Befitting its status as the new gTLD representing the Entertainment Capital of the World, .VEGAS had a very splashy General Availability debut Monday (Sept. 15) in Las Vegas. The new extension is also benefiting from its partnership with the City of Las Vegas who gets 10% from each .VEGAS registration.

That's why city and registry officials chose to celebrate the debut at City Hall in front of a giant 3-D .VEGAS logo display, complete with showgirls.

Dignitaries on hand for the start of .VEGAS General Availability earlier this week included (left to right): Bart Mackay (Principal, Dot Vegas, Inc.), Tyson Mackay (Vice President of Marketing, Dot Vegas, Inc.), Mike McLaughlin (Senior Vice President of Domains, GoDaddy), Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn G. Goodman, Dusty Trevino (Chief Financial Officer, Dot Vegas, Inc.), Jim Trevino (Chief Executive Officer, Dot Vegas, Inc.) and Sky Trevino (Chief Technology Officer, Dot Vegas, Inc.).

Jim Trevino CEO, Dot Vegas, Inc.

Jim Trevino, president and chief executive officer of Dot Vegas, Inc., said the new TLD is also getting a great reception from the community.  “We are extremely pleased with the local participation among small and large Las Vegas businesses," Trevino said. " Virtually all of the major operators on the Las Vegas Strip pre-registered .vegas domain names for the city’s leading hotel/casinos, nightclubs, restaurants, attractions, events and retail destinations." Trevino added, "A strong sampling of family owned small businesses, governmental agencies and non-profits took advantage of the pre-registration opportunity as well.  Given the strong interest from Las Vegas concerns, we are excited about what general availability will bring, particularly since .vegas is an unrestricted top level domain.  That means there is no nexus requirement to Las Vegas for individuals, companies and businesses to secure their own .vegas TLD.”

Go Daddy Senior Vice President of Domains Mike McLaughlin, who was also on hand for the launch, said, "We’ve seen a great deal of interest for .vegas domain names driven by increased demand for new extensions, especially those that are location specific. Las Vegas is one of the most recognized brands on earth, so it has great global appeal for savvy marketers looking to distinguish their name online by associating with one of the most powerful and iconic brands in the world.”

Those interested in registering a .vegas domain name can do so with GoDaddy or any of more than 50 other domain registrars with which Dot Vegas, Inc. is contracted. The registration fees are determined by the individual registrars with prices we are seeing tending to fall in the $50-$60 range.

Domain brokerage and consulting firm Igloo.com has acquired online domain sales platform Aftermarket.com from Thought Convergence, Inc. for an undisclosed price. The acquisition follows Igloo’s recent announcement of an exclusive agreement with Rook Media to provide brokerage and related services for their newly acquired DomainSponsor portfolio. 

The Igloo announcement said visitors 

to Igloo.com’s newly owned marketplace will have access to millions of names appealing to every type of buyer, adding "Igloo’s sales platform will offer custom templates, the ability to negotiate online with offer/counteroffer functionality, Buy Now for immediate procurement, and most importantly, a dedicated domain advisor to assist you at any point in the sales process.  Moreover, customer service and sales assistance for buyers will soon be just a click away with the addition of an online chat feature."

We've gotten used to seeing Donuts, the largest operator of new gTLD registries, open general availability for multiple extensions every Wednesday and today is no exception with .loans, .life, .guide and .church all making their debut. However, Donuts has plenty of company today with Radix Registry rolling out .website, .press and .host and the Rightside registry introducing .republican.

Today's entrants follow eight others that opened to all earlier this week, including six TLDs from Minds+Machines; .cooking, .country, .fishing, .horse, .rodeo and .vodka. Afilias joined in with .organic (though registrants must meet special requirements to purchase those) and - in one of the most highly anticipated launches of a new city TLD -  .Vegas Inc. lauched .vegas amid much fanfare in Las Vegas.

With so many entering the fray at once, diving into a sea already filled with hundreds of other new gTLDs and hundreds more still to come, it is, of course, getting harder and harder for any single extension to stand out in the ever growing crowd. Each release has been a long time coming, so there is no doubt that the introduction of each one is an exciting event for the registry operator, but each one also presents them with an extremely difficult challenge - how do you break through the clutter those on the outside see? It's certainly a day for them to celebrate but the real work is just getting started. 

