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.ASIA country
Saturday, February 16. 2008
The ICANN meeting held in the Indian Capital city of New Delhi has been an eye-opener for me as far as .ASIA is concerned. Seen from Europe, .ASIA has mainly been a protection exercise for western companies that are active in Asia. Especially during the domain's Sunrise phase which, by definition, is only open to prior rights holders and therefore is heavily biased towards commercial entities such as companies.
But the conversations I've had in India have made me re-evaluate that assumption. Registrars and domain professionals here are already sensing strong demand for .ASIA, and not just from companies. Individuals are interested in the domain as well and more surprisingly, they actually know it's coming!
This is surprising to me because in Europe, I don't think the general public generally knows about an imminent new domain launch until it's already happened. I suppose I really shouldn't be that surprised that there are a large number of domain-savvy people in India. The country is an IT powerhouse after all. But it certainly makes me wish our own media would take a leaf out of India's book and concentrate on new Internet developments a lot more.
Continue reading ".ASIA country"
Where's the Asian in .ASIA
Wednesday, February 6. 2008
I've just seen DotAsia's overall Sunrise stats. Once again, I'm left wondering why it's only the usual suspects (i.e. us Europeans and the yanks) going for this new domain.
The last time I wandered down this train of thought, DotAsia's CEO Edmon Chung chastised my comparison of .EU's and .ASIA's Sunrise periods which he considered unfair. We discussed this over lunch a few days after my article was published in Domaines.Info and I hate to admit it, but in some ways I think he was right.
Edmon argued that as the success rate (what some might call the "transformation rate", i.e. the number of applications that actually lead to the requested domain being registered) was much higher for .ASIA (above 90% for the first Sunrise, compared to around 50% for .EU's), it was misleading to only mention outright registration numbers (which are vastly in .EU's favour).
Edmon's main point: the .ASIA Sunrise process gave everyone involved a smoother ride.
Continue reading "Where's the Asian in .ASIA"
