insight 

I noticed the other day that there is a “Linked ICANN” group in LinkedIn so I joined it assuming it was run by ICANN.  However, having seen the home page (http://www.linkedicann.com/) it clearly isn’t.  In fact it appears to be a domainer run group since that site has nothing but adverts on it.  I’m not a member of the group any more.

This got me thinking that it would be good for us to have a Nominet group on LinkedIn for anyone to join, which we could use as another way of keeping in touch with our community.  It would also mitigate the chances of someone doing to us what they’ve done to ICANN.  So I’ve created a group called “Nominet Community” and anyone can join.  This is the URL:

http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/101204/7BB57564185C

While I was at it I created one for Nominet staff, past and present, to join.  Obviously this one is not open to everyone:

http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/101205/179AFC14DE04

On Wednesday last week, we launched our domain name industry report at our first .uk registrar conference. This seems to have been well received by all in attendance and has got a couple of mentions in the media.

Some, though by no means all, of the content was already in the public domain. The challenge for us was to bring together a large amount of disparate information and present an overview picture of the .uk domain name industry within a global context, including some previously unpublished statistics (.uk renewals, registrant and registrar trends).

Since presenting this information, we’ve had some requests for other data to be presented in the future and are already investigating various strands of research. We’d like to know what you think of the report and what other data you’d be interested in seeing us produce. So if there’s data you think we’re in a position to obtain and publish, then please ask and we’ll see if it’s possible to get at it.

The conference itself was also a first for us. We wanted to present a day that would be of interest to our registrars, increase the understanding of the various issues that we are all faced with in the market at the moment and impart some of the latest information about how we’re trying to support our registrar community. Judging by the feedback on the day, we seem to have hit the mark for most people.

If you were there and feel we could have done better then, let us know how and we’ll bear it in mind for future events.

If you weren’t there and want to know what happened then take a look at the presentation slides here.

I see that there have been a few stories in the press regarding ICANN investigating the practice of registering a domain name based on the search someone has done on that domain name. As far as we are aware this practice is not widespread in the UK. Read more

We’re watching the launch of .asia with interest. Yesterday saw the opening of the sunrise period during which organisations with Trademarks can register domain names. If there are multiple registrations for the same domain, then instead of the usual first come first served process as observed with the launch of .eu there’ll be an auction this time. Read more

We became aware of increased activity by the .tk registry (Tokehau – a small collection of islands in the South Pacific) recently when they opened their London office in August and have seen a real spike in media activity from them and massive increase in number of registrations.

There’s some interesting stuff about how they’re set up in terms of commercial arrangements and who makes what money (see http://www.dot.tk/en/pageC00.html), however, what’s interesting about them for me is the services they’re offering and how they’re getting people interested in the .tk name. They appear to have three core products:

1. a product that takes a long URL such as

http://www.nominet.org.uk/registrars/systems/serviceannouncements/

which then suggests a shorter easier to remember alternative, such as www.serviceannouncements.tk and sets it live for a 30 day period.

2. a free domain name registration service, which requires a level of visits and the .tk registry make their money by placing advertising on the site

3. paid for domain name registration which does not have to carry advertising

They appear to be selling direct and promoting themselves via PR and direct presence. I imagine they should get some good take up and that would certainly appear to be the case so far with their claims of 1.6m names already on the register and 10,000 new domains being registered per day. It would be interesting to know if they’re paid for domains or simply, the thirty day short URL product.

Other key questions for me are:

What will the take up be in terms of brands that actually use the domain as their primary domain?

How will they fair when it comes to renewals?

Will there be a secondary market and how will it fair in the long-term?