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discuss The .icu showcase

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Bob Hawkes

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NameTalent.com
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I hope I am not duplicating a thread, but could not find a showcase for the newly in general availability .icu extension. I admit, in general I am not a fan of the extension, and it will be interesting to see how successful it is. Konstantinos Zournas commented on Twitter overnight that .icu had learned nothing from last 4 years of ngTLDs and I think there is a lot of validity to that. He did not outline what his tweet meant, but I presume referencing lack promotion, lack getting end users on board first, bargain initial pricing, holding premium domains at registry.

I believe in general the extension is intended to mean "I see you" but somehow the extension rubs me the wrong way (biz does also, along with many other extensions).

I have never seen this elsewhere, but another possible use for .icu would be as in intensive care unit, since it is a common abbreviation for that. Will be interesting to see if it gets any use with that meaning.

It is encouraging that it seems (at least from what Namecheap are listing as regular price) that the renewal rate is less than $8. A lot of good names seem to be reserved as premium by registry, although with variable prices some of which are only a bit above normal.

Do you plan to register any .icu?

If you have, registered some, share them with us!
 
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Hell yeah! Every fricking email spamming scumbag organization got a boat load of them! I swear I must get 5-10 junk spams a day with this useless stupid extension!
YES. Just so. I'm getting daily tens of .ICU scams by random generated domain names. Every one has links to the database to the same domain name. NameCheap deletes them as soon I report them BUT new scams comes still every day. This is due to the almost free domain name and free internet pages. Problem is not mine but I think this scam campaign [with unknown content (virus) coming from the data base] may lead to some serious attack by numerous hijacked computers?
 
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lifesaving.icu

In my search, I found a few premium, I'd like to buy they were cheap enough too, about $20. I didn't buy them though, on principle. I think the premium costs are greedy and unnecessarily confusing for everyone involved. It's worrisome that these ntld are so micromanaged to the point that we're scared they just straight steal our best names from us via price increases (as uniregistry already did, in a big way). Ntld have their sunset phases where registry can earn some extra bread. Hardly anything on the bone from domainers, and many hate newtld in general, in part because this greed/mismanagement.
 
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Hi @JayT
While I share your concerns in general, to my knowledge the registry have not redesignated any as premium that had not been initially aligned to one of the 4 price tiers (I could be wrong). Also, the registry has a stated policy that premium are for first year only, and all renew at the very reasonable standard rates. I wish that all new gTLDs did this.
Bob
 
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Hi @JayT
While I share your concerns in general, to my knowledge the registry have not redesignated any as premium that had not been initially aligned to one of the 4 price tiers (I could be wrong). Also, the registry has a stated policy that premium are for first year only, and all renew at the very reasonable standard rates. I wish that all new gTLDs did this.
Bob

Both mine are marked as premium, but don't think I paid any extra when I registered them. Also, only about $5 in renewals each.

Helpline / icu
Hotline / icu
 
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.ICU is as garbage as Geneva is a home of slave owners.
 
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I agree that there is not a lot of respect for it among many domain investors, mainly related to the deep discounting and so far limited prices for the handful of aftermarket sales
Yeppers, it's just that these acronym nGs aren't strong brands, regardless of how they're priced. But also to JayT's point, the initial premium fee or the continuing premium renewals on them are a deterrent.

This premium pricing is just smoke and mirrors on these weak extensions, as if everyone is or will be vying for them. Simply won't be the case. They are trying to compete with the big boy extensions where, although its still frowned upon by us, in theory a sort of premium pricing might be justified.

What do we have for these acronym extensions? VIP, FYI, ICU, GDN, RIP, LOL. And then there's ONL- what the heck is that?? Who uses "onl" to mean "online"? I mean it's silly really. Granted there are pairings that work well with any of these acronymicals, and I have several myself, but on the whole they should be a good combination and not just any random wording.

ICU is interesting, but as a strong brand.. I dunno. I guess that'll be up to the buyer to discover and implement. Creative minds outside the domainingsphere are always surprising us, and will likely come up with a brand that none of us have in our portfolio, lol.

peekaboo.icu would be fun.

