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Crisis or no crisis for domain names?
Wednesday, December 31. 2008
There's no real suspense here: yes domain names are also being hit by the current economic downturn. Aftermarket domain sale volumes may not be falling too much, but transaction values are certainly down as sellers adapt to the end of the "anything sells (even a dud domain)" era by dropping their prices.
Another sign of a cooling off in the second hand domain market: NameMedia has shelved plans for a $172 million IPO which the professional domain seller had filed back in November. Current market conditions have been named as the main reason for not going ahead with the stock market listing.
Yet it's far from being all doom and gloom for the industry. Record sales are still happening. Take AT&T's purchase of YP.com for a mouth-watering $3.85 million cash payment in November. The American telecom giant is the operator for the US Yellow Pages, so the two-letter domain is an obvious bonus for the company's telephone directory service.
The sale shows that good names will continue to hold their value during the current downturn, just like top real-estate tends to fare much better than the rest of the property market in such times. Think top-flight New York apartments and you'll get the idea. Just like that kind of real-world property gemstone, a two-letter .COM domain has undeniable intrinsic value.
So as usual, the crisis is really a way to bring back a level of sanity to some over-inflated values. It's also an opportunity for savvy investors to fill their shopping basket with great deals. In a few years' time, they'll be the ones behind the headline-grabbing sales you'll be reading about on this blog…
"Lucky ICANN" theme echoed by several people
Tuesday, December 16. 2008
I'm chuffed to see that my "is ICANN the luckiest organisation around?" post has been picked up by several people. When I wrote it, I didn't know if I was the only one to feel that ICANN's current reliance on the good will of a lot of volunteers might not be sustainable in the long run. It seems I wasn't the only one. As an example, check out Patrick Vande Walle's account of similar problems he has identified as an ALAC representative. There's another example of a comment here.
ICANN may review new TLD fees
Wednesday, December 10. 2008
New gTLDs being discussed during an open public session at the Cairo ICANN meeting, last November. Photo SVG.
Last Monday ICANN held a new gTLD Q&A session hosted by the GNSO Council. The subject of ICANN's proposed fee structure for initial evaluation and annual registry fees was once again at the centre of much of the discussions, during which it transpired that said fees may well be revised in the forthcoming second draft applicant guidebook (DAG), due out in February 2009.
A recording of the two hour telephone session is publicly available on the GNSO Council's calendar page (see "mp3" link for December 8 entry).
At one point during the session, I put a very direct question to Kurt Pritz, one of the people in charge of the new gTLD programme at ICANN. "Is there a good chance that the fee structure will change?" Kurt answered that yes, that was a possibility.
That doesn't mean that it's now written in stone that the proposed $185,000 evaluation fees or the $75,000/5% (whichever the greater) annual fees will change, but it does look more likely now.
It also shows that ICANN is doing exactly what it said it would do. It's taking a long hard look at all the comments being made on the first DAG, and there have been many on the question of fees, and it's acting upon them.
ICANN, the luckiest organisation around?
Saturday, December 6. 2008
ICANN at work. At a Registrar Constituency meeting (during the November Cairo meeting), Board members, Councillors and community representatives interact and contribute to ICANN's policy development. All are volunteers, putting substantial amounts of time and effort into the ICANN process. Photo SVG.
When I got to Cairo last month for the ICANN meeting, I had just been elected to the GNSO Council. Walking into the venue hotel, I bumped into one of my friends on the ICANN staff. I suppose I was expecting some kind of congratulations. I got a weary "you really are deranged!" instead.
It's a reaction that I didn't understand at the time. I looked at being on the Council as an exciting opportunity to be at the heart of the policy development process going on in my industry, and I still do. Policies like the new gTLD program stem from the GNSO and ICANN's other Supporting Organisations (SO). So Council members get to be involved in defining tomorrow's Internet. That's something that I found really thrilling.
But since taking my position on the Council after the close of the Cairo meeting, I've also discovered the other side of the coin. Council members must brave a constant deluge of papers, reports, ICANN updates and telephone meetings (3, sometimes 4 2-hour meetings a week). They must keep themselves up to speed with everything that's happening in the ICANN world, including of course topics that don't fall directly under the banner of their own Supporting Organisation. They must report to their individual constituencies, the Registrar Constituency in my case, to make sure the people they are elected to represent know exactly what's going on at SO level.
Continue reading "ICANN, the luckiest organisation around?"
Pre-crisis numbers show continued domain name growth
Friday, December 5. 2008
But for how long? That's the question some people will no doubt ask themselves while reading Verisign's latest domain stats. The .COM registry's numbers cover Q3 2008, so miss out on the full impact of the credit crunch. They show no real signs of slowing domain growth.
Even though there was a small decline in the rate of overall domain registration growth, this is easily explained by the historical trend for a weaker third quarter when compared to registration volumes for the first half of any given year.
Overall, across all TLDs, there were 174 million registered domains at the end of September 2008. That's a 19% increase year over year. The world's TLDs added a total of 11.5 million names in Q3 2008, a decline of 2% in growth rate from Q2 2008 and also 2% less than the Q3 2007 growth rate.
There were 68.9 million names registered across the ccTLDs at the end of Q3 2008 (89.4 million for .COM and .NET combined). That's 5% growth over Q2 2008 and 26% over Q3 2007. China's .CN stole a march on all other ccTLDs by moving into top spot ahead of Germany's .DE. The next three are .UK, .NL and .EU, but the top three ccTLDs all experienced flat growth rates in Q3 2008.
Check out www.Domaines.Info's stats for comprehensive registration numbers including overall top ten, gTLD top five, ccTLD top five, regional top fives (Europe, Asia, America and a top three for Oceania) and an overall top 40. Each chart shows current month registration numbers and compares them with the previous quarter's registration numbers. Growth rates are given and where possible, local market penetration is shown as a "number of domains per 100 people".
