Ramon Ray from Small Biz Technology did a talk with Mike McLaughlin about new gtlds and why people should consider them.
It is hard to hear Mr. Ray speak but Mr. McLaughlin can be heard loud and clear.
Ray asks McLaughlin are people going to laugh at me if I have a .pizza ? Mc Laughlin stated that Go Daddy is tld agnostic, the small business customer who does not have the budget to purchase a great domain in the secondary market, you can get a ton of availability and choice with the new gtlds.
Christopher Kompanek wrote a piece on Frank Schilling that is featured in FT.com. The piece was feature in the At Home section and takes a nice look at the inner workings of the man behind Uniregistry.
From the article:
Tucked inside a nondescript building on Seven Mile Beach in Grand Cayman, a stone’s throw from the island’s largest and glitziest hotels, Frank Schilling’s home feels a bit like the Batcave. A lift leads to a large intercom-protected gate, which reveals a pair of oversized double doors that open into a huge marble-covered entrance passage.
“We refer to it as ‘the house’ even though it’s technically a condo,” says Schilling, the owner of Uniregistry – a top-level web domain name registry – as we walk through an endless maze of rooms. They include a set of guest quarters with a private entrance; a cosy library, a spacious craft room for his two children, Elle and Leo, aged nine and eight; and a screening room with suede-lined walls and a Capiz chandelier that he refers to as “Talitha Getty chic”.
FantasyFootball.tips sold on Flippa for $500, there were only two bids and this is a new seller, it will be interesting to see if the sale gets completed. The domain was registered on February 25, 2014.
Link to the listing
Afternic also reported Dog.Photography sold for $750.
Eli the computer guy runs a You Tube channel that has over 278,000 subscribers, he did a video that included talking about the new gtlds. Now his audience is not domainers but rather those in other fields of technology.
He felt these were something that his audience should know about and then immediately forget. His opinion seems to draw upon his first experience with domain names. He wanted StarvingGeek.com back in 1999 and it was registered. He decided to go with StarvingGeek.info and convinced himself that this new .info extension would catch on.
One point that he mentioned was the similarity of people who may own certain domains. StarvingGeek.com was someone who had a similar story to his, so while he was traveling the world, friends were checking out StarvingGeek.com and thinking it was Eli.
He dropped the .info a few years later as he came to the conclusion that no one was using the .info extension, except for spammers.
I bring up the video and posted it because Eli is the type of person in tech who consults businesses and has a decent following. These people will shape the opinions on whether or not to go with a new gltd for a lot of small businesses. If you are planning on selling or consulting to small business, its good to know what they are hearing from the other side of the coin.
With approximately 6 1/2 hours til his first two extensions are available to the public, we ask Frank Schilling a few questions.
1) What are your expectations for your first two strings, do you expect a lot of demand ?
Demand is very hard to say in these early days and we do not have Godaddy or many of the legacy registrars due to our registry “Know your customer” compliance guidelines (which the traditional registrars feel threatened by) but we expect we’ll be able to place 100,000 .sexy names in the first year. tattoo was projected lower with 30,000 registrations.
2) Will there be several names unavailable and will 1 letter strings be available for registration ?
Initially ICANN mandates that many of the 1 and 2 character strings will be unavailable but we will do press announcements as these become available.
3)Do you think there is an advantage to being one of the first strings out the gate ?
Perhaps in these early days yes, but I would not want to be a small 2 string registry like us launching with something average or impotent. We think .SEXY and .TATTOO have a lot of gravity as some of the first fun extensions and we expect they will have gravity and resonance when they are no longer as new.
4) Will there be any advertising outside of the domain industry to promote Sexy and Tattoo?
Yes there will, our advertising will begin with the launch of our registrar on March 8th
5) Anything else you would like to add about these two new strings ?
It has been a humbling journey going from day-dreamer, kid in a cul-de-sac — to, late bloomer domainer, to registry operator. I’m very proud of all the people on the Uniregistry team for helping me bring the first two fun strings to market. I could not have done this alone and they help me bring my vision to market. These strings are a reflection of the people at Uniregistry. We want to be the registrar and registry people want to use to manage their online identity and we look forward to welcoming the registrants of the future.