.mobi Afilias Acquires .Mobi

10 million would require a massive surge in registrations.

There are roughly

85.0 million .com
12.7 million .net
8.0 million .org
5.7 million .info
2.0 million .biz
1.6 million .us
0.9 million .mobi
0.2 million .asia

Adds and deletes for .mobi are both averaging in the 25,000 to 30,000 a month. Over the last year (the IDN's launch really helped) the year on year increase was about 100,000

AmericanForum.com said:

Snoop ... Do you expect to see the same scenario repeated for all other

tlds ? ... example .me ... etc ?

Click to expand...

I doubt other extensions have been losing money at the rate .mobi was.

---------- Post added at 02:34 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:59 PM ----------

accentnepal said:

The domain registration part was undoubtedly profitable, but DotMobi recently was calling itself a software company that had a domain extension as one of it's projects. I said I thought the backers were causing the registry to spend money on things unrelated to selling domains.

Click to expand...

From their about us page,

About us | dotMobi

dotMobi is a leading mobile Internet services company, helping businesses and individuals reach the world’s billions of mobile phone users. dotMobi spurs mobile industry innovation by giving content providers the tools they need – including the .mobi top level domain – to ensure the Web will work on mobile phones with speed, accuracy and relevant content.

dotMobi was founded by leading mobile operators, network & device manufacturers, and Internet content providers, including Ericsson, Google, GSM Association, Hutchison 3, Microsoft, Nokia, Orascom Telecom, Samsung Electronics, Syniverse, T-Mobile, Telefónica Móviles, Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM), Visa and Vodafone.

That to me doesn't sound like an org claiming to be a software company.

accentnepal said:

I said I thought the backers were causing the registry to spend money on things unrelated to selling domains.

Click to expand...

-When was the last time the backers showed interest in it?
-What were they spending money on that was unrelated to the the .mobi domain?

accentnepal said:

A Mobi rep wrote on M that prospects will be better with Afilias (he's the PR guy, wadda you expect) but more importantly said that marketing plans were being formulated - as if that is a detailed process.

Click to expand...

Have you ever heard of a company being bought, especially one in a weak financial state, without the acquirer forumulating new marketing plans?

accentnepal said:

The staff at DotMobi has been very innovative in promoting the extension on a small budget, I hope that can continue.

Click to expand...

I think you'll find in a year most of them have gone regardless of what is said right now. It will need to be a very different operation because the way it was being run wasn't sustainable. Given the amount of money being lost I don't think it is fair to say they were innovative on a small budget, the budget was probably way too big.

lol,
I think it's good news for .mobi...

exsedo said:

I must have misunderstood your post, my comment was based on this :-
" Purchase by Afilias means the extension will not be abandoned and will be available at all the registrars. Utter doom has been avoided."

Click to expand...

I was restating other people's oft voiced opinion expecting the death of Mobi. While the future number of registrations is anybody's guess Afilias is an established registry and their purchase insures the continuation of the extension and wide availability.

Snoop said:

dotMobi said:

... dotMobi is a leading mobile Internet services company, helping businesses and individuals reach the world’s billions of mobile phone users. dotMobi spurs mobile industry innovation by giving content providers the tools they need – including the .mobi top level domain – to ensure the Web will work on mobile phones with speed, accuracy and relevant content. ...

Click to expand...

That to me doesn't sound like an org claiming to be a software company.

Click to expand...

Actually that is exactly what I am speaking of --- the first mention of the extension is 36 words into the paragraph. Maybe replace "mobile Internet services company" for "software company" in my post.

Snoop said:

-When was the last time the backers showed interest in it?
-What were they spending money on that was unrelated to the the .mobi domain?

Click to expand...

I base my opinions largely on these posts on the M forum.
( Vance Hedderel is dotMobi PR Director)
The portions in <<brackets>> are member's questions:

Vance Hedderel said:

{snip}

<<(Question) I'm going to venture to say this is the death blow to people hoping for even stronger registry marketing activities. Is afilias marketing any of their other TLDs? Seems their focus is strictly registry technology.>>

Just the opposite ... dotMobi is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Afilias, that means it will be an entity that has greater focus and control over its activities than previously when 14 board members were involved. (Ever heard the phrase, "herding cats"?)

<<(Question) will Pinky, Caroline and you now remain on the dotMobi team?>>

It's business as usual for dotMobi. Well actually, business as better ... Afilias is focused on dotMobi growing the .mobi domain. I see this being a big plus for .mobi domain owners.

