Wednesday, April 29, 2015

.GOLF new gTLD is 1 of 8 new Sunrise Periods to have started

New Sunrise Periods have started for:
  1. .FAITH new gTLD;
  2. .DATE (.DATING new gTLD is launched already);
  3. .REVIEW (.REVIEWS is launched already);
  4. .GOLF (The sport);
  5. .TOURS (Nothing to do with the French city of Tours);
  6. .PLUS;
  7. .GOLD;
  8. .MOVIE (.FILM new gTLD to be launched soon).
Expect five more Sunrise Periods to be launched in May 2015: .BANK - .MARKETS - .SITE - .CAFE - .EXPRESS new gTLDs.

Source: http://trademark-clearinghouse.com/gtld-calendar.

So you like Golf? Why not consider registering Golf.club too?

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

New domain names: who really uses them? (in French)

Two articles dealing with new gTLDs in French ("confusion around dot-trademark new gTLDs" and "are new domain names used?"):
  1. Confusion autour des noms de domaine “.marque” (.商标)
    "Les nouveaux noms de domaine rencontrent un taux d’adoption faible mais qui augmente petit à petit. Les marques, face à cette déferlante de nouvelles extensions doivent faire des choix, parfois dans la plus grande confusion, et en fonction de leur budget. A l’annonce de la possibilité d’enregistrer leur .MARQUE, la réponse est souvent unanime: “hors de question de dépenser 185.000 Dollars pour enregistrer mon .”marque”! Mais est-ce bien cela dont nous parlons?"
  2. Les nouveaux noms de domaine sont-ils réellement utilisés?
    "Les nouveaux noms de domaine apparaissent peu à peu sur Internet et si certaines extensions extrêmement négatives font parler d’elles de temps en temps pour retomber dans l’oubli et si d’autres traînent à être lancées, la question qui se pose alors pour les utilisateurs n’est pas tant celle des volumes d’enregistrements mais plutôt, celle de la réelle utilisation de ces nouveaux noms de domaine."
A lire sur le Journal Du Net:
  1. Confusion autour des noms de domaine “.marque”: http://www.journaldunet.com/ebusiness/expert/60639/confusion-autour-des-noms-de-domaine---marque.shtml
  2. Les nouveaux noms de domaine sont-ils réellement utilisés? http://www.journaldunet.com/ebusiness/expert/60633/les-nouveaux-noms-de-domaine-sont-ils-reellement-utilises.shtml

Monday, April 20, 2015

Article on .商标 new gTLD (.trademark)

Extract: what does it mean for Trademarks?

"Well, it is like asking a club what he thinks about the ".club" new domain name extension. In our case, we have a sign dedicated to the entire Intellectual Property community and a Trademark, no matter which country it is from, may be interested in securing its name in this extension to consider existing on a Chinese market".

Article available on CircleId: http://www.circleid.com/posts/20150417_new_trademark_gtld_is_here/.

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Did you know that Google indexed redirections?

A waste of money
With the arrival of new gTLDs, it is a fact: brands and other companies must register more domain names: not necessarily because they need them but because they don't want someone else to do it. Then, the domain name points to...the Registrar's parking page or it sometimes points to...an error or a blank page.

With a background working for many Corporate and Retail registrars, I always kept wondering why companies were paying for domain names that they didn't use: "hey, who cares: the company is paying for this".

Some Trademarks have thousands of domain names that they don't even park nor redirect to another website (or their home page)!

Google indexes redirections
Below is a snapshot of Google and I am happy to see that GoDaddy has a good use of its domain names: the www.godaddy.club is a redirection which takes the user to the right webpage according to its location.

A reason to pay
For Brands who spend thousands of dollars to submit their trademark data into the Trademark Clearinghouse and then register domain names, another good thing to do is to redirect the domain name for the reason explained on the picture: it also has an impact on Search Engine Optimization and this has a price.



Monday, April 13, 2015

New .CLUB Registry to win best new gTLD Award

What is the WDD?
As found on the official website: "World Domain Day is not just an event. It’s where people can turn their dreams into reality. This year, on April 10th, the world will witness an event that will revolutionize the way people do online business and promote their domain names. World Domain Day is an international event which is focused on promotion of domain names and also on educating people on how successful online businesses can be set up".

