Friday, December 8, 2017

Photography and new gTLDs: blue or red?

This is the "recap" of the 2017 new gTLD report related to photography and a few other digital things. You might have noticed that the title of the report has been changed to "Photo / Digital new gTLDs". The reason for this is that the report informs about more than photography and I was requested to add the .DESIGN new gTLD. This new TLD will be added to the report in 2018.


Blue or Red?
Blue and red are the two colors that I used to qualify the extensions that gained registrations (in blue) and those who lost some (in red) from a month to the other.

One can easily notice that the .MEDIA - .STUDIO - .DIGITAL - .ART and .CAM new gTLDs have sticked together and known a successful year in terms of registrations. The .ART launched late and is a pretty interesting example since its Premium domain name strategy was criticized, blocking hundreds (thousands?) of domains from being registered through the network of accredited Registrars.

The .FILM and .MOVIE Top-Level Domains are interesting too since they are niche TLDs. Their progression curve is slow but constant. The film (and movie) industry seems to be attracted by these two highly descriptive extensions.

I bet on the .PHOTO (with no "s") new gTLD when I launched these reports and wrote that the singular version of a TLD would beat the plural version in terms of interest. If registration volumes demonstrate "interest", I guess I was wrong since the .PHOTO domain name registration volume is seriously dropping down and lost 7,000 registrations in one year when the .PHOTOS gained 800. But hey...it is still too early to say since the figures that I see...don't match.

In regards to .PICS, the behaviour is strange since it is a short TLD, kind of descriptive too: every english speaking person knows what a "pic" is. I don't understand why it has lost almost 20,000 registrations since January 2017. In fact, I would be tempted to think that "pics" do not magnify the word "photography" so one interested in such extension would rather buy a ".photo", a ".photos" or a ".photography" instead of a ".pics". Or is it because there's a .PICTURES too?

The two .BRAND new gTLDs for Canon and Nikon have not been very active and seem to have been in tests during the year but the .NIKON extension recently increased its registrations to 30 ".nikon" domain names recently. 16 only for the .CANON TLD. Are the two competitors entering the arena with a project?

Check the full report here.

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