{snip}

<<(Question) Can we consider your statements a commitment to consumer level marketing of the .mobi brand? If so what time-frame?>>

While I'd love to say "Yes, absolutely!," the reality is that specific marketing plans are just now in development. After all, the acquisition has just closed so there's still a ways to go.

What I can tell you is that Afilias is truly enthusiastic about dotMobi and the .mobi domain. And a big point to note is what Andres said, "We can only go up from here, especially with only one cook in the kitchen now."

<<(Question) As for the reasons for the sale, I prefer not to speculate.>>

Let's use a divorce metaphor: it wasn't about the child, it was about the parents not getting along. But, as it should be in all divorces, the child is still on good terms with the parents.

Click to expand...

As I mentioned, Vance is the PR guy, he is paid to be upbeat, but it seems that all those backers, many of whom are aggressively in competition with each other, greatly muddied the work environment with their conflicting goals. Most Mobi domainers and developers have been concerned about the company, and this is a reasonable explanation.

Snoop said:

Have you ever heard of a company being bought, especially one in a weak financial state, without the acquirer forumulating new marketing plans?
.....
I think you'll find in a year most of them have gone regardless of what is said right now. It will need to be a very different operation because the way it was being run wasn't sustainable. Given the amount of money being lost I don't think it is fair to say they were innovative on a small budget, the budget was probably way too big.

Click to expand...

Mostly I agree with you.

As stated, Afilias is not known for promoting their extensions. An expensive saturation advertising campaign is vanishingly unlikely. But Mobi is a big move for Afilias. They surely are considering their options. The mobile market is going to be beyond huge. Afilias now owns 5000 of the best Mobi domains. There is a lot of incentive to promote the extension.

Please note that I am in no way predicting 10 million regs. I believe, considering that mobile is expected to pass PC use in the next decade, that clever marketing within cost constraints has a reasonable chance to attain that level.

I was quite surprised to hear they were losing the kind of money that's been reported -- have to agree with you that they obviously weren't paying attention to the bottom line and I certainly wouldn't call that "being innovative". Plenty of ccTLDs seem to be doing just fine (financially) with smaller registration numbers, so I'm sure it's something an experienced player like Afilias should be able to fix.

snoop said:

I doubt other extensions have been losing money at the rate .mobi was.

---------- Post added at 02:34 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:59 PM ----------



From their about us page,

About us | dotMobi

dotMobi is a leading mobile Internet services company, helping businesses and individuals reach the world’s billions of mobile phone users. dotMobi spurs mobile industry innovation by giving content providers the tools they need – including the .mobi top level domain – to ensure the Web will work on mobile phones with speed, accuracy and relevant content.

dotMobi was founded by leading mobile operators, network & device manufacturers, and Internet content providers, including Ericsson, Google, GSM Association, Hutchison 3, Microsoft, Nokia, Orascom Telecom, Samsung Electronics, Syniverse, T-Mobile, Telefónica Móviles, Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM), Visa and Vodafone.

That to me doesn't sound like an org claiming to be a software company.



-When was the last time the backers showed interest in it?
-What were they spending money on that was unrelated to the the .mobi domain?



Have you ever heard of a company being bought, especially one in a weak financial state, without the acquirer forumulating new marketing plans?



I think you'll find in a year most of them have gone regardless of what is said right now. It will need to be a very different operation because the way it was being run wasn't sustainable. Given the amount of money being lost I don't think it is fair to say they were innovative on a small budget, the budget was probably way too big.

Click to expand...

-REECE- said:

I was quite surprised to hear they were losing the kind of money that's been reported -- have to agree with you that they obviously weren't paying attention to the bottom line and I certainly wouldn't call that "being innovative". Plenty of ccTLDs seem to be doing just fine (financially) with smaller registration numbers, so I'm sure it's something an experienced player like Afilias should be able to fix.

Click to expand...

Yeah but I believe the losses are due to over expenditure on the 'side projects' all the sites and tools they have been building. A few days ago Vance was on the other forum mentioning that tmtld have 3 new sites coming out in the next 6 weeks. So you shouldn't assume that everything is terrible over there, the registry is still making cash. I believe they and many others still think its early days and are investing in the future. Did they invest more than they should? Possibly. Sounds like the original backers didn't want to invest more cash at least. Which is understandable, there goal was to use dotmobi to get the mobile web moving, not get into the domain business for a profit.

mo_dork said:

So you shouldn't assume that everything is terrible over there, the registry is still making cash.

