The new gTLD .Guru just topped 40,000 registrations making it the most successful new gTLD to launch.
.Photography is the second most popular new gTLD with almost 25,000 registrations.
.Tattoo is the least registered new extension, fully launched to date, still under 1,000 registrations.
I had a chance to chat with Dan Schindler of Donuts the registry that owns .Guru as well as almost every new gTLD launched to date who told me a couple of weeks ago based on Donuts internal projections, .Guru was not in their top half of strings they were launching in terms of expected registrations.
So Donuts has o be very happy with the numbers to date for .Guru.
The total number of new gTLD registrations now less than 5,000 away from 200,000.
Meantime the total of .Com registrations continue to grow and is now over 126,000,000 which as you can see from the above chart continues to grow even during the launch of the new gTLD’s.
The existing new gTLD registration which seems to be negatively effected by the new gTLD’s is .Info as you can see from this chart:
All charts courtesy of RegistrarStats.com
The descent of .info began in 2012, before new gTLDs launched. I think it’s more of a “flight to quality” that people are letting their .info (and other alternative gTLD) domains expire, rather than any causality relationship from new gTLDs. .info has lost over 2 million registrations, whereas the sum total of the “new” gTLDs is less than 200K, as you pointed out.
I had a guy yesterday “threaten” he was going to buy a .guru if I did not meet his price for the .com.
I told him to hurry and buy the .guru before someone else gets it – maybe even me.
Being the first decent new gTLD out of the gate has helped .guru, but with around 5-10 new extensions coming out per week let’s see if it has staying power.
To put things in a little perspective, all the new gTLD combined have far less registrations than .PW and even .MOBI has 1M+ regs.
Brad
I’m only curious what the renewal numbers will be this time next year. We’ve all been through the hype cycles for .me, .co, .xxx, .mobi, etc. The renewal bills next February will be shocking I’m sure.
As for the tld’s struggling out of the gate, I would agree with R Schwartz that they are DOA and likely will never net a profit.
aughtBrian I would have counter-threatened by registering a bad .mojo in his given name.
Pump…pump…pump…
This little short video will explain it all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOOs8MaR1YM
DomInv –
I am cracking up – that is funny as they come
My brother sent me the YouTube video referenced above. I’m still laughing.