.BOOK - .FASHION and .BOT new gTLDs

Three Sunrise Periods were updated:

1. The .BOT new gTLD;
2. The .FASHION IDN new gTLD (.xn--bck1b9a5dre4c) from Amazon : the Japanese language characters that mean “fashion” in English;
3. The .BOOK IDN new gTLD (.xn--rovu88b) from Amazon : the Japanese language characters that mean “book” in English.

For these three strings, the Trademark Claims will open on the fourth of November 2021 and will close on the fourth of February 2020.

For details, see here for .BOT - .FASHION and .BOOK

New gTLDs : Project John Wolley is Looking For Financial Partners

2023 is not so far away and to be set up before the next round of new gTLD starts, I look for (a) partner(s) interested in new gTLD innovation.

Are welcome:

• Accredited Registrars,
• Existing Registries,
• Backend Registries,
• Financial Institutions,
• Experienced Entrepreneurs willing to invent something new.

For a detailed explanation of the project, contact Jean Guillon.

Just terminated: the .LUPIN dotBrand new gTLD

The .LUPIN new gTLD was terminated by its owner and this is what the termination of registry agreement says:

"As you are aware, “.Lupin” TLD was never technically or operationally activated or used by Lupin in any manner. Hence, pursuant to the Registry Agreement (RA) for .LUPIN gTld between ICANN and Lupin Limited dated 07 NOV 2014; we hereby notify our intention to not renew the Registry Agreement beyond the period for which the last payment was made by Lupin and that the Registry Agreement be treated as terminated. You are requested take the termination on record and return to us all information / data belonging to Lupin Ltd."

Read the Termination of Registry Agreement here (PDF download). 

Read the ICANN Notice of Registry Operator Request for Termination of Registry Agreement for  .lupin TopLevel Domain here. (PDF download)

 

The .BEST new gTLD and THE.BEST Social Network (update)

As you might probably know, THE.Best social media has now made an important shift to become an innovative social commerce app where social media users can not only review but also promote their best products and services.

Cyril Fremont, CEO of the .BEST new gTLD wrote a few lines to explain in details the new social commerce direction that he is now taking according to the .Best mission : "Turn every social media user into a .Best seller".

Why social commerce ?

Social commerce is one of the hottest trends in social media today, and it seems to have an even bigger impact in 2020.

30% of online shoppers say they would are likely to buy direct from a social media network like Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter or Snapchat.

Instagram data tells us that 70% of shoppers look at Instagram for product discovery: https://www.facebook.com/business/instagram/shopping

Instagram is actually transforming its business model to enable social browsers to buy directly from instagrammers.

In China, Social Shopping via videos is currently performing extremely well. There are efforts from short video apps like Douyin (TikTok’s Chinese sister) that match merchants with content creators for promotion. During the coronavirus lockdown, millions of consumers relied on live videos to check out products and posed questions to merchants remotely, a practice that has won endorsement from local governments as a way to drum up domestic consumption. In just Q1 this year, more than 4 million live shopping sessions took place in China; but that's not only a natural evolution of social media, E-commerce platforms are also evolving to social commerce.

Chinese e-commerce giant and pioneer of shoppable videos Alibaba is looking to recruit over 100,000 international influencers this year – rising this number to 1 million influencers by 2023 – to help brands sell more across the globe through the group’s international retail platform, AliExpress, which claims to have 180 million annual active consumers: https://twitter.com/FremontCyril/status/1315938584525000705

To be 100% clear about THE.Best vision: https://twitter.com/FremontCyril/status/1315704910068023296

• WEB 1.0 from 2000 to 2010 was the rise of e-commerce platforms (amazon, alibaba, ...)
• WEB 2.0 from 2010 to 2020 was the rise of social media platforms (facebook, instagram, twitter, ...)
• WEB 3.0 starting 2020 will be the rise of social commerce.

What about social media user motivations in 2020 ?

There are actually almost 4B active social media users (+10% YoY): https://twitter.com/FremontCyril/status/1315594932875415552

Social media statistic uncovers that an average of 3 hours are spent per day per person on social networks and messaging.

But more importantly: 54% of social browsers use social media to research products (Source GlobalWebIndex). More and more buyers are joining social media networks and looking for reviews and product recommendations. Here is the summary of social media users motivations in 2020 :

• Social Media Browsers : Research products. (Ex : +350 MAU on Pinterest )
• Social Media Creators : Monetize their content (Ex : 39% active influencers on Instagram)
• Business Owners : Promote their products. (Ex : 80M Facebook Business pages)
• Brand Owners : Protect their trademarks. (Ex : 7M Registered Trademarks)

What about THE.Best social commerce value for social media users?