Click to expand...

What do you base this on? the financial reports show losses each year. It should be possible to run this registry profitably with alot of cost stripping, but that clearly wasn't the case in the past.

mo_dork said:

I believe they and many others still think its early days and are investing in the future. Did they invest more than they should? Possibly. Sounds like the original backers didn't want to invest more cash at least.

Click to expand...

When a company runs it itself into the ground to the point where it has nearly no cash left despite reasonable sales then it is pretty certain that they have overspent.

mo_dork said:

Which is understandable, there goal was to use dotmobi to get the mobile web moving, not get into the domain business for a profit.

Click to expand...

How do you know what the goal was of the shareholders? Looking back at what has actually happened I think they acted more like they were in it to try and get a decent return. I think the former idea "to get the mobile web moving" was a widely held view a few years ago, and that is why people thought (mistakenly) that the backers would actually promote this extension - it led alot of domainers down the garden path in to talk of .mobi buttons on phones and suggestions of google.mobi.

Is it that hard to believe the backers put money in simply because they thought they might make a profit directly from the investment? Isn't that the basis upon which most investments are made?

snoop said:

What do you base this on? the financial reports show losses each year. It should be possible to run this registry profitably with alot of cost stripping, but that clearly wasn't the case in the past.

When a company runs it itself into the ground to the point where it has nearly no cash left despite reasonable sales then it is pretty certain that they have overspent.

Click to expand...

Please re-read the quote from Vance of DotMobi I copied above re: Dealing with the 14 backers was like herding cats. The actual registry was profitable.

How do you know what the goal was of the shareholders? Looking back at what has actually happened I think they acted more like they were in it to try and get a decent return. I think the former idea "to get the mobile web moving" was a widely held view a few years ago, and that is why people thought (mistakenly) that the backers would actually promote this extension - it led alot of domainers down the garden path in to talk of .mobi buttons on phones and suggestions of google.mobi.

Is it that hard to believe the backers put money in simply because they thought they might make a profit directly from the investment? Isn't that the basis upon which most investments are made?

Click to expand...

Companies like Microsoft and Google would only invest in Mobi if there was an expected benefit to the parent company - even in the best case the money return would be totally insignificant on Google's balance sheet.

Most Mobi investors agree that the potential of promotion of the extension by the backers was an unfulfilled promise, as was trustmark enforcement. Without this promotion the value of Mobi is less. Other factors (potential of the Mobile web, current use of Mobi by many large corps, availability of quality domains at overly depressed prices) still make Mobi a worthwhile investment IMO, given that it is speculative.

accentnepal said:

Please re-read the quote from Vance of DotMobi I copied above re: Dealing with the 14 backers was like herding cats. The actual registry was profitable.

Click to expand...

I've reread the quote and it says nothing about the profitablility of the registry. Mind numbing that the actual financial figures are public, and they show losses, yet you'd argue otherwise.

accentnepal said:

Companies like Microsoft and Google would only invest in Mobi if there was an expected benefit to the parent company - even in the best case the money return would be totally insignificant on Google's balance sheet.

Click to expand...

This is guesswork. Might have looked like that 3 years ago but not today.

accentnepal said:

Most Mobi investors agree that the potential of promotion of the extension by the backers was an unfulfilled promise, as was trustmark enforcement.

Click to expand...

I don't remember anything being "promised" by the backers. I do remember domainers speculating about all sorts of unrealistic stuff like .mobi buttons and large companies mainly using .mobi as opposed to their current domains for their mobile offerings. I also remember the extension being heavily hyped by the registry -which is what is to be expected of any new tld.

snoop said:

I've reread the quote and it says nothing about the profitablility of the registry. Mind numbing that the actual financial figures are public, and they show losses, yet you'd argue otherwise.

Click to expand...

Last summer Trey (President of dotMobi) assured the Mobi Forum that the "Registry" was profitable. In retrospect it seems he was splitting the registration portion of their business from the remainder.

This is guesswork. Might have looked like that 3 years ago but not today.

Click to expand...

Guesswork, yes, but why else would Google and Microsoft make an investment requiring active participation (board meetings) for such a small sum of best case profits? Not today is correct -- and they sold.

I don't remember anything being "promised" by the backers. I do remember domainers speculating about all sorts of unrealistic stuff like .mobi buttons and large companies mainly using .mobi as opposed to their current domains for their mobile offerings. I also remember the extension being heavily hyped by the registry -which is what is to be expected of any new tld.

