We have several bases to touch today. Let's start the trip around the horn with Verisign's release of their latest Domain Name Industry Brief covering the final quarter of 2013. This report is always packed with interesting information on domain registration trends. 

In the 4Q-2013 report Verisign (the operator of the .com and .net registries) revealed that 5 million domain names were added to the Internet in the closing quarter of last year, bringing the total number of domain names registered worldwide (in all extensions) to 271 million. That is 18.5 million more than the previous year's total, representing a healthy 7.3% jump in year over year global domain registrations.

.Com continues to be the world's most popular TLD (by far) with 112 million domains registered, about five times more than any other extension. 

With the universe of domain names continuing to expand, operators of the hundreds of new gTLDs that have started coming online hope to grab a piece of the pie for themselves. Many operators are battling rivals for some of the more appealing extensions, but one such battle for .PARTY has ended with Famous Four Media winning the rights when its last competitor, Oriental Trading Company, Inc., agreed to bow out (a move that is almost always accompanied by substantial compensation. 

Famous Four's parent, Domain Venture Partners, has applied to operate 57 TLDs and has now won