• Social Media Browsers : THE.Best provides an open social commerce app that let social media browsers discover (feed), research, find and review the best products/services in any category (hotels, high-tech, beauty, fashion, ...)
• Social Media Creators : THE.Best provides a unique curating solution that help content creators monetize their audience promoting the best products.
• Business Owners : THE.Best provides an innovative digital solution that help business owners promote their Best products through influencers.
• Brand Owners : THE.Best provides a dual digital protection for official trademark owners : https://www.brands.best.

What is THE.Best secret sauce and unique curating innovation for social media creators ?

Curating content is adding your voice (and value) to an existing handpicked collection of content. Gathered from a variety of sources, around a specific topic, that you publish and share with your social community. Many brands already use content curation on their owned and operated websites and blogs to promote industry news stories, but social media is the marketing platform where curation happens most. Social media content curation takes place when a marketer filters through all of the interesting content online and shares the best news, video, images, etc. he/she finds online on a company’s social networks.

In THE.Best social commerce app, each post is a commodity, so that curating content means promoting other products. So that, THE.Best social commerce app enables content creators monetize their social media audience by curating best products on a dedicated .Best social commerce website. Every social media user can build its own .Best social commerce website just by curating other best products and services. By promoting others products, social media users win rewards for each click coming from their .Best social commerce website.

What about Brand & Business owners ?

As a Brand and Business owners, THE.Best content curation helps you promote your best products from thousands of social commerce websites. Brand and Business owners can achieve data-driven marketing at a scale with minimum effort.

How content curation is important for social networks ?

Internal content curation is the growth key of most social media platforms :

• Twitter has its Tweet/Retweet content curation,
• Pinterest has its Pin/Board content curation,
• THE.best has its Best(product)/.Best(websites) content curation.

What's THE.Best plan ?

THE.Best Social Network new social commerce features (promoting your best products) will be available by next week for influencers, vip, business and brand owners through a new apple store (testflight) and google play app version.

THE.Best unique product curation features will be available by end of 2020 with the new social commerce website template.

The .FORUM new gTLD is here

The ICANN just announced the Sunrise Period for the .FORUM new gTLD.

WHEN

• Starts: 15 November 2020
• Ends: 15 December 2020

WHAT THE APPLICATION SAYS

Fegistryʹs mission for .forum is to create a recognizable, viable, and profitable extension to bring together individuals and companies who are passionate about self-identifying with forum.

There are thousands of forums on the Internet and a registrant can create a website that identifies itself directly in the TLD. It seems fitting, as ICANN opens up an unprecedented and innovative program to expand how we use and identify with the Internet, that use cases like .forum should be allowed as well. 

We are creating the opportunity for internet users to identify websites that operate as forums by looking just at the TLD. By owning a domain in the .forum community it creates a win-win for most companies because they don’t need to identify to the left of the dot they are a forum.

It is our goal to be a financially successful company, solvent throughout our launch and profitable within our first year of operations. We believe this is an eventual reality and that our projections and financial analysis included in this application demonstrate this.

We hope to grow at a rate that allows us to continually improve our registry offerings, and increase benefits for both our customers and employees.

Our commitments and projections at this time are focused on conservative estimates of our revenue in order to best prepare for a TLD market with the possibility of 100,000+ TLDs in the next decade.

We don’t expect the demand for domains under our TLD to be big. Perhaps up to 10,000 registrations by the end of year 3, however we do have investors and a technical team that will stand behind the company if projections are higher than we anticipate.

For more, check the details here.

Will it be .WEB or .WED ?

Well, it seems that it won't be .WED since the Notice of Registry Agreement Termination by ICANN is now written and the TLD is being terminated.

Yes, there is a .WEB on its way and it is a strong barrier to launching a .WED but it does not absolutely mean that a future launching  of the .WEB (probably by Verisign) could not be transformed as an advantage to develop .WED (previously, that TLD stood for "wedding").

My opinion on this

I can hardly believe that the people behind .WED did not make it to sell their TLD because when I emailed asking for a price I got an error in return ! The details were provided by ICANN (...)

When a TLD is failing, you don't make an offer, you ask for a price. These guys just let the full TLD project fail because they didn't know how to handle the situation. Note that this is a good lesson to learn: when "you don't know", please ask those who do because there always is a solution and a SWOT analysis is just one of them. And actually, THERE ARE BUYERS around.