Click to expand...

There was not much said directly by the backers. The registry discussed a lot of things they were not able to deliver (with caveats added) such as a "Mobi Button". On the other hand the DotMobi registry did many things to promote the extension that never had been done before. Some worked well., others did not, as would be expected. Does any non-Com international extension have such a long list of major corporations using their domain? Maybe Org, I doubt Net has such a list.

It remains to be seen, but I hope the purchase by Afilias will allow the company to focus exclusively on the extension and thereby be able to accomplish a lot more.

lol you guys still discussing pros/cons of mobi?

here are some gold medals for all you. congrats, you now all have gold medals. you guys are the debate champs.

now go out and make some money or do something, anything that is halfway productive. lulz

ok we can expect 1$ .mobis reg soon :p

accentnepal said:

Last summer Trey (President of dotMobi) assured the Mobi Forum that the "Registry" was profitable. In retrospect it seems he was splitting the registration portion of their business from the remainder.

Click to expand...

In retrospect I would say that claim was BS. mtld was the registry, that is all the did, they ran .mobi and they were losing money doing it.

accentnepal said:

Guesswork, yes, but why else would Google and Microsoft make an investment requiring active participation (board meetings) for such a small sum of best case profits? Not today is correct -- and they sold.

Click to expand...

To make a profit from their shareholding? They likely ended out with a loss, but that is life.

accentnepal said:

The registry discussed a lot of things they were not able to deliver (with caveats added) such as a "Mobi Button".

Click to expand...

It was all geared towards selling registrations, from start to finish. The same reason for telling speculators they are working on getting .mobi buttons implemented is probably the same reason they claimed to be making a profit. The whole .mobi button idea started on domain forums, I personally do not think it was something they ever thought was a serious consideration. In short what would be the point of it? For all those .mobi sites people visit? Funny that today in the tv forums people are saying "will sony start producing an Internet TV with a .tv button on tyhe control".

accentnepal said:

Does any non-Com international extension have such a long list of major corporations using their domain? Maybe Org, I doubt Net has such a list.

Click to expand...

Probably most of them do, .net, .org, .tv.. the list isn't that long compared to the number of major corporations worldwide.

accentnepal said:

It remains to be seen, but I hope the purchase by Afilias will allow the company to focus exclusively on the extension and thereby be able to accomplish a lot more.

Click to expand...

Not sure what you mean by "exclusively". I think though you'll find alot less focus on promotion now, cost cutting will be the main focus in my view. It is needed to keep this extension afloat.

Nobody outside of DotMobi knows for sure where they were putting their efforts. The quotes I posted show that the backers (some more than others, surely) were pulling the company in conflicting directions. In other words there was a high level of "politics", never helpful for profits.

Based on the information I have two things appear clear to me:
Many smaller registrys show a profit, so the actual work of running the registry was likely not the source of the excess costs. It appears that Afilias handled the technology from the start. Afilias runs a number of small Country Code registrys.
And
Companies such as Microsoft, Google, Nokia, Visa, and most of the others do not spend their time investing in micro businesses like DotMobi unless there is a perceived benefit to the mother corporation. In this case the intention was to seed the Mobile Web. It could be argued they were successful and they sold because the time for seeding has passed.

Both are my opinion, not fact, and anyone is free to believe differently.

DotMobi was trying to please 14 masters, the backers, who were, except for Nokia, not interested in the extension. These backers caused DotMobi to spend a lot of money on side projects that benefited the parent companies and not Mobi. So the registry itself was probably doing OK, many registrys make a profit with less than 900,000 domains.

Click to expand...

I see this very differently. There was never ever any clarity about the "backers" and their agreement with mTLD. There was of course a ton of speculation about how deals were going to happen with companies like Samsung making the magic mobi button and other cell makers defaulting the browser to mobi. None of it came true. Not even close. This is where all mobi speculators failed and once people came to realize this mobi fell like a brick.

The people that started mobi used the same pump and dump strategy we have seen with other extensions. They created a mass land grab that topped a million registrations. They promised many things and delivered on very few.

I see this sale as their final cashout of mobi. It's designed for them to drop the project and move on to greener pastures. Mobi fans should do the same.

Looks like the registry was not healthy, perhaps it was sold because the backers weren't willing to put in any more money?

Click to expand...

