World Domain Cup offered by Interlink Japan, is open for ideas (string) to anyone who is interested to share their gTLD ideas with Interlink and if Interlink accepts their idea, the winner will get :-

• USD 10,000; and
• USD 1 per domain name.

What’s even more interesting, internet users will vote and decide which string to go ahead with.

This is going to be interesting.

The first (as i know of) to use such an approach publicly on the internet.

Submission of application begins on May 11 2009, so head on to http://www.worlddomaincup.com/english to find out more information.

Kudos Kevin.

Here is a poll from Advertising Age, on what marketers think about the new gTLD.

The poll above is referred from here.

What do you think?

Pingdom recently came up with a statistic of the domain name industry for 2008 and Internet numbers for 2008. Fantastic analysis on the subject which triggered me to ponder what will happen in the next 5 years generally for ccTLD and gTLD. Moreover, the first round gTLD submission is expected to be open Q1 09.

Let me re-quote some important numbers:-

Internet Users 2008

Internet Users

• 1,463,632,361 – The number of Internet users worldwide (June 2008).
• 578,538,257 – Internet users in Asia.
• 384,633,765 – Internet users in Europe.
  
• 248,241,969 – Internet users in North America.
• 139,009,209 – Internet users in Latin America/Caribbean.
• 51,065,630 – Internet users in Africa.
• 41,939,200 – Internet users in the Middle East.
• 20,204,331 – Internet users in Oceania/Australia.

Domain names for the past 3 years

Growth trends for the past 3 years

Let me go over some of the interesting points :-

• China (CNNIC) is the lead contributor to such growth and immense size of domain name which is accumulated to 13,572,326 domain names registered and growing. (They broke the 14m mark this year).
• Russia had the fastest growth rate of 11% quarterly , followed by DENIC by 12,448,242 domain names.
• Argentina has about 1,767,273 as of Oct 08. (This is partially because domain name is fully subsidized by the government)
• ccTLD registry has begun slowly to grow larger than most of gTLDs except for .COM.
• .BIZ, .INFO , .ORG, and .NET although in the millions, is slowly losing it’s appeal.  Sad to say, domain name that is normally associated with the mention extension has always had a bad image and often associated with spam, phishing sites. I’m aware that PIR(The body that runs .ORG) is doing something about this. Read here and here and here.
• Countries have begun to start taking their ccTLD more serious especially established countries and some governments have begun to take initiatives to boost their ccTLD numbers.
• Internet users in Asia is the highest at the moment even if North America and Latin America sum up, they are still lacking quite a far bit behind.
• As reported in Verisign Domain Name Brief 2009, 12% of 90m of .com/.net has no websites and 24% has a single page site which means 36% of .com/.net 90m, sums about 32,400,000 domain names serves no site or only a single page site.

My predictions for the next 5 years would be (in no specific order):-

• Established country who posses strong Internet presence will continue to grow off the charts especially European countries.
• China will continue to be the largest ccTLD around if not, almost on par with .com. CNNIC currently only have 14m domain names where as the entire population in China is at 1,330,044,544. What CNNIC has now, is still a marginal of the mass population.
• Technology driven countries such as Korea and Japan will have a steady growth of domain names but marginal only.
• The moment new gTLD is released, .com domain name will continue to climb because of brand protection and internet users see as .com as the grandfather and defacto of extensions. But there is another opinion behind this which i’ll leave out for the moment.
• .BIZ, .INFO , .ORG, and .NET will continue to be where are they right now because new gTLDs will be more specific and market oriented, targeting only a specific set of users and users won’t see it’s necessary to purchase other gTLD extensions especially if they have to start purchasing names from their respective ccTLD and protecting it in .com as well.

I would love to know what you think, so please drop a comment or two

*Domain stats from Hosterstats , Images by Pingdom , Verisign Domain Name Brief 2009

** This post was suppose to be released during ICANN Mexico but my laptop crashed and i was left without a laptop for more than 1 week.

