.US Goes Over 1 Million Registrations

[Duke]

.US broke the 1 million mark in total registrations April 11, making it one of only six ccTLDs in the world with more than 1 million domains registered. .US is now at 1,000,359 according to DomainTools.com

The others (with their total number of registrations as of March 31, 2006 - according to Denic.de) are Germany's .de (9,720,156), Great Britain's .co.uk (4,783,448), the Netherlands' .nl (1,859,732), Italy's .it (1,112,230) and Belgium's .be (1,028,741).

Belgium is only in the group because they gave away thousands of free registrations earlier this year, so that would leave only 5 members in a ccTLD 1-million club based on paid registrations.

 

[stuff]

and .eu has 1,459,523 already

 

[Leading Names]

and .eu has 1,459,523 already

Good to see, I think .us has a lot of potential. Slow, steady growth is the best kind IMO.

I see the rapid growth of .EU as negative thing that will slow any true growth (development) within the namespace and have big implications in terms of the long-term success of the extension.

- Rob

 

[Duke]

and .eu has 1,459,523 already

Good point. .eu is not listed in the Denic rankings I cited because their last update was March 31 (and .eu went over 1M April 7) but they are certainly over the threshold now (and IANA classes them as a ccTLD even though the EU represents multiple countries)

 

[StockDoctor]

I'm rooting for the .EU extension even in the face of a new record in abusive regs. When comparing .EU with .US I think you would have to take into consideration the number of alternative language versions regged for the same keyword strings versus mainly just English for .US. This has advantages and disadvantages and leads me to think you would have to produce 6 or more .EU regs to equate to 1 .US reg. For example, there is really only one Mortgage.us, where there are more than 6 different language versions of the keyword that make sense for .eu. Doesn't the splitting up of the market using those versions go against the idea of a unification of the European market? Just thinkin. Here's a prediction for you though. On the first anniversary renewal date of the .EU extension, I see a huge number of drops coming. I'd say over 30%.

 

[trismegisto]

I'm rooting for the .EU extension even in the face of a new record in abusive regs. When comparing .EU with .US I think you would have to take into consideration the number of alternative language versions regged for the same keyword strings versus mainly just English for .US. This has advantages and disadvantages and leads me to think you would have to produce 6 or more .EU regs to equate to 1 .US reg. For example, there is really only one Mortgage.us, where there are more than 6 different language versions of the keyword that make sense for .eu. Doesn't the splitting up of the market using those versions go against the idea of a unification of the European market? Just thinkin. Here's a prediction for you though. On the first anniversary renewal date of the .EU extension, I see a huge number of drops coming. I'd say over 30%.

I agree, but the drops will be for all domains not in english language.
I think the only EU domains we can consider valuable or brandable are in english. For other languages we have the national TLD. And if one society that has its site in italian, or spanish, will try to grab his name with EU, it will be necessary an english translation for their EU website.
I think we will have some "original" EU domains and some "replica" of italian, spanish, german, UK, etcetera websites. (Sorry for not mention all the States, they are a lot! )

Tris

 

[stuff]

.eu now 1,507,763

 

[QuantumBeam]

should be an interesting future

 

[David G]

...When comparing .EU with .US I think you would have to take into consideration the number of alternative language versions regged for the same keyword strings versus mainly just English for .US. ....

A very valid point. With so many major languages the overall usage will be severely fragmented vs .us, perhaps taking at least 6 or 7 domains to equal the name recognition and meaning of just 1 .us.

 

[carlton]

... I think .us has a lot of potential. Slow, steady growth is the best kind IMO

"Slow, steady" breeds longevity. Despite all of the internet's growth thus far, there remain many more levels of expansion and .US will definitely have a huge place in all of this. It's amusing, and short-sighted, when you hear people refer to such and such as a "dead" or "failed" extension.

 

[Rubber Duck]

"Despite all of the internet's growth thus far, there remain many more levels of expansion .....

Yes, dot US many have a place, but 90% of the left over expansion will be in IDN. Dot com is just about Mined Out at 50M, but IDN could easily take the dot com registry to 500 Million. The potential to create new URLs is almost unimaginable to the ASCII domainer stuck with just 37 characters to play with. In Chinese alone there a 50K characters. Japanese uses about 2K. The diversity of scripts and characters will permit the creation of almost limitless, but nonetheless meaningful domains, without even straying from the dot com registry. OK! none of them will have much application in the US, but then just how many primary URLs does the US actually need?

