.us Afilias Director endoreses NeuStar to run .us

[dnthomas]

http://www.enom.com/inthenews.asp?pr=070504dotus

ENOM just relased this statement. John Kane, the media contact, is on the Afilias Board of Directors http://www.afilias.info/about_afilias/board_list. Afilias is the registry partner for the Domain Name Aliance with GoDaddy.

Bizarre......................



BELLEVUE, WA - September 21, 2007 -- As the US Department of Commerce considers reassigning operation of the .US top level domain from Neustar, which has managed the TLD since 2002, Paul Stahura, founder of eNom, Inc. the world’s second largest domain registrar, asserts making a change from the present management of .US may incur unnecessary expense for registrars and negatively impact the TLD’s reputation and brand.

"Neustar has proven they are technically sound, and there are no issues with the registry," Stahura said. "They have done a terrific job growing the .BIZ extension to over 1.8 million registrations and the 5th largest TLD worldwide, and growing .US to 1.3 million and 6th largest TLD worldwide. Neustar’s technology has proven to be solid and reliable."

In comparison to the growth of other country code extensions, Stahura said, "Despite the unavoidable fact that .COM is the de facto TLD in the United States, .US has held its own. This doesn’t indicate a need to change things at the registry level." As for marketing, Stahura said "Certainly any registrar could step up at any time and be aggressive about promoting .US, as many of us have done and will continue to do. You do not need to be the registry to market .US well."

Stahura believes changing the .US registry could create needless administrative and technical expense for registrars to process such a switch.

Stahura also favors maintaining the price integrity of .US as he believes a slightly lower price would not significantly affect volume. "Price is not the only factor in the success of a TLD. Neustar has, with .BIZ and .US, demonstrated they can grow TLDs in an extremely competitive marketplace."

Stahura looks forward to Neustar continuing as the .US registry. "Neustar has proven itself in both the technical and management arenas to be capable, responsive and highly respected. I can’t think of any company better suited to represent the United States in managing this important country code."

About eNom
eNom is an ICANN accredited registrar offering world-class Internet domain name services at competitive prices. In business since 1997, eNom specializes in domain name registration and related services, and is the #1 reseller registrar, according to Name Intelligence®, with the largest and most active distribution network in the domain industry. eNom currently ranks as the second largest domain name registrar worldwide.

© 2007 Demand Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Demand, Demand Media, eHow and weHow are trademarks of Demand Media, Inc.

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Media Contact:
John Kane
VP of Business Development
pr @ enom.com
425.974.4602

 

[start me up]

Not bizarre, Kane is listed as the media contact for all of enom.

http://www.enom.com/inthenews.asp

Clearly this is a personal statement by Stahura, not speaking for enom as a business or other employees/management.

 

[stahura]

Actually to be 100% clear, it is NOT a personal statement of mine. I am speaking for eNom.

 

[dnthomas]

Are you saying that you believe he is not speaking for the company? As the Chief Strategist for Demand Media, Inc., the compnay that owns ENOM, and still head of ENOM (as far as I can tell), you think that he would be able to post an article on the ENOM website if it was not what the company believed.

Perhaps I buy your John Kane explanation, but Come on, everything about the statement (i.e., registrars should not incur costs) sounds like it is the ENOM company position.

 

[zouzas]

They have done a terrific job growing the .BIZ extension to over 1.8 million registrations and the 5th largest TLD worldwide, and growing .US to 1.3 million and 6th largest TLD worldwide. Neustar’s technology has proven to be solid and reliable."




where i can throw up.





clearly it wasn't writtin with a straight face...

 

[airwav]

Could it be because Enom is #2 and GoDaddy is #1?

If Alliance (GoDaddy) gets the .US contract, there is no way Enom will ever catch up...

 

[Fundraiser]

Actually to be 100% clear, it is NOT a personal statement of mine. I am speaking for eNom.

