Dot MX - Mexican domain names registry reached 250K registrations.

DomainNews reports:

NIC Mexico (Network Information Center México), the registry and administrators of the .MX cctTLD, is announcing that on April 28th, 250,000 .MX domain name registrations have been reached.

This new threshhold turns out to be highly promising for the increasing use of .MX domain names, given the accelerated behavior of registration in the last years; and considering also its 24% annual growing rate. It took 15 years to get the first 100,000 .MX domain registrations, and only two and a half years to add another 100,000. Therefore, reaching the amount of 250,000 .MX domains in just a single year is very satisfying for NIC México and they expect a much shorter waiting period to register next 100,000 .MX domain names. (more…)

Not surprising with their recent rapid economical growth, China now has more internet users than US. And they also have over 10 million .cn domain names registered.

But what? At $0.13 per domain (yes, you read it right - you can register a .cn domain for just 13 cents, for example on todaynic)  Chinese domains are less valuable than .ca, even though they outnumber them by more than 10 to 1.

 Also many Chinese companies prefer phonetic .com names. I’m aware of a few private sales for such names in high 5 and 6 figures. Naturally these are.com names that refer to some of the top industries in Chinese.

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Qualified businesses and professionals can reserve their business names, trademarks, and personal names on a first-come, first-served basis prior to the rule changes using EnCirca’s ProForwarding service (http://www.encirca.pro). Trademark owners may protect their intellectual property in advance of any rule changes by using EnCirca’s ProForwarding service as well.The dot-pro public comment period is over and RegistryPro and ICANN have received overwhelming support for their proposed changes to the dot-pro registry. The public show of support takes dot-pro one step closer to enabling all licensed professionals from anywhere in the world to register dot-pro domain names that work just like dot-com domain names.

Dot-pro currently supports Lawyers, Medical Doctors, Accountants and Engineers. Examples of businesses and professions that will soon be eligible for dot-pro include: Architects, Dentists, Educators, Chiropractors, Veterinarians, Surveyors, Plumbers, Inspectors, Investment Advisors, Real Estate Brokers, Insurance Brokers, Nurses, Opticians, Optometrists, Podiatrists, Psychologists, Therapists, Social Workers, Building Contractors, Electricians, Patent and Trademark Examiners, Court Reporters, Police and Fire Safety Officers and any other profession where an official credential is required for a business or individual to offer services.

Qualified businesses and professionals can reserve their business names, trademarks, and personal names on a first-come, first-served basis prior to the rule changes using EnCirca’s ProForwarding service (http://www.encirca.pro). Trademark owners may protect their intellectual property in advance of any rule changes by using EnCirca’s ProForwarding service as well… more

Apparently the Soviet Union is still alive. Except for Soviet Union emblem t-shirts being a hot item in Russia now, Russian webmasters don’t want to break their connection to the shady communist past and keep fighting ICANN to protect the obsolete .su extension.

Read more on the matter here

ICANN is still attempting to delete the obsolete SU (Soviet Union) extension but having little success. While they have managed to decommission the .YU (Yogoslavia) extension successfully last year, they are finding rebellion among Russian webmasters, ISPs and the Registry itself. (more…)

Here is some interesting information about the .in domaining space. .in domains became available for registration only in 2005 (there was .co.in before that, which is less popular now) and all the top names are taken by several individuals/organizations.

There are currently around 400k-500K .in domains registered. For comparison .asia which just started recently has a similar number of registrations and is perceived by many domainers as “quite useless” and .ca domains have just crossed 1 Million registrations.

Indian economy is growing fast and many companies are eager to establish their online presence. Only about 6% of Indian population have internet access and the potential for growth here is enormous. While the prices are still quite low it provides an excellent investment opportunity.

.in domains can be registered by anyone, no Indian presence required (in contrary to for example .ca domains, which are only for Canadian residents).

Cybersquatters beware .in registry imposes very strict rules to protect trademark owners. Offenders may face very high legal charges and fees.