Study image from Bigstock	Most agree that the key for new gTLDs will be widespread development in the new extensions. The more end user sites that come online, the more the public will recognize there are alternatives to .com.  Naturally a business is going to be reluctant to use a new gTLD if they think it will hurt them in search engine ranking or marketing. That makes a new research paper - called Search Engine Marketing Study: .Com Vs. New gTLDs - that Globe Runner, an interactive marketing firm based in Dallas, Texas, just released particularly interesting. In a blog post about the study, author Bill Hartzer, a well-known SEO expert, wrote in his final thoughts, "Our overall goal when
setting up these tests was ultimately to determine whether using a .Com domain name or a new gTLD domain name is better when it comes to search engine marketing and Google AdWords. We are not totally convinced that one is necessarily “better” than the other." "What we did see, though, is that Google AdWords tends to favor the new gTLDs, as they served up more impressions, for less cost, and a better average position then the .Com domain names we used. At the same time, though, when it came to conversions, the public appeared to favor the .Com domain names," Hartzer wrote.

If you scroll to the bottom of Bill's blog post you can download the full white paper there. It includes all of the data Globerunner compiled, including the actual CTR, CPC, budget, and even the keywords that we used during the tests.

Afilias, who last February won the rights to operate one of the best new gTLDs, .green, has made some major moves to bolster the prized TLD's prospects. If you have been following the .green saga, you know that The DotGreen Community Inc., a San Francisco based non-profit organization led by Founder Annalisa Roger, had been pursuing the .green extension since 2007. However, other applicants with deeper pockets later entered the fray forcing DotGreen Community to reluctantly end their quest late last year.

That left three applicants standing, with Aflias (who administers the .info domain and provides back end services for many others TLDs) finally winning rights to .green in an auction that also included Top Level Domain Holdings and Demand Media. Before the auction I wrote, "The eventual winner of .green might benefit by bringing some of the passionate people from the Dot Green Community aboard when the extension is launched." So, as you would imagine, I am delighted that is exactly what Afilias has done - actually going one better to partner with the entire DotGreen Community organization, giving them the responsibility to manage the extension while Afilias provides the back end services they are so well-known for. Details were announced in a press release today. 

 Annalisa Roger
Founder and CEO
DotGreen Community Inc. 

The last time we caught up with fast moving young entrepreneur Jacob Fedosky (in October 2012) he was off to college at Texas Tech where he also continued the domain related endeavors he began while still in his teens. Now 21, Jacob launched his latest project today at DailyDomains.com. 

DailyDomains is Jacob's new domain sales newsletter that is differentiating itself with a tight focus on high quality domains offered in small batches so none get overlooked.  Each newsletter will feature just 5 domains and to illustrate his focus on high value assets - Fedosky cited  Conversion.com, Stamina.com, Zut.com, TLF.com as examples of listings you will see in this opening week. 

Fedosky said, "I started the newsletter because, as a domain investor, I need two things; a reliable source of premium domains to buy and a reliable marketplace that could quickly sell my premium domains. A newsletter made perfect sense to me, but I didn't want to "mimic" the other newsletters that are already running so 

 Jacob Fedosky
DailyDomains.com 

I decided to run a maximum of 5 domains per day in order to keep the quality high. Also, I'm handling all transactions through Escrow.com to prevent the financing issues that other brokers have run into recently."

You can subscribe to Jacob's newsletter by visiting www.dailydomains.com/subscribe and can submit your domains for sale by email to [email protected].

With the conclusion of the first DomainX conference last Sunday (Sept. 7, 2014) at the Marriott Hotel and Convention Center in Hyderabad, India, Indian domain investors have dramatically elevated their profile on the world stage. 

Of course, there have always been active and successful Indian investors and entrepreneurs in the industry, many of whom have been regulars at U.S. domain conferences over the years. But now, with the emergence of the country's own shows focused entirely on the domain investment field, it's clear the Indian domain community has grown into a powerhouse that can stand and prosper entirely on its own merits.

