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When
the .PW
Registry
began taking orders for .PW registrations
from the general public March 25, 2013,
CEO Bhavin Turakhia was hoping the re-launched TLD could reach 100,000
registrations within a year. Looks like
they will hit that mark well ahead of schedule.
The .PW Registry reported today that 50,000
.PW domains have been registered in the three
weeks since it became open to all. Officially, .PW is the country code for Palau
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but, under a new marketing agreement with Directi's .PW
Registry, it is now being offered globally and
positioned to mean the "Professional Web"
Turakhia,
who is also CEO of Radix
Registry, a company that has applied
to operate a number of new gTLDs, said,
"Considering
that no competing extension had come anywhere
close to achieving 100,000 names in the first
year, it was a goal that most considered
ambitious. The feeling of achieving 50%
of the goal within the first three weeks is surreal.
The team put together and executed a brilliant
marketing plan. We are eagerly looking forward
to leveraging this experience for our new
gTLDs”
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Last
November, credit card giant Visa
announced a service designed to compete
with PayPal that, in a boon to the .ME
registry, was set up at V.me
where Visa touts the service, saying,
"Whether you're using a computer,
tablet, or mobile phone, V.me by Visa
makes online payment as easy as online
shopping."
Of course,
for V.me to take off, merchants have to accept
it. I do a lot of shopping online but had
never run across anyone accepting V.me until
today when I received a daily deals
email I get from Buy.com. |
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At
the top of the email was an option to
"Sign up and use V.me at
checkout to receive a great discount on
these select items." The items,
already on sale before the additional
discount, ranged from cameras and watches
to boomboxes and juicers. Though there was
nothing I needed in this particular
mailing it was a good promotional idea and
if V.me continues to gain "shelf
space" as a payment option at major
retailers it will give the .ME TLD a
tremendous boost in name recognition.
There aren't many more powerful players
than Visa to have in your corner.
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One
other note today, the National
Arbitration Forum (NAF),
one of the two services (Along with WIPO)
that hear UDRP cases,
reported that the number of
cases they handled in 2012 dropped
slightly from the previous year,
falling from 2,082 to 2,060. |
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While
that appears to be a miniscule
decline, it is more significant when
you consider that over the same
12-month time frame, the number of
registered domains jumped by
well over 10%, without a
corresponding increase in the number
of UDRP filings at NAF. I would like
to think that some high profile Reverse
Domain Hijacking decisions
was making people think twice before
filing a UDRP without good cause,
but there is no way to know for sure
why filings have been treading water
in recent months. |
(Posted April
23, 2013)
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