There was no evidence they put money in to begin with. Find me press releases or contracts that back up the assertion that backers financed Mobi. My recollection was that their involvment was always vague and it could have simply been partnerships where mobi could use their name in promotion. For all we know mTLD paid them to be a partner!

I think we can expect $1.99 mobi soon.

Mobi will continue it's current state which is very low in the eyes of most domainers. It will always remain a fringe extension.

Have you ever heard of a company being bought, especially one in a weak financial state, without the acquirer forumulating new marketing plans?

Click to expand...

It's a misconception that affilias needs to remarket mobi. Because of their postion in the marketplace and their current infrastructure they can simply absord mobi with minimal effort. They probably won't even buy so much as an extra hard drive to add mobi. Every major registrar already carries mobi and the current 900k registrations should be enough profit to justify the purchase for them. mTLD however had their entire operation run to promote one product. Their inexperience and inability to push mobi appropriately has obviously become an apparent fail to them. So they cash out and move on.

I was restating other people's oft voiced opinion expecting the death of Mobi. While the future number of registrations is anybody's guess Afilias is an established registry and their purchase insures the continuation of the extension and wide availability.

Click to expand...

So what. Extensions rarely stop existing. However there is no correlation between existing and being a good extension. Domainers should flee to greener pastures at this point. The only benefit I see is a healthy long-term registry running mobi. mTLD was imho unstable and made many terrible decisions. Afilias will probably run it with no nonsense or lies as most of it's extensions are. mTLD attempted to be more than a registry and overall people didn't give a damn.

mTLD seemed to be started by marketers from cell providers and manufacturers looking to make it big. I saw this early on.

Which is understandable, there goal was to use dotmobi to get the mobile web moving, not get into the domain business for a profit.

Click to expand...

Please tell me your being sarcastic or joking.

With their books opened up does anyone see what the backers invested if indeed they did? I have hunted for evidence of the backers involvement for years with no answers.

Companies such as Microsoft, Google, Nokia, Visa, and most of the others do not spend their time investing in micro businesses like DotMobi unless there is a perceived benefit to the mother corporation.

Click to expand...

They do if they have a buddy or friend at the company they convince to get involved. People that are fortune 500 marketers are in a circle of friends that can easily be convinced to throw support into new projects. Maybe you're just not experienced enough in high level marketing to know that. It's about who you know and how well you can convince people. Most projects that get funded by angel investors never go anywhere. The investors don't care because they're already rich and they just write off the loss. If the venture works their return is normally very high so in the end they're happy.

Show me contracts and make me eat my words. Show me press releases from these partners/backers with facts about the partnership. I search for them for a long time and never found even one. It was all smoke and mirrors. The veil has now been lifted.

Jesse-
This has been discussed on the Mobi Forum. GoGo, a member there, has done extensive research on the DotMobi corporation. Each backer put in money, I think it was 600,000 Euros, with Nokia and one other putting in three times that much. Each backer had a seat on the Mobi board of directors, which controlled the corporation.

Going back further, the idea for the Mobi extension was developed by Nokia, to encourage sales of their web-enabled phones by making a place for mobile-friendly content. ICANN originally rejected the application as not being industry-wide, so Nokia recruited the other investors.

The search function over there is not working for my computer at the moment, so I cannot get you the quote. But those are the basics.

So a company worth $50 BILLION gave a couple million to mTLD. Not very exciting news.

I'd love it if anyone can pull up that thread for me.

Timewarp said:

I think its good news as well, Afilias has more experience, connections and resources.

Click to expand...

Oh yes, Afilias has done wonders with .info. Just look at .info:

1) You can buy a new .info for under one dollar.
2) Resales are in the tank.
3) Almost ten years after launch, abysmal usage.
4) Almost ten years after launch, zero public awareness.
5) Almost ten years after launch, zero promotion on any measureable scale.
6) Almost ten years after launch, the Sunrise Trademark fraudulent registrations have not been resolved.

Afilias has "more experience" driving an extention into the ground. This is really bad news for .mobi.

HeyNow said:

6) Almost ten years after launch, the Sunrise Trademark fraudulent registrations have not been resolved.

Click to expand...

Note that a number of those sunrise domains have been revoked and are pending reallocation.