No surprise that Enom is anti-registrant. The very first statement is that it will increase Enom's cost of doing business and further down in the statement it again refers to Enom having to bear additional costs. Who cares about if registrants might be better served? Rather than considering the failures of Neustar to uphold contract obligations that would enhance the name space for use by US consumers, the focus of the statement is on maintaining the status quo so that Enom does not have to incur some administrative expense.

Come on Paul, aren't you at least a bit embarrassed that your handlers have you claiming that "They (Neustar) have done a terrific job growing the .BIZ extension to over 1.8 million registrations and the 5th largest TLD worldwide, and growing .US to 1.3 million and 6th largest TLD worldwide." Terrific? Maybe that was a typo for "terrible." Also quite pathetic was "Neustar has, with .BIZ and .US, demonstrated they can grow TLDs in an extremely competitive marketplace." Please, what have they actually done to grow those TLDs? Surely you had to cringe knowing people with knowledge of the domain industry would read that.

Does Demand Media have some plans with Neustar or is this just the standard disregard for what might be good for registrants?

 

[Carlton]

No surprise that Enom is anti-registrant. The very first statement is that it will increase Enom's cost of doing business and further down in the statement it again refers to Enom having to bear additional costs. Who cares about if registrants might be better served? Rather than considering the failures of Neustar to uphold contract obligations that would enhance the name space for use by US consumers, the focus of the statement is on maintaining the status quo so that Enom does not have to incur some administrative expense.

Come on Paul, aren't you at least a bit embarrassed that your handlers have you claiming that "They (Neustar) have done a terrific job growing the .BIZ extension to over 1.8 million registrations and the 5th largest TLD worldwide, and growing .US to 1.3 million and 6th largest TLD worldwide." Terrific? Maybe that was a typo for "terrible." Also quite pathetic was "Neustar has, with .BIZ and .US, demonstrated they can grow TLDs in an extremely competitive marketplace." Please, what have they actually done to grow those TLDs? Surely you had to cringe knowing people with knowledge of the domain industry would read that.

Does Demand Media have some plans with Neustar or is this just the standard disregard for what might be good for registrants?

Good post, insightful comments. These extensions have survived despite the empty efforts of the present registries. Simply because the extensions themselves have intuitive meaning and are listed as alternatives on the homepage of any legit registrar. The promotion via registry = absolute zero.

 

[airwav]

...

Come on Paul, aren't you at least a bit embarrassed that your handlers have you claiming that "They (Neustar) have done a terrific job growing the .BIZ extension to over 1.8 million registrations and the 5th largest TLD worldwide, and growing .US to 1.3 million and 6th largest TLD worldwide." Terrific? Maybe that was a typo for "terrible." Also quite pathetic was "Neustar has, with .BIZ and .US, demonstrated they can grow TLDs in an extremely competitive marketplace." Please, what have they actually done to grow those TLDs? Surely you had to cringe knowing people with knowledge of the domain industry would read that.

They have grown it so well, that when I was giving out my .US email address yesterday to a big car dearlership, I was questioned whether our company was affilated with the government!

I explained that the .US was there for all American businesses. They said they were going to get their .US domain.

This is a small example, but I run into something similar quite often.

 

[sheridanct]

Response from John Kane

The following statement is being posted on behalf of John Kane (currently on business travel):

"For the record, I would like to state that I had no part in the issuance of eNom's statement about the dot US bid. Furthermore, as a Director of Afilias, I am supportive of afilias' involvement with the
DNAlliance bid for the usTLD".

John Kane

 

[airwav]

The following statement is being posted on behalf of John Kane (currently on business travel):

"For the record, I would like to state that I had no part in the issuance of eNom's statement about the dot US bid. Furthermore, as a Director of Afilias, I am supportive of afilias' involvement with the
DNAlliance bid for the usTLD".

