Tuesday, June 30, 2015

New gTLDs: .ANIMAL names in the second Round?

Round 1 of the ICANN new gTLD program has been successful in many areas and industries such as "colors", "clubs" and "city domain name extensions" (city Top-Level Domains). In which areas of interest should we expect the the second Round to be as successful?

Colors are selling pretty well in Round 1
A few figures:
  1. .RED : 31,609 domains registered;
  2. .BLACK : 4,950 registrations;
  3. .PINK : 13,330 registrations;
  4. .ORANGE : This is a trademark;
  5. .BLUE : 15,585 registrations;
  6. .GREEN : 1,464 registrations.
Afilias submitted four applications for colors: red, black, pink and blue. A trademark applied for the .ORANGE new gTLD application and .GREEN was submitted to represent the Green movement ("Earth's domain").

What about animals?
Some applicants realized that speculating with new gTLD applications was possible. Auctions for some of them also seem to have been lucrative but this is nothing compared to private auctions: some new gTLD applications were won in auctions for millions of Dollars leaving their applicants with more money than what they spent to apply.


For the second time, I hear about "animals" and with the experience of Round one, I wouldn't be surprised to see applications related to names of animals. If speculating on domain names has existed for the past 20 years and speculating on new gTLD applications is profitable, it could become the next trend.

A few animal names I heard recently:
  1. Lion(s);
  2. Crocodile.
There are many more possibilities:
  • Bull
  • Panda
  • Tiger
  • Jaguar: application was submitted already for a Trademark.
  • Gazelle
  • Eagle
  • Penguin
  • ...
Some of these names are Trademarks too so here is my next question: what if an applicant was to submit an application for one of these animal names?

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