The .Berlin Registry which as of the last update has over 115,000 registrations owes a lot of there success to two registrants who between them have more than 50% of all the registered domain names
DomCollect AG with Andre Schneider listed as the principal has over 38,000 of the 115,000 registrations
DomainProfi GmbH has over 23,000 .Berlin domain name registrations
Together the two companies own over 60,000 of the 115,000 registrations for .Berlin
Consider that just a two days ago there were only around 48,000 .Berlin domains registered.
These two companies now have more .Berlin domains than the entire zone file had two days ago.
DomCollect AG is a domain investment company.
According to their website, DomCollect Worldwide Intellectual Property “was established in 2005 with a view to acquire and monetize qualitative premium and generic domain names.”
“Owning a portfolio with thousands of domains, we have a visitor volume of more than a million of highly qualitative visitors per month available. We are in the market to enlarge our domain portfolio with premium domains and domain portfolios.”
“Our domains cover areas ranging from ‘A’ like automobile to ‘Z’ like zoo.”
Domainprofi is likewise a domain investment company, and says on their website, “The DomainProfi GmbH has specialized in the trade of domain names. We buy domains in large packages and sell them to consumers. We focused on so-called generic, ie descriptive german-speaking domains. ”
“These are general terms that you would as well find in a dictionary. ”
“We are one of the largest company of its kind and the largest owner of generic domains in Germany. ”
“We currently have 271,407 domains with 219,491 with the domain suffix de.
Of course there is nothing wrong with domain investment companies getting more domain names.
This blog is written by someone who also has a domain investment company.
However what is quite interesting is that .Berlin opened the flood gates by offering free .Berlin Domains and the majority of these free domain names seem to be domainers.
Most registries say they don’t want their domains owned by domainers or by domain investors and that is when they are willing to pay for the domains.
Obviously it would be more impressive if the 3 Million plus residents of .Berlin went out and registered .Berlin domains when they are available for free.
The fact that its the domainer/domain investor community that is stepping up to take the free domains would not appear to be helping the registry or the city.
Another way to look at it is this: Registries could consider domainers as an outsourced sales department. In fact, domainers are generally salesmen who pay the registries up-front in order to publicize their products for sale. This is a bad deal for domainers unless the cost is low compared to the likely average purchase amount per time spent. So offering cheap (or even free) domains to a group of people who can amplify end-user outreach is a gamble that could pay off.
With the bulk of domains in the hands of just 2 domain investors, however, I suspect that such a gambit will not pay off for the registry in this case.
DomCollect does not qualify as a “domainer”; it’s an independent-operating company owned by Sedo.
Point taken.
At least those free .Berlin domains didn’t end up in NetSol accounts with an “opt out” clause 😀
There’s a world of difference between
(1) Giving away products on a voluntary basis while advertising the freebies;
(2) Stuffing domains into people’s accounts arbitrarily and without their consent in order to fabricate numbers for the sake of deceiving customers into investing in your company’s product.
As for .BERLIN, it’s hard to know whether DomCollect and DomainProfi simply noticed the opportunity and took advantage of the giveaways in a big way … or whether they acted in cooperation with the registry. That latter interpretation would indicate a strategy similar to Uniregistry’s, which is fine.
To be honest, and knowing the pride of Berliners for their city, I am surprised the freebie is extended beyond Berlin residents (it requires a local proxy service, offered for free – for now.)
How do you identify a domainer? From this junk:
http://dnforum.com/threads/destinations-berlin-and-other-berlin-domain-names.526749/
Now this is what I call “clean us out”.
As I stated “If you really want domain investors to clean you out then you would price the extensions for free in the beginning and let us re-sell”
http://www.thedomains.com/2014/05/21/famous-four-why-domain-investors-should-embrace-new-gtlds-today-i-have-some-thoughts/#comments
Wonder if the registry will make them develop websites (rather than just putting them on PPC parking) on these domains? Section 5.2 of the .BERLIN registration agreement is quite interesting in this respect. Having this much speculation in a new TLD could result in a rerun of the .EU ccTLD fiasco where over-speculation killed development in the TLD resulting in the TLD being a Dead Zone for the first few years of its existence. (Development rates at or less than .BIZ level and not a .COM contender/replacement in the EU market.) If so, the .BERLIN gTLD could be in for a tough few years as it battles to kickstart development in the gTLD.
I think most people are now asking, wait a minute, is .berlin free? Free for all fellas, where have we been now that all the top .berlin names are gone.