The domainosphere is abuzz . . cough . . cough . . about a one day sale of new .xyz domains for $.01.
As a student of domain history (yes I'm that old) I recall a time when the same action was undertaken by other new gTLDs, such as .Info.
What followed this extraordinary sales event in its earlier permutation?
Oh, the memory lingers.
tangor
7:57 pm on Jun 1, 2016 (gmt 0)
Youse gets what youse pays fer.
More pie in the sky.
jmccormac
8:41 pm on Jun 1, 2016 (gmt 0)
And again most people don't really understand what is happening and what this is intended to achieve. :)
One of the databases here models renewal trends and generates renewal predictions. These are the domain counts on the Netsol nameservers from July and August 2014 with respect to the first day of the previous month's counts:
hoster - July 2014 -- August 2014 register.com: 201,829 -- 47,375 worldnic.com: 199,153 --- 162,722
Now for the renewals (2014 registrations renewed in 2015).
hoster -- July 2014 -- August 2014 register.com: 5.727% -- 5.378% worldnic.com: 5.677% -- 4.743%
In the domain name industry (registry side as distinct from retail and domainers), freebie promotions always have a low renewal rate in the region of 5%. That means that approximately 5% of those freebies turn into paying registrations. Netsol showed 194,849 new registrations as a registrar in June 2014 and 165,824 in August 2014. So taking 5.5% as the renewal rate, that would provide a 10,717 renewed domains for July 2014 and 9,121 for August 2014 domains. Many registries have run freebie/discounting offers and .INFO did it before .XYZ as did .BIZ and almost every other registry.
If I recall correctly, the Netsol deal was a contra-deal where domains were traded for advertising so little or no cash changed hands. It kickstarted the .XYZ and got it a lot of publicity. The problem is that it may have locked it into a boom and bust cycle where it is dependent of promotions to maintain the current registration volume.
Regards...jmcc
Webwork
5:16 am on Jun 2, 2016 (gmt 0)
Intended to achieve . . .
Achieves? Spam-o-rama! $1.00 .info domains ruled email spam for a considerable time.
jmccormac
5:48 am on Jun 2, 2016 (gmt 0)
Discounted domain registrations and freebies always seem to have been used for spam. If the price is low enough, then they are throw-away domains. The registries realise that spam is a problem but their intent is to get registrations and some level of usage in their TLD. For some new gTLDs, even the Freemium model might not be enough to stave off the day of reckoning when the costs exceed the revenues.
Regards...jmcc
bill
6:44 am on Jun 2, 2016 (gmt 0)
China did this in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. They made .cn ccTLD names ridiculously cheap (less than $0.10/year). They thought that this would promote China on the internet and be a great international promotional gimmick. Guess what happened...
Today, in order to get a .cn domain you have to submit photo ID and register the site with the Chinese police if you host inside the Great Firewall. They seem to have learned their lesson.
Honestly speaking, if they held this .xyz promotion any longer than a day, the first thing all e-mail server managers should do is reject all mail sent from any .xyz domain, and filter all mail to trash any message containing a .xyz domain link in the body. I'm thinking of doing that anyway...
Robert Charlton
9:17 pm on Jun 2, 2016 (gmt 0)
Leaves one wondering how Alphabet, the poster child of all .xyz domains, is going to handle its outgoing email. (This was the first thing that struck me when I saw the title of this thread.)
I've long had a spam filter on all incoming .info email, and I've yet to see what I'd call a false positive. While I have seen one or two legit .info domains out in the world, I don't deal with them, and I wonder how they manage online communications. Too bad, because it could have been a useful TLD.
Getting back to the .xyz sale, maybe Apple is behind it. ;)
Swanny007
10:09 pm on Jun 2, 2016 (gmt 0)
What a waste of a TLD. Begin spamming.... NOW. #facepalm
What is the purpose of .xyz anyway and why would I as a legit webmaster want one of those TLDs? Seriously.
jmccormac
4:43 pm on Jun 3, 2016 (gmt 0)
I think that Alphabet might use .google (It owns that TLD.)
Regards...jmcc
Robert Charlton
7:21 am on Jun 4, 2016 (gmt 0)
I think that Alphabet might use .google (It owns that TLD.)
Here's a quick and dirty site: operator search for the .google domains with an online presence...
[a site:.google]
It returns about 514 results. There might be better ways to find them. Using "the" instead of "a" returns 507 results. I don't see anything Alphabet-related. The only official site I've seen for Alphabet... a whimsical minimalist effort at this point with probably required press releases... is...
I think it's a very funny use of the .xyz TLD. In a way, it reminds me of the joke about the Reader's Digest version of the Bible...
"In the beginning was the end."
Anyway, this is why I'm wondering how Alphabet will be handling the spam situation on the TLD. A dot google email address might make sense... though I don't know whether it confers necessary legal separation, assuming that reserved TLDs would have anything to do with it. IANAL.
tangor
11:59 pm on Jun 4, 2016 (gmt 0)
Don't know why, but that made me think of a little guy singing "abc"...
