Name Wire are trademarks of Brainstorm Labs, LLC

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.