The .berlin gTLD started Monday 16 June with close to 50,000 registrations and ended the day with over 116,000 registrations, meaning there were a massive 65,000 or so registrations in 24 hours.
The massive number of registrations came about with a special promotion with participating registrars that saw the maximum fee charged of â¬5.55. Some registrars were reportedly giving the domains away for free.
Itâs a marked contrast to the questionable activities of Network Solutions that gave their .com registrants the equivalent .xyz domain unless they explicitly opted out of the offer.
The special promotional campaign is running from 16 to 20 June five lucky registrants during the period will win an Apple iPad mini 32GB WIFI. Winners will be drawn on 27 June 2014.
The massive number of registrations pushed .berlin back into second place in the new gTLDs chart compiled by nTLDstats.com behind the controversial .xyz which has 145,868 registrations at the end of 16 June. Then .berlin (116,589), .club (72,023) and .guru (62,182). These are the only four gTLDs with more than 40,000 registrations. There are 11 gTLDs with more than 20,000 registrations, 25 with more than 10,000 and 115 with more than 1,000.
Getting noticed when there are so many gTLDs is going to prove more and more difficult when there are 302 gTLDs delegated and most of which will be after public registrations. Some have not begun Sunrise periods, let alone entered General Availability and there are hundreds more to come.
But the .berlin promotion has certainly boosted their registrations! And hopefully in a year or two when domains come up for renewal there will be plenty of .berlin websites floating around.