Source: http://www.thedomains.com/2015/04/12/world-domain-day-2015-industry-award-winners-a-big-thanks-from-thedomains-com/.

The World Domain Day 2015http://worlddomainday.com/

Register your .CLUB domain name with Uniregistry.

Thursday, April 9, 2015

Universal Acceptance is not just a technical question: the .CLUB example

Extract: If Universal Acceptance relies a lot on technology to accept new domain names, it also relies on consumers adoption.

As the moderator of an important group related to new gTLDs on LinkedIn, I often "catch" articles related to new gTLDs, to initiate a conversation. Catching an article requires to copy-paste a URL in the Title field of the discussion but it only worked with "old" domain name extensions such as ".com". It did not work with ".club" domain names until very recently and I had to generate ".com" URLs to redirect to the right article.

Read my complete article on CircleId.


Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Inform about new gTLDs directly on your website

Many of you already read NEWSgTLDs.com to grab the latest info related to new generic Top-Level Domains (new gTLDs). Some of you read it using the RSS feed and some have subscribed to its Newsletter.

I post several times a day, sometimes up to 20 times a day and you may be interested in offering this info directly on your own website. If you are interested in offering this info, why not use one of these two banners:

Instant NEWS about new gTLDs

HTML code to Copy-Paste for the Black 468x60 banner:
______________________________________________________________________________

<a target="_blank" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/newsgtlds/~6/2"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/newsgtlds.2.gif" alt="Instant NEWS about new gTLDs" style="border:0"></a>
______________________________________________________________________________


OR:

Instant NEWS about new gTLDs

HTML code to Copy-Paste for the White 468x60 banner:
______________________________________________________________________________

<a target="_blank" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/newsgtlds/~6/1"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/newsgtlds.1.gif" alt="Instant NEWS about new gTLDs" style="border:0"></a>
______________________________________________________________________________

Contact me for any question.

Jean.

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

LinkedIn: a good news for .CLUB domain names

Good to know: LinkedIn now accepts to capture URLs using a domain name ending in .CLUB. Such change now makes it possible to discussion group participants to start sharing with a source of information using a .club domain name.

Source: http://www.gtld.club/2015/04/good-news-for-club-domain-names.html.

A scarry business model coming for Round 2 of the ICANN new gTLD program?

Extract: "If losing an auction has become a way to recover part of the money invested in a new domain name extension, let's not forget that applying does cost $185,000.00 only (a little more actually because the ICANN has been very slow in launching its new gTLD program and some entrepreneurs lost a lot of money waiting for a launch date), it has also become a way to ... earn a lot more money, even much more when rich applicants are many and definitely want to win their domain name extension in the auction".

Read my complete article on gTLD.club: http://www.gtld.club/2015/04/a-sad-business-model-for-round-2-of.html and register your .CLUB domain name with Uniregistry.

Good news for .CLUB domain names

Domain names in LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a fantastic tool because it allows to paste a hyperlink in the "discussion title "field to catch an article. Once the "discussion title" is modified with a nice Title, more details can be added below to initiate the discussion.

It is exactly what the 1890 subscribers of the "New generic Top-Level Domains" group do on LinkedIn everyday.

The GOOD news
Until vey recently, it was possible to paste a URL or a domain name using the .com extension and I could make it work with .consulting domains too but for other TLDs, I had to proceed a different way and generate another URL.

LinkedIn now works with .CLUB domain names and it makes it much faster to use any content published on internet using a .CLUB domain name to initiate a discussion on the basis of an article.

How to proceed in a LinkedIn group:
  1. Copy your .club URL;
  2. Paste it in the "discussion title" field (and wait for 5 seconds);
  3. Option: add details below;
  4. Click on "Share".
Done :-)




Friday, April 3, 2015

A sad business model for Round 2 of the ICANN new gTLD program?

What are new gTLDs

New gTLDs are new domain name extensions authorized by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and launched in 2012. The program was initiated many years before but official publication of the list of new applications was published in 2012; See their list and status here.

Typically, a new gTLD application offers new opportunities and the chance - for example - for a club to register a domain name ending in ".club", instead of ".com" or ".es" (the country code Top-Level Domain for Spain). A good example would be the "new generic Top-Level Domains' Club" which uses gTLD.club as its domain name: as you can see, it ends with the appropriate domain name extension for a club.