At the recent ICANN meeting in Mexico, they setup a booth to capture portrait images of anyone who attends ICANN meeting and it’s for free.  There was a total of 231 photographs taken during that time and it’s too bad that i myself didn’t had the chance to get mine taken.

It’s uploaded to Flickr and check out the images, quite good and each image is properly labeled with name and affiliations.

This is  TK Tan, the CEO of RegistryASP.

If you bump into him, just say hi to him.

He is a very warm person at heart.

Today ICANN released the second version of the gTLD RFP draft application guide, one week before ICANN Mexico begins in hope to make full use of the public comment periods during the meeting.

Public comments begins on 19 Feb 2009 and closes on 13 April 2009.

There is also a detailed analysis on the public comments by ICANN and it’s a whopping 154 pages. This shows how dedicated and serious ICANN is about the new gTLD process. ICANN is even conducting consultations activities around the world in places like Hong Kong, London and New York.

This is an extracted from ICANN’s announcement (which was released today) on the changes made in the gTLD RFP.

Module 1: Intro to Application Process

• Timeline: Clarified that the objection filing period closes after Independent Evaluation results are posted
• Public comments: Included language on role of public comments in the evaluation process
• Community-Based applications: Added clarification on community vs. open and why these terms are used; added language on intent of community-based category and under what circumstances community claims are evaluated
• IDN: Updated sections on compatibility problems, IDN tables, and phonetic representation item
• Fees: Essentially eliminated comparative evaluation fee – it is now structured as a deposit and returned if criteria are met; added credit for qualified 2000 round applicants: added refund structure; reduced annual registry fees and simplified fee structure

Module 2: Evaluation Procedures

• String confusion: In order to better describe protections against user confusion - added more language to distinguish when different similarity checks are made (visual, aural, meaning); clarified relationship between string confusion objections and contention between similar strings; described improvements to the algorithm for testing visual similarity.
• String requirements: Added more detail on prohibition of hexadecimal and octal strings; updated ongoing revision process of IDNA protocol
• Geographical names: Clarified that country and territory names in all languages would be considered and augmented documentation requirements for government approval

Attachment to Module 2 – Evaluation Questions & Criteria

• Tech/ops: Supplemented “preventing abusive registrations” question by calling for takedown procedures and measures to reduce opportunities for phishing/pharming: updated RFC revisions and added RFCs for DNSSEC; proposed changing scoring to encourage applicants to escrow thick data
• Financial: Reorganised questions to make scoring more clear.
• Overall: Clearly marked questions where responses will be kept confidential, or where responses are optional; revised scoring slightly

Module 3: Dispute Resolution Procedures

• Legal status: Included language on objector rights and participation in dispute resolution process; clarified that legal rights objections are for registered and unregistered trademarks
• Standing: Inserted standing section for morality & public order objection to reflect current considerations; clarified that community objector must be related to community in application
• Procedures: published new set of revised, detailed procedures, added option for more than one panelist at parties’ option for legal rights objections
• Standards: Inserted standards for morality and public order disputes
• Other: Included a proposal for an Independent Objector role in limited circumstances

Module 4: String Contention Procedures

• Contention resolution: Included auctions as mechanism of last resort (including rules and procedures); described how a foundation would be employed to distribute funds accruing from an auction; supplemented section on how applicants may self-resolve contention
• Comparative evaluation: revised scoring for more granularity and specificity, added comparative evaluation steps for when more than one applicant passes comparative evaluation (instead of auction)

Module 5: Transition to Delegation: Registry Agreement

• Modified process for amending agreements
• Modified registry fees section: lowering fees and simplifying structure
• Reinstated transparency and equivalent treatment clauses
• Included proposed registry-registrar model: lifting separation requirements in a limited way
• Included requirement for advance notice on price changes
• Added new language requiring community-based TLDs to comply with self-imposed registration restrictions

There is much to read and get prepared and i can kiss my weekend goodbye.

See you in Mexico!