The highest reported sale for .in domain so far was poker.in for $60K (check other high sales here), which to a western person makes perfect sense, but in fact poker is not popular at all in India so the may actually be much harder to monetize than it seems. As usually there are many high value unreported .in sales and the end user interest is quite high in these.

There are no 1-2 character .in domains, but the LLL.in and NNN.in are quite popular and are traded a lot. Premium LLL.in domains reach around $60-100 minimum prices and in my opinion they represent one of the best investment opportunities now. We’ve seen in .com, net, .org and even in .ca domains how 3 letter domains grow in price on the reseller market and have very good end user potential due to many possible acronyms. Indian domaining space is expected to grow significantly over the years and the value of these names should skyrocket!

Some historical registrations figures, available from INregistry

• Feb 17, 2005 - 24,000 domain names registered on first day
• Feb 21, 2005 - 75,000
• April 05, 2005 - 100,000
• Nov 7, 2006 - 200,000

Generic and GEO .in domains are almost impossible to get now as most are owned by several entities below.

• Indiaportals.org own an amazing portfolio, including some of the best generics. The best among these can easily go for 5 and even low 6 figures.
  bakery.in
bank.in
bar.in
beauty.in
books.in
box.in
buy.in
call.in
card.in
care.in
casino.in
casinos.in
cell.in (more…)

It was reported that Money.co.uk was sold for an astounding $2.4M!

Money.co.uk is a nice looking site, but doesn’t seem to have much traffic

The report remains unconfirmed and is only based on a digg article and a few blogs that picked it up, so it might as well turn out a hoax, or a joke.

Another record for .uk, after a month ago cruises.co.uk sold for over a million.

.me is about to be launched. Sounds pretty good for a personal site. I think many people would like it and it has many cool possibilities, like kill.me, love.me, hug.me, pay.me etc. A tld that is also a word!

.ME Registry officials today announced the roll-out plan for .ME, the new domain name extension. .ME is expected to be utilized as both a personalized Web address and as a catchy business marketing tool around the world.

The registry will begin accepting .ME applications in May, for the start of what is known as the General Sunrise Period, a time when only trademark owners can apply. However, registrars who sign up before that time can start accepting Sunrise and Landrush applications and pre-registration requests, as soon as they’d like. As was the case with .ASIA, multiple parties will be allowed to submit applications for the same domain name. Domain names that receive more than one application will go to an auction process. .ME Registry officials today announced the roll-out plan for .ME, the new domain name extension. .ME is expected to be utilized as both a personalized Web address and as a catchy business marketing tool around the world.

The registry will begin accepting .ME applications in May, for the start of what is known as the General Sunrise Period, a time when only trademark owners can apply. However, registrars who sign up before that time can start accepting Sunrise and Landrush applications and pre-registration requests, as soon as they’d like. As was the case with .ASIA, multiple parties will be allowed to submit applications for the same domain name. Domain names that receive more than one application will go to an auction process. more

Update: Domain was sold.

X2.ca For $1495 - This is not a Joke!

Post sold to claim the domain
Payment expected within 24 hours - Paypal or escrow, buy pays the fees.

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(more…)

A quick update on the recent .ca pool auction results:

icq.ca sold for $3400
north.ca sold for $2701

MyID is also going to do a premium .ca auction.

They are mostly after 2-3 char domains and generics. Also cities and french domains.

Myid.ca doesn’t seem to be too popular so I’m guessing this auction won’t have a wide enough reach.

In other news pizza.com auction on sedo is up to $2,505,000. Many seem to be trying to capitalize on the big pizza chunk by shillbidding their domains to just under the reserve. We’ll soon find out if that worked for them..

ICQ.ca in now at auction in Pool.com with current high offer $2302 and over 3 days to go.

Now obviously this LLL.ca domain is only that valuable due to the popular IM program with the same name. So it’s very likely that icq.ca has some very good type in traffic that can let the owner make the money back in just a few months.

But the problem is ICQ is a trademark, which now belongs to AOL. Even if the domain icq.ca will be used for something unrelated to the icq brand AOL can claim it and most likely receive the domain. (more…)