Once a new gTLD application has been approved by the ICANN, the owner, also called the Registry, becomes the only legal entitywolrdwide to be allowed to create thse new domain names to end users. A distribution network is in place already, those to sell these new domain names are called the accredited Registrars.

The Round one of the ICANN new gTLD program has been a success and now offers dozen of different industries, types of businesses, locations, communities, trademarks and cities, the choice to select a domain name which offers a high level of precision. The Round one has now ended and it means that no company can submit a new gTLD application anymore and will have to wait for the second round two to start in a few years time.

The Round two of the ICANN new gTLD program

No one really knows when it starts, even the ICANN cannot answer that question but it is quite possible that it happens in 2017 or 2018 (but again...no one knows). The traditional Business model for a Registries is to submit an application (at the price of $185.000), go through the legal, technical and financial ICANN validation process, sometimes go through complementary procedures, then ... start to make money selling domain names. Some Registries are very succesful and some are not.

If the business model is more or less the same for all Registries, receive ownership of the domain name extension from the ICANN and sell domain names massively, the first Round has developped an unexpected and very scary new trend that future potential applicants should keep an eye on prior to submitting their application in "Round 2".

A very sad new business model is born

What happened in Round One
In 2012, when all applications were revealed to the public, many applicants realized that they were not alone to apply for the wanted domain name extension, and in some cases, they were more than five to have paid $185,000 for the same extension. The ICANN methodology to submit an application (also called the ICANN Applicant Guidebook (or "AGB")) offered to solve that problem upfront or, as a final solution, to go to an auction. Not a bad solution but specialists from the domain name industry decided that they could do this themselves and keep some of the money for themselves, instead of giving it to the already very rich ICANN.

Many external auctions to the ICANN helped select the final owner of an application such as the .FREE new gTLD which was won by Amazon. To understand how new gTLD auctions work, I suggest to read this post.

The good point about private auctions is that money is distributed between losing applicants.

What could happen in Round Two
If losing an auction has become a way to recover part of the money invested in a new domain name extension, let's not forget that applying does cost $185,000.00 only (a little more actually because the ICANN has been very slow in launching its new gTLD program and some entrepreneurs lost a lot of money waiting for a launch date), it has also become a way to ... earn a lot more money, even much more when rich applicants are many and definitely want to win their domain name extension in the auction.

The dirty question: what if you don't want to become the owner of a Top-Level Domain but want to profit from other applicants by having them to win their TLD in an auction?

The dirty answer: the idea is to keep your ears open prior to the launching of the second Round of the ICANN new gTLD program to learn about who is going to apply and for which extension. Some applicants have made more than a million dollars losing an auction for the TLD they had applied for. With a minimum investment (let's say $200,000.00) it becomes possible to submit an application and earn much more if several applicants submit the same.

Conclusion

Any applicant with the intention to submit an application in Round 2 of the ICANN new gTLD program should NEVER inform the public prior to having selected the right partner to submit his application. Forget about NDAs because an extension is just a keyword anybody can drop in a discussion so when you tell a service provider that he is too expensive and move to the next one... Well, you're the one to judge.

If these infos were not kept so secret in the first Round, it is because no one expected so many applicants to submit the same application but also because no service provider had imagined creating a different auction process to solve such string contentions. Now the process exists, expect experts to profit from auctions to generate cash: the first Round of new gTLDs has very clearly demonstrated that losing an auction can be profitable.

Hold on: what about Trademarks?

Any lawyer is aware that a Trademark using a generic string/keyword can be exposed, in particular in countries where Trademark Law is not so respected nor efficient. So what happens when a Trademark owner realizes that someone else submitted an application in Round 2 for its string as a "Generic application" and not a "Brand application"? If legal procedures exist to fight against such behaviours...finding no solution can also end...in an auction.

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

ICAN to acquire Jovenet Consulting to promote new gTLDs

Jovenet Consulting, the company to have massively promoted new gTLDs from the past four years, was just acquired by the Not For Profit Giant in charge of developing new generic Top Level Domains worldwide.

The American giant, after being criticized for its lack of communication to end-users, has decided to take action and give 1% of revenues generated by new gTLDs to sponsor Jovenet Consulting.

Jovenet Consulting promotes new domain names to end-users.

.BRAND new gTLD Reports are updated once a month: CLICK HERE !