Above, at far left: Chief guest Vinit Goenka (National Co-Convener, BJP IT Cell & India Head for verticals E-Governance, ICT Industry Interface & Policy Issues) inaugurates the first DomainX conference Sept. 7, 2014 in Hyderabad, India while the leader of the DomainX organizing team, Manmeet P. Singh from the Domain Name Owners Association of India (DNOAI) looks on. (All photos in this article are courtesy of the DNOAI).

Below (first three attendees seated left to right): Arvind Reddy, Vinay Murarka and Eldo Thomas in the large crowd attentively listening to DomainX 2014 speakers.

I was honored to participate in the conference, appearing with both Michael Castello of CCIN.com during his keynote speech and with DNForum.com owner Adam Dicker in a later session. Unfortunately, due to a massive problem with the Indian visa application system in the U.S. (caused by an incompetent company that took over visa processing this summer with disastrous results) none of us were able to enter the country to speak in person as we had planned.  DomainX organizers made the best of a bad situation that they had no control over by setting up Skype connections with U.S. based speakers so we could address our friends in India (I have read that the Indian government plans to have a new visa system in place by the end of this year that should eliminate this problem in the future). 

DomainX Keynote Speaker Michael Castello appeared on three large 
screens in the conference hall to address the audience via Skype. 

While those of us in the U.S. had to speak over the internet, many experts from India and other parts of Asia spoke in person, including another keynote speaker - leading Indian domain investor Deepak Daftari.  While I can't give you a first hand account of how well things  went on site, every account I have read from people who were there gave DomainX and its line up of speakers glowing reviews. You can see those at these links: ContentOpus.com (written by Anil Kumar Pammidimukkala), YuvaEngineers.com (written by K.V.A.Sridhar), INForum.com (written by Arpit Agrawal) and DomainInvesting.com (a very comprehensive review written by keynote speaker Deepak Daftari). Since they gave such thorough first hand reports that include every session held at DomainX  I won't go over the	Keynote Speaker Deepak Daftari  on stage at DomainX 2014.
same ground they covered so well, but it is obvious DomainX delivered a very well received package and did it despite charging no admission fee to attend!  Sponsor support made that possible, so kudos to the companies that helped underwrite this event in an effort to grow the industry for the benefit of all.

In addition to making the trip to DomainX to speak, .Asia CEO Edmon Chung 
further supported the show's maiden voyage as one of the top sponsors.

Reason to celebrate! The entire DomainX production crew gathered for this team photo 
to mark a successful debut that laid a great foundation to build on going forward. 

Now that the appetizers have been served we are looking forward to a rich banquet of future conferences produced by India-based entrepreneurs. With the experience they have gained from their initial outings, added to the many talents they already possessed, there is no stopping them now! 

Tina Smith at the 2011 DNCruise conference.

This is a sad day for those of us the domain industry who have had the pleasure of knowing or just crossing paths with the effervescent and beautiful Tina Smith. We got word from Tina's husband Tim last night that his wife, best friend and partner had lost her battle with breast cancer. 

Tim and Tina founded an Orlando based company called Basati.com where Heather Fontaine posted a Remembrance of Tina today, noting, "Tina leaves behind a legacy of love, laughter and compassion, which will live on in each of us who knew her.  She not only changed the world while she was here, but her leaving will inspire us to be better people, to care a 

little more, to love each other, to judge less, and to be compassionate for one another." 

Many in our business first met Tina and Tim at one of the domain conferences they attended, the 2010 Domainer Mardi Gras conference in New Orleans or the 2011 DNCruise conference held aboard a Caribbean cruise ship. While snapping photos during DNCruise I was struck by how this beautiful vivacious woman absolutely LIT UP every room she was in - she was literally a walking ray of sunshine. Rare people like Tina brighten everyone's life they touch and make an impression that never goes away.

Tim and Tina Smith at the 2011 DNCruise conference.

In announcing Tina's passing last night Tim told a Facebook group of their many friends - Tina's Warriors - "I am Who I am today because she was in my life. She pushed me, she believed in me, she loved me."

Tina, a gifted writer who chronicled her battle with cancer, also had a lot to say to Tim and her large and loving circle of friends in a post on her blog that was published today - a special goodbye she wrote, knowing time was growing short, titled If you are reading this post...