HeyNow said:

Oh yes, Afilias has done wonders with .info. Just look at .info:

1) You can buy a new .info for under one dollar.
2) Resales are in the tank.
3) Almost ten years after launch, abysmal usage.
4) Almost ten years after launch, zero public awareness.
5) Almost ten years after launch, zero promotion on any measureable scale.
6) Almost ten years after launch, the Sunrise Trademark fraudulent registrations have not been resolved.

Afilias has "more experience" driving an extention into the ground. This is really bad news for .mobi.

Click to expand...

Is there a new tld which has done better? I'm not suggesting .info is a good extension, . But I don't think it can be said Affilias has done badly with it, look at the alt extension competition (.biz, .us, .jobs, .travel etc).

snoop said:

Is there a new tld which has done better? I'm not suggesting .info is a good extension, . But I don't think it can be said Affilias has done badly with it, look at the alt extension competition (.biz, .us, .jobs, .travel etc).

Click to expand...

It CAN be said that Afilias has done badly with .info. You can't buy a new .us or .biz for under a buck. No other extension actually gave away domains for free as did Afilias a couple of years ago. As a result of that decision, .info became known as a spammers haven, which posed significant problems with search engines. Basically, .info is notorious, not famous. Afilias is not into nurturing an extension.

Since you seem to favor .com and speak mostly of the downside of other extensions, I'll assume you don't partake in .us, .info, .tel, etc. If I'm wrong, please advise. If indeed you don't partake in .us, .biz, .tel, etc., then you are missing a whole field of data: non-published sales. I can tell you .us is performing well in that field, over and above the rest. Let's not even place .travel, .jobs, .coop, and .aero in the same field, as those are overwhelmingly non-achievers (almost non-existent). For sure .us is making inroads, despite lack of energy by Neustar. Neustar, like Afilias, is not into nurturing an extension, but has an advantage with .us because most of the world utilizes country codes significantly.

The sleeper in the crowd is .tel. Contact information is often searched for, hard to find a good percentage of the time, and costs over $1 from your cell phone for "Directory Assistance." I know, Google will give you contact info for free. Too bad their service is inaccurate a good deal of the time.
.TEL holds potential in that arena.

To judge an alternative extension after only a couple of years since new is probably hasty. But go ahead, that's your M.O.

Since I posted at the top of this page there has been an increase of over 100,000 .info's (More than .mobi added in a whole year including all the new IDN .mobi's)

.info is the fastest growing gTLD outside .com and has been every month for the last 4 or 5 months or so.

All the reports for the last couple of years show .info is used far less for spam and phlishing than some of the other TLDs.

So I think you are being a bit hard on Afilias . If Afilias does as well with .mobi as it has done with .info that has to be good for .mobi

gpmgroup said:

Since I posted at the top of this page there has been an increase of over 100,000 .info's (More than .mobi added in a whole year including all the new IDN .mobi's)

.info is the fastest growing gTLD outside .com and has been every month for the last 4 or 5 months or so.

All the reports for the last couple of years show .info is used far less for spam and phlishing than some of the other TLDs.

So I think you are being a bit hard on Afilias . If Afilias does as well with .mobi as it has done with .info that has to be good for .mobi

Click to expand...

1) You can go to Godaddy right now and buy a .info for under one dollar ($.89). The reg numbers would increase for any TLD offering new names for under a buck. You have been able to buy .info for under a buck for at least the past 4 or 5 months, so it's not surprising that .info would be the "fastest growing ...", to use your words.

2) .INFO is used "far less for spam and phishing" than which TLDs?

Don't get me wrong, I own some decent .info names, and I hold hope for the extension, but I don't see the financial promise when compared to .us.

HeyNow said:

If indeed you don't partake in .us, .biz, .tel, etc., then you are missing a whole field of data: non-published sales. I can tell you .us is performing well in that field, over and above the rest.

Click to expand...

No different to any other extension, most sales aren't reported.

1) There has to be reason for the growth and .if it coincides with the $.89 promotion then that makes sense.

The thing is though these registrations seem to be sticky in that the zone file seems to be growing substantially each year. Given a 1-2 month drop cycle it's highly unlikely these names are being dropped and re registered at the low price so it most be worth paying the full price on renewal.

2) http://eval.symantec.com/mktginfo/e...of_spam_and_phishing_report_03-2010.en-us.pdf [page 2]

Being in the uk when they opened the second level up for .us I thought .us would really take off and if it hadn't been for the nexus requirements we would have liked to buy some, but adoption has been mush slower than I thought perhaps its still too early, but I guess it doesn't bode well for .nyc and other city TLDs in the short to medium term.