John Kane

Thanks for the clarification :]

 

[zouzas]

They have done a terrific job growing the .BIZ extension to over 1.8 million registrations and the 5th largest TLD worldwide, and growing .US to 1.3 million and 6th largest TLD worldwide. Neustar’s technology has proven to be solid and reliable."
..

any link to these facts??????


based on zooknic

.biz and .us as ranking 5th and 6th among tlds. According to Zooknic reports from beginning of August they rank 10th and 15th respectively

 

[stahura]

Re: what is good for registrants
Is it good for registrants that the .us registry is controlled by one individual, who refers to himself as controversial?

Re: where I got the stats. I got them from eNom’s internal stats folks. But NameIntel also keeps similar stats of the most popular TLDs in the US here:
http://www.domaintools.com/internet-statistics/ Updated today.
You can see that .biz and .us are #5 and #6, as I said, but I should have said “in the US” not “worldwide”.
My point being that .US holds its own in the face of very stiff (near monopoly) competition. .DE, for example, does not compete much with .com in Germany, so its apples-to-oranges to compare .DE to .US volume.

Re: John Kane
1) As of two days ago, John resigned as an Afilias board member, and so he can say whatever he wants about Afilias now.
2) He is an eNom employee who has 100% of my support
3) eNom is an Afilias shareholder
4) My official eNom statement in support of Neustar’s bid for .US stands.

 

[zouzas]

thanks for the clarification.


individual your refering to you mean parsons?



enom's press release seems it should
have come out couple months back
why so late?

 

[fonzie_007]

Best laugh I had all day... "Neustar" and "terrific job" are two terms that should not go together. How about full disclosure as to the financial interests involved here? I work with people who make arguments for other people for a living and even Stahura's statement stretches the imagination of anything I would expect any of my colleagues to argue.

 

[tariq39]

>But NameIntel also keeps similar stats of the most popular TLDs in the US here:
>http://www.domaintools.com/internet-statistics/ Updated today.

The numbers on NameIntel are not for just the US, as Stahura wrongly claims - they are for the entire world. What's he smoking?

>You can see that .biz and .us are #5 and #6, as I said,
Did anyone notice NameIntel only tracks 6 TLDs? US and BIZ rank last and next to last on this list (i.e, 6/6 and 5/6).

>but I should have said “in the US” not “worldwide”.
These TLDs are not the "#5th largest TLD" and the "#6 largest TLD" in the world, or in the US, or anywhere else except on Planet Stahura. TLDs are defined as Top Level Domains. Includes .DE, .UK, .CN etc. You cannot say "TLDs worldwide" and then later distort the facts to fit this fiction.

eNom has already edited this press release once to remove John Kane ("it was a computer problem"). They have to do it again to correct the wrong TLD rankings ("i should have said in the US"). You cannot trust what this outfit is saying anymore -- too many "i meant to say this" excuses.

fonzie, I like your idea of full discloure of the financial agreements between eNom and Neustar.

Let us hope US DoC comes to its senses and awards .US to the GoDaddy Alliance. Maybe we should write to the DoC about this.

 

[zouzas]

How about full disclosure as to the financial interests involved here?

can we get an answer to this?


is enom partnering with neustar ?

NEUSTAR INC (form 4)3 Oct 2007
NEUSTAR INC Files SEC form 4, Statement of Changes in Beneficial Ownership.
EDGAR Online All SEC Filings - http://www.edgar-online.com/
[ More results from EDGAR Online All SEC Filings ]

 

[fonzie_007]

can we get an answer to this?


is enom partnering with neustar ?

NEUSTAR INC (form 4)3 Oct 2007
NEUSTAR INC Files SEC form 4, Statement of Changes in Beneficial Ownership.
EDGAR Online All SEC Filings - http://www.edgar-online.com/
[ More results from EDGAR Online All SEC Filings ]

Stock options were executed.

 

[airwav]

Stock options were executed.

Yep, could be from all the ppc that they may have received from the Zip Code directory... gotta do something with all those clicks :td:

All we can hope for is that the DoC does what is right for the .US, not what is comfortable.