Though she has left us in physical form, Tina will, as Heather said, live on in everyone she touched along the way. Typical of their shared concern for others Tim requested that no flowers be sent. He said Tina always felt it was much better, much more productive, to donate that same amount to a worthy cause. He invited any who wish to do so to "choose one near and dear to you. Tina’s choice would be":

Libbys Legacy Breast Cancer Foundation
1718 S. Orange Ave
Orlando, Fl 32806
http://www.libbyslegacy.org 
https://www.facebook.com/LibbysLegacy

Europe's largest online marketing fair and conference - DMEXCO - will have a very strong domain industry flavor when it opens tomorrow in Cologne, Germany. Over 30,000 attendees from approximately 100 countries are expected to visit the 800 exhibitors who are setting up at the gigantic two-day event. 

Above: Congress Hall in Cologne, Germany where DMEXCO 2014 is being held this week.

Below: An interior view of Congress Hall in the early stages of set up for DMEXCO 2014.

The first DomainX conference was completed Sunday (Sept. 7, 2014) in Hyderabad, India at the Marriott Hotel and Convention Center. Approximately 350 domain investors and developers reportedly  attended the event organized by the Domain Name Owners Association of India. 

I had the pleasure of participating in two sessions via Skype, first interviewing keynote speaker Michael Castello of CCIN.com then, after an in person keynote from Deepak Daftari, returning to interview another long-time friend and industry leader, DNForum.com owner Adam Dicker. 

A view of the conference hall and crowd during Michael Castello's keynote speech 
at the first DomainX Conference in Hyderabad, India Sunday (Sept. 7, 2014).

Since I couldn't be there in person (due to widely publicized problems with the Indian visa system that also kept the other U.S. based speakers from coming) I can't give you a first hand account of how the day went, but the initial feedback has been very good. The first review from an attendee that I have seen online was published by K.V.A.Sridhar here.

I thought that one of Mr. Sridhar's most interesting observations was this - "Attendees on my table are not domainers, in fact I am the only one on my table who owns domains for flipping. Others own one domain at most for their business purpose. But the beauty is that, by the end of conference, every single one of them is planning to buys domains for domaining."

That - and the personal relationships that are built at a conference like this - is how an industry grows. The arrival of domain investor-centric conferences in the rapid growing and increasingly  important Indian market this year is a very positive development for the global domain industry and we are looking forward to watching and participating in the expansion as it unfolds. We expect to receive additional photos and highlights from DomainX and will bring you those when they become available.

India's first pair of conferences devoted solely to domain investing will be completed Sunday (Sept. 7, 2014) when the DomainX Conference makes its debut in Hyderabad. The event, being staged by the Domain Name Owners Association of India at the Hyderabad Marriott Hotel & Convention Centre, follows the inaugural World Domain Day conference that was held August 24 at the Avasa Hotel in the same city.

DomainX has assembled an impressive international cast of speakers including two keynoters. Michael Castello of CCIN.com (and the subject of our February 2014 Cover Story after he sold Whisky.com for $3.1 million) will kick off the conference with a keynote talk delivered via Skype. I will join Michael for the second half of his session to do a Q & A with him and will also field questions from the audience. 

Michael and I had both intended to be there in person but there has been a major breakdown in the Indian visa system (due to a new third party processor that has proven to be incompetent) that has prevented scheduled speakers from the U.S. from getting into the country on time. Thanks to technology we can still appear and interact with the audience via Skype though.

That session will be followed by an in person keynote talk delivered by Deepak Daftari who is one of India's best known domain and angel  investors. 

I will come back for the final morning session to interview DNForum.com owner Adam Dicker (via Skype) is a session that will cover How to Make Money in Domain Name Market. Due to the time difference it will be 3am U.S. Eastern time Sunday morning when our session is wrapping up but we are confident the adrenaline rush will keep both of us up well past our normal bedtimes!

A lunch break will be followed by a very busy afternoon that is scheduled to feature individual talks (both virtual and in person) from James Wester, Pavan Duggal, Edmon Chung, Kartik Taneja and Morgan Linton. There will also be a star-studded Legal Discussion featuring an international panel and a  panel discussion about Opportunities in India for Domain Name Investing. You can get all of the details about the agenda here. (including any late updates).