**

I have just one:

C a n n a • ICU

Can be interpreted a few ways.
 
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or the continuing premium renewals on them
Just to make sure wrong information is not spread the premiums in ICU do not continue. The subsequent years are standard. Here is their statement:
"Our premium names don’t have a premium renewal fee; so once you sell one your customer doesn’t have to worry about a billing surprise next year when she sees the name renew. "

Also while a small number of .icu are premium, which they are and at what levels (they have 4) are clearly set up in EPP so every registrar has clear premium price information, compared to the confusing nature of some of the extensions. Also, most of the premium (85% of the premium names) are at the lowest tier, which is a wholesale cost of just $12 (most retail about $16 or so). So considering renewal rates of about $8 from multiple registrars (actually $7 at a few) you could have 4 years of a low tier premium for almost exactly the same 4 year cost as a .com at hand reg at cheapest prices. And some pretty nice words that cost huge amounts in other extensions, even in new gTLDs, are available for low tier hand registration.

ICU is interesting, but as a strong brand..
I agree that the idea of .icu in almost all cases is not for a brand or main corporate site. It is more for a catchy marketing campaign, possibly an online showcase, social media, personal use, creatives use, etc. Clearly there are business users, such as travel.icu, but I think the majority will not be.

Bob
 
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Just to make sure wrong information is not spread the premiums in ICU do not continue. The subsequent years are standard.
Correcto- but I was referring to another poster's statement on backing off of premium domains (all new G's in general), regardless of it being just the initial premium or a continuing one. But this is an ICU thread, sry for confusion.

I don't particularly mind this strategy ICU uses for pricing, actually. It would be nice for other registries to adopt it.
 
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It's awesome that the price will be regular renewal, I agree with that, across the board pricing. However, it's just the registry word. It's peculiar they have 4 tiers, maybe once domaining gets more (or..less!) popular they can raise the price to whatever, or for sure, like bound by a contract they won't raise the renewal according to tier? See, too many questions with adding this tier crap, imo.

I always think back to my uni domains. I thought Frank Shilling was a good domainer, I thought he knew what he was doing. He's a famous domainer, who are these ICU ppl? Always have to wonder...but what happened to the pro, Frank? We heard he was losing money. Was he going bankrupt? IDK, but about a dozens extensions went up 100-1000% in price. You could 'lock in' for 10 years. But that's not nice if you have many names, honestly, most of us are not rich like Frank, we can't afford the upfront payment, we barely make 1 year. The $1 discounting is basically a donation of your $ if hikes on your premium names is in cards.

I am only saying so because the more 'manged' a tld is, the more I worry they only care about every last penny. If someone were to take a chance and invest 100k on the best ICU 'premiums', you'll be sick to hear they go up 1000% unless you renew for 10 years. Like you're expecting to pay 100k a year but a million a year is out of the question. This can happen, a

Don't even get me into fake sales to lure ppl in neither. Sometimes numbers that seem too good to be true, something fishy, like buying their own names. Not saying ICU doing this but it's fishy to move up so fast, while i find so many 'premiums' still exist. WHY would people reg the WORST domains first?
 
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smarter

icu beat the .top
 
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I too immediately think Intensive Care Unit. I don't know what they were thinking putting this one together. I think I prefer the spam of .mobi over .icu to be quite honest lol.
 
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Congrats to intensive care unit, King of the new gtlds. Jumping 1.8 million regs in the last 2 months to first place at 4.1 million+ - https://ntldstats.com/tld
 
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That's shocking. This is a really weak extension. ICU= Intensive Care Unit
 
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.TOP successor...
And the same silence in terms of inquiries.
 
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It's fascinating to me the popularity of this extension, I don't quite get it.

I looked for words ending in IC and found a slight name hack available:
poet.icu (Poetic U) or (Poet I See U)
but it looks like this and many single words I tried are now considered premium names and are ~$14. I'm not gonna get it if anyone likes it.

With all the spam it sounds like ICU is getting used for, Spammer.ICU would be kinda ironic to nab and aggregate a list of spammed ICU names somehow, as it would make sense matter how someone interprets the ICU part "Spammer I See You" or putting spammers in the ICU, lol.
 
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