discuss What's with .ICU? Who is buying?

• Social media sites that like the "I see you"
• A lower cost alternative to .tv for video and YouTube sites, and somewhat better names without high premium charges, and with cheaper renewals, than .live or .tv
• Catalog sites, where the "I see you" works
• Travel sites, or virtual tours.
• Therapy possibly?
• ICU as intensive Care Unit either for some sort of medical or veterinarian, or in some figurative sense.

Jimmysun said:

No actually end users and developed websites, I won’t invest it.

Click to expand...

abstractdomainer said:

What is happening here? Who is buying?

Click to expand...

Jurgen Wolf said:

Bots are buying them.
Automated regs.

Click to expand...

HotKey said:

I hand-registered one to add to my collection, just cause I thought it was a cute double entendre:

canna • icu

but tbh the extension sucks, completely pointless and if the registry went under I wouldn't give two hoots. The only thing they have going for them is their yearly pricing. Actually prefer .xyz over this extension.

Bots? Well, bots are a "what" not a "who". Sounds like some sort of mad scientist controlling them.. maybe stuck in an intensive care unit with nothing to do..

Click to expand...

Jurgen Wolf said:

Chinese bots...

@jmcc
Please confirm...

Click to expand...

Bob Hawkes said:

You can use sources such as NameStat to answer your question, at least in terms of geographical aspect. The vast majority of registrations in .icu are from China.

Some decent English words still available. In searching, it seems to me that blocks of short and numbered domain names are being held, but not actively listed for sale, at least on the major western marketplaces. Dofo show a rather small number of .icu domain names actively for sale, and NameBio shows a very small number of sales.

The fact that all .icu renewals are at standard rates (i.e. no premium renewal charges) and that the renewal is less than .com probably helps names stay registered compared to other new extensions. That is .icu has both significant first year discounting, and a low renewal fee for 100% of the domains. It is a combination few other extensions offer. Still, if you had asked me to predict how many registrations it would have had i would predict maybe 100,000, not 6.5 million.

What is .icu possibly good for?

• Social media sites that like the "I see you"
• A lower cost alternative to .tv for video and YouTube sites, and somewhat better names without high premium charges, and with cheaper renewals, than .live or .tv
• Catalog sites, where the "I see you" works
• Travel sites, or virtual tours.
• Therapy possibly?
• ICU as intensive Care Unit either for some sort of medical or veterinarian, or in some figurative sense.

I have personally held about a dozen, and have sold two at low $$$ range. They both are in end use for small sites. I have let a few drop. I think this extension, being low cost to hold, will appeal to some individuals, organizations, and small home-based businesses. I doubt many major businesses will use one, although there are a few. There may be uses I do not understand in China, although I have been told that the fraction in active use is not large.

Bob

Click to expand...

Bob Hawkes said:

I looked a bit more on the original holder of the .cyou brand extensions. The company was called ChangYou and they went by both that name and CYou. Their symbol on the Nasdaq stock exchange was CYOU. I say was, because it appears they are in the midst of going private. They had a very profitable last quarter, $135 million in revenue for the quarter. I have not seen what price they got for selling the extension, but since they were publicly traded at the time, it must be within some documents filed with the securities commission.

So with the rebrand they clearly are pushing cyou as (among other things) the positive message of change you. That term is trademarked in a surprising number of different applications, with 117 live TESS records. Even though .cyou seems an unusual TLD to domainers, we should not discount the possibility of interest from the change movement.

And in other news... thanks for the list @NickB, and as a result of your list I have, for the first time in 2020, registered another .icu, this one Sicily. I think I broke at least a few of my pieces of advice with this hand registration . But, well, I always wanted to own an island, and now I do! (ok truth be told I have in other TLDs had a couple of islands). So should you not see me around NamePros for awhile, you will know I am off to check out my Mediterranean island in person! A number of the other ones on list were registry premium, but several really nice ones Wales, Scotland, Tibet lowest tier premium - price on those wholesale is less than $10 so if shop registrars can get them not much different than a .com registration, and all .icu renew at standard fee. I left them for someone else. Anyway, thanks, seriously, for the list. I am happy with Sicily.

Bob

Click to expand...