analysis Reviews of Domain Extensions

[Bob Hawkes]

I have for some time been planning to do a series of in depth reviews of extensions. Each report would cover a single extension, although they would make comparisons to others. Most reports would cover:

• Basic information (meaning, time since general availability, restrictions if any, etc.)
• Statistics (registrations, growth rate, how much used in real websites, geographical spread of registrants, etc.)
• Price information (clearly changes and will link to tools, but historically how have registration, renewal and transfer prices been, whether registry reserve premiums and how that is handled, etc.)
• Abuse information (a look at the domain extension and comparators re how abused it is for spam, phishing and malware)
• How actively and effectively the extension is being promoted by both registry and others
• Resale Prospects (a look at NameBio and DNPric.es and SoldDomains and other data, considerations, a listing of some of the more notable sales, trends i.e. does it seem to be getting more sought after or less)
• Representative Actual Websites (not necessarily the best or most visited, but a selection of actual in-use websites demonstrating different ways the extension fits)
• Additional Ideas for Use (complementing the above, how the extension might be effectively used - sometimes I will use some of my own domains to illustrate this, but that won't be a big part, this is not mainly self-promotion)
• Summary Statement (admittedly any conclusion can be debated, but based on above evidence I will try to in a few sentences summarize a view of the extension)
• Links (at end I will include some links, e.g. to NameStat entry for extension, noteworthy sales list, the registry promotion page, Spamhaus to check latest abuse, etc, just so have these in one place and also to allow users to update with the most current information)

I am going to try to make these so that they will be valuable to both the domain investing community and to end users. I realize that implies trade-offs as e.g. the domain community already know how to look up things like NameBio sales, but generally end users do not. By making them written with enough explanatory detail I am hoping that they will be helpful as a resource for those selling domains to refer potential clients to.

In case wondering, I certainly do NOT plan to cover all 1500 extensions . As well as a number of the new extensions that have significant followings, I plan to cover com, net, org and info, a few other legacy like pro, asia, us and biz, and a number of country codes that have a 'global' use like .co, .io, .me, .pw, .ly, ai and some others. I will not be covering most country codes or lesser used ngTLDs.

As NamePros users will have gathered, brevity is not my strength, so these reports will be fairly long, but hopefully useful. I will try to do the same as I do in my volunteer writing for a community newspaper (not domain related!), be balanced and fair and evidence based. I view these as sort of like an in-depth book review, but for domain extensions.

As each report is complete, I will post a brief summary and the link to the complete report in this thread. I will also announce each one on my Twitter feed (which is @AGreatDomain).

If you see things you would like me to include (or exclude) after the first few are out, please don't be hesitant to make suggestions in this thread.

Bob