DomainX and the Indian domain industry is also getting encouraging sponsor support from many companies, including Go Daddy, Verisign, Neustar, .Asia and many others.

The emergence of dedicated domain investment conferences in India is a welcome and  long overdue development. The nation is home to many brilliant domain investors, service companies and entrepreneurs and they will be in the spotlight for many years to come. 

Michael Castello
Virtual Keynote Speaker

Deepak Daftari
Physical Keynote Speaker

Adam Dicker
Featured Speaker

World Domain Day, a new international domain conference staged by the Indian Domain Owners Association, debuted Sunday, August 24, 2014 at the Avasa Hotel in  Hyderabad, India. Show organizers reported more than 300 attendees turned out for the inaugural event.

A panoramic view of the crowd at World Domain Day August 24, 2014  in Hyderabad, India.

World Domain Day was organized by a team that included Sanjeev Goyal, Prakhar Bindal, Vishaal Vij, Divam Sharma, Anshul Chaudhary and Arvind Reddy. The presence of many of the India's top domain investors, as well as well-known industry figures from other countries, caught the attention of mainstream media outlets, including several TV stations that sent reporters to cover World Domain Day.

World Domain Day CEO Prakhar Bindal being interview by TV5 News 
during the inaugural event in Hyderabad, India August 24, 2014.

The World Domain Day Organizing Team included (left to right): Sanjeev Goyal,
Prakhar Bindal, Vishal Vij, Anshul Chaudhary, Divam Sharma & Arvind Reddy.

We were unable to attend the conference, but you can find an excellent review of the event written by someone who was there, Anil Kumar Pammidimukkala, in this recap that has been published on the World Domain Day (WDD) website: http://worlddomainday.com/wdd-2014-recap/.

To touch on just a few of the highlights that Anil covers in more detail (with photos that Mr. Bindal graciously shared with us), WDD had an excellent keynote speaker in Dr. Govind, the CEO of the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI), and one of the two members of ICANN-GAC from India.

Dr. Govind speaking at World Domain Day in Hyderabad, India August 24, 2014.

Of course, new gTLDs are going to be a major topic of discussion at every domain conference now that hundreds of new extensions have begun rolling out. World Domain Day had leaders from many new registry operators on hand to personally answer questions from WDD attendees.

Above: Four new gTLD representatives on stage for a panel discussion at World Domain Day are (left to right) Gajendra Upadhyay (Afilias), Anand Vora (Donuts), Jeffrey Sass (.CLUB) and Karn Jajoo (Radix)

Below: In another session two executives from TLD Registry discussed the burgeoning domain market in China. At left is CMO Simon Cousins (夏明),who is responsible for global and China branding, marketing and communications, and at right is CEO and Co-Founder Arto Isokoski.

In addition to a robust turnout and impressive speaker's roster, World Domain Day drew widespread sponsor participation, with global powerhouse like Go Daddy and Sedo among those supporting and sending representatives to the inaugural show. 

Patricja Krol and Dildeep Singh represented Sedo at World Domain Day 2014. Patricia, who speaks  English, German and Polish, is credited with handling several 7-figure domain name sales. 

Following their successful debut, World Domain Day organizers are already planning a 2015 event in a new location that should prove to be very popular - Dubai - most likely in March of next year.

As I previously told you World Domain Day is one of two new domain conferences scheduled just two weeks apart in Hyderabad. The next one will be the DomainX conference this coming Sunday, September 7, 2014 at the Marriott Hotel & Convention Centre. Michael Castello is scheduled to deliver the keynote there and I will be interviewing DNForum.com owner Adam Dicker (via Skype) in one of the sessions following Michael's talk. I'll have more on that show for you later this week.

While I expressed some concerns about two shows being held so closely together in the same city, WDD proved there is a great deal of pent up demand in the Indian market for the unique kind of networking and educational opportunities that only well organized and attended conferences can provide. DomainX expects to hit a home run too and if they succeed the industry at large will benefit greatly. India is obviously more that ready for its turn in the spotlight and will play an ever expanding role in the ongoing worldwide growth of the domain business.