ShortDot is launching the Sunrise period for its fourth new gTLD on 10 March, the recently acquired .cfd, which they are promoting as being for #ClothingFashionDesign.
ShortDot Launches Fourth New gTLD: .CFD
Tag: .ICU
.BOND To Commence Sunrise on 17 October
The .bond new gTLD, originally applied for by the Australian Bond University, but now owned by the operators of .icu, ShortDot SA, is gearing up for a launch with Sunrise commencing on 17 October.
.bond will be launching in its Sunrise phase, for trademark holders, on 17 October. Sunrise will last 33 days ending on 18 November. Following will be an Early Access Program that adds an access fee to the cost of registration that will gradually decrease over the first seven days, giving users the ability to register more desirable names before others. Prices for the EAP appear not to have been publicly released, but .bond registrars will receive a detailed email with pricing for the EAP as well as normal wholesale registration rates. There will be a small list of Registry Reserved names. General Availability will then commence for .bond on 19 November.
“Our goal is to let end users be creative, free, and unique online with what is to the left of the dot by making the extension short and easy to recognise. We think .bond will resonate with those in the financial services arena, but we are excited to find out exactly who the early adopters will be,” said Lars Jensen, founder and CEO, ShortDot.
“We recommend that trademark owners who want to register their matching .bond domain reach out to their preferred registrar or take a look at our list of accredited registrars to secure their brand as soon as possible,” he added.
ShortDot uses CentralNic as their backend service provider and when .bond officially launches on 17 October all registrations, renewals and EPP lookups will be done via the CentralNic EPP servers.
.ICU and .VIP Join the Million Domain Names Club
In recent weeks .icu and .vip achieved the one million domain names under management milestone making it 7 new gTLDs to currently have achieved the milestone.
For .icu, itâs been a meteoric rise having only launched general availability in May 2018 and reaching one million registrations only 13 months later. Itâs one of the cheaper top-level domains around, but still managed to avoid any drop in total registrations as first year renewals came around.
For .vip, it took just over 3 years to achieve the one million registrations mark and unlike .vip, has had a few dips along the way.
The new gTLDs that currently have more than one million registrations according to nTLDstats are .top (3.474 million), .xyz (2.399m), .club (1.611m), .site (1.568m), .online (1.290m) followed by .icu and .vip. Another to have achieved the one million registrations was .loan, which now has 910,500, but peaked at 2.5 million in May 2018.
For .icu, while registrations have continually increased, itâs also one of the most abused top-level domains according to Spamhaus. In the latest Spamhaus Botnet Threat Update: Q2-2019, .icu is the 16th most abused TLD and is third among new gTLDs with 72 domain names detected. The TLD with the most domain names considered abusive by Spamhaus was .com, with 1,778 followed by .ru with 731.
3 Months In And .ICU Is Rocking It!
The .icu new gTLD has only been in General Availability for 3 months and itâs already the 50th largest of the more than 500 new gTLDs to have hit GA, and over 1,200 (including .brands) to have been delegated
The .icu new gTLD has only been in General Availability for 3 months and itâs already the 50th largest of the more than 500 new gTLDs to have hit GA, and over 1,200 (including .brands) to have been delegated.
In a post to commemorate the 90 day milestones, the .icu team have released some milestones theyâre pretty happy with including they now have over 64,000 registrations, some of which are showcased at InTheWild.icu, as well as registrants in 82 countries.
Some of the categories the .icu team is seeing development of websites are cryptocurrencies (blogs, news and pricing platforms), personal sites (consolidation of social media profiles, personal and professional profiles) and tools such as link shorteners.