Frank Schilling’s North Sound Names just registered 23K domain names in Uniregistry’s .LOL new gTLD domain name extension.
We noted that .LOL which launched last week, had under 800 registrations after its first day of availability.
On the following day, .LOL wound up with 23,779 registrations and now has 24,341 registered domains.
North Sound Names which had just over 207K+ domain names registered until last week now has over 230,586 with the difference coming from .lol registrations last week.
North Sound Names is the largest registrant of new gTLD domain names according to ntldstats.com
I also see indications ‘LOL’ is a lot less used now compared to the past, i.e. the iPhone smiley face icon, or ‘haha’ seems to be far more often used, which I see a lot of recently, especially in text messages, with smiley face used by older people and haha by the young and teens.
One more issue about so many seemingly non-obvious value names being registered in bulk and in numerous new tlds, not just in .LOL. I don’t get it because what with exact match (non-single-word) name inquiries in .com and .org looking weak and slow how could all the little or no value and EMDs in the new tld’s be considered a good investment, especially if registering 20k names!
Can’t the owners of the e registries just hold back premium names in their extensions, rather than register them? This has been the M.O. of many registries, including .ME and .CO. But perhaps this is for business/amortization/capitalization reasons for Uniregistry, as the parent entity?
“Can’t the owners of the e registries just hold back premium names in their extensions, rather than register them? ”
Yes, they can. That’s why I don’t see anything improper, as some do (not necessarily you Steve) about the way Frank handles the “premium” names.
What difference does it make whether he puts the same premium price on them at the registry level or at North Sound Names?
Well, under Australian consumer law, advertising a premium domain at the registry is all above board, while advertising the premium domain at registry for a standard price only to pass it to a subsidiary to offer at a premium price could be in breach of consumer law.
Now while you could say Australian consumer law doesn’t apply because the company/ies in question are not in Australia, the ACCC has been known to sue overseas companies for breach of Australian consumer law because said companies are in fact targeting the Australian consumer. (Steam being one example who was required to offer customer warranties to Australian customers even though they are not required to do in the USA)
Even if successfully defended, this doesn’t mean the defendents costs are covered.
So yes, premium price at the registry or via a sister company could actually matter.
.LOL is every bit as timeless as the eternal .HOOT
LOL
I registered few .lol domains days after GA due to the $2.99 incentive per domain thru name.com. However, if by next year, the high reg fee does not drop from its current $30+ fee, to under $20; then I won’t be renewing any of the names, some of which are:
Gagz.lol
Memez.lol
Chuckle.lol
To name a few.