Rubber Duck

 

[StockDoctor]

Yes, dot US many have a place, but 90% of the left over expansion will be in IDN.

Duh! Of course it has a place, the strongest most profitable place in the world. Also, when you say "90% of the left over expansion" you mean in shear numbers of regs (worthless or not) versus future property value of those regs right? If domains are Internet real estate, I'd rather be buying up US properties than a bunch of land in Botswanna or China for that matter.

just how many primary URLs does the US actually need?

Enough in the future to satisfy the demands of the 60% of American business that are still without any significant webspace or Internet advertising. Think local search and how many Dentist offices in the US will still need an address. If the coms are gone or overpriced, what would be the next logical choice of extension?

 

[Rubber Duck]

Well if your talking preferring selling domains to local dentists to having massive generic terms that can address a market of 1.3 Billion, it is quite clear where the fence is and which side of it we both are.

Don't know about the strength thing. What I am hearing about the US economy is mostly not good. Growth rates in the Far East are much larger, and the size of the US economy is flattered by an overvalued dollar.

Rubber Duck

 

[carlton]

Yes, growth rate in the Far East will be good, but that has little to do with newer tld growth in the U.S. and English-speaking countries. America has much internal expansion yet to go as all media migrate to wireless broadband internet. The non-com tld's will become extremely important as the net matures and content becomes better associated with the descriptive tld which follows the search word.

 

[WhoDatDog]

Type-Ins

 

[StockDoctor]

Well if your talking preferring selling domains to local dentists to having massive generic terms that can address a market of 1.3 Billion, it is quite clear where the fence is and which side of it we both are.

Hey I'm all for China's ccTLD and IDNs or whatever else makes domainers happy in an extension. People need to look at the true fundamentals of the market before they start throwing their money at extensions though. As I've said before, .US is prime Internet real estate, and the future small business market (including dentists or plumbers or whatever)for domains and websites, holds great promise. We're not talking how many people are in a market after all, instead, we're talking how many dinero, moola, bucks we can grab for ourselves from a market.

Don't know about the strength thing. What I am hearing about the US economy is mostly not good. Growth rates in the Far East are much larger, and the size of the US economy is flattered by an overvalued dollar. Rubber Duck

What you're hearing is how Bush has really messed up a nice budget, and thrown hundreds of $billions at a stupid war. That's true, but while China may have 5 times the number of people, the US economy still has 5 times the $trillions.

 

[Rubber Duck]

That's true, but while China may have 5 times the number of people, the US economy still has 5 times the $trillions.

Yes, but the big problem seems to be where they are borrowing it all from!

Bush spins it that he putting diplomatic pressure on Hu, when in fact he is probably just asking for his allowance to be raised.

Bill is being courted by Hu, but Hu is probably just sizing Microsoft up for aquistion to go with the hardware production they already aquired from IBM. Lets face it much of the Microsofts software is already being produced in China and India. Ok, the management is American, but look what a sound job that has done over the last couple of years. Chinese know that Microsoft's stock is set for a tumble.

 

[ptesite]

So, when are they going to re-examine the possibility of allowing private WHOIS for .us?

 

[DryHeat]

If nothing else, .US has been out there in usage for several years and will be around in future as we know of it....!

IDNs, sure they'd be the next *big* thing but by all accounts they're STILL work in progress with so many technical, security, administrative, and political issues to be addressed that no one can say for sure ultimately in what shape and form they'd eventually have utility and (thus) value; IDN.com, IDN.ccTLD, IDN.IDN or something else! One just need to keep in mind the recent Chinese move on implementing their own IDN structure under their ccTLD, as one practical example of this very fluid and uncertain situation. IMO, all these unknowns make IDNs a highly highly speculative and risky ventures.

 

[zouzas]

very poor showing of .eu only 1.5 mill regs divided about a minium dozen coutries puts .eu per country at only about 100k regs Per country very very poor showing for .eu.....

shows country prefer their own cctld,,,

i would have expected 5-10 mill. first week based on the hype of .eu