Radix's New .FUN Marketing Campaign: Boring? Dismal? Little Hope? Yep - All of Those and More

I know the headline looks like we're out to do a hatchet job on Radix's .FUN TLD but it's their fault not mine. They actually want to be associated with Boring, Dismal and Little Hope. Misery Bay, Cape Disappointment, Death Valley and Tombstone too! Say what! But think about it. Those are all names of real places and who could be in more need of a little fun than towns with names like that? So, what does it all mean?

Since ICANN's new gTLD program was launched almost a decade ago, hundreds of new domain extensions have been added to the Internet. It is hard to stand out in a crowd that big, but if you want to make it you had better give it your best shot. Especially when you are one of the newer ones like .FUN that just arrived in 2017.

Radix, who operates ten new gTLDS, has earned a reputation as one of the most creative and consistent marketers in the domain registry business. While, on the surface, "fun" looks like a word that would market itself, data driven Radix  leaves nothing to chance. So, they went on all in with New York's Fred & Farid agency to do something special with .FUN.  

The campaign started with the premise that a .FUN domain name can bring a level of excitement to any kind of industry, not limited to entertainment, gaming or leisure. To demonstrate that, F&F zeroed in on the city of Boring, Maryland, actually going there to meet the people and check out a place that, if you made the mistake of judging a book by its cover, might sound like one of the "least fun" towns in the entire country. As usual, looks turned out to be deceiving. In Boring, F&F bumped into local resident and real estate agent Jim Blum, a good natured guy who was happily recruited to be the Boring spokes model for the campaign. 

While the box truck tooled around Boring bringing a smile to townspeople's faces, F&F also put Jim in a promotional video for .FUN that spread the word across the world wide web that Boring is not boring at all!. In fact Jim proclaimed, "This is the center of the Universe right here!" 

Having established a beachhead in Boring, Radix and F&F plan to expand into other towns like Dismal, Little Hope, Death Valley, Tombstone, Misery Bay, Cape Disappointment and others with names that are begging for a .FUN touch.

With this campaign, Radix is positioning .FUN as a go to domain extension for brands, startups and young companies that want to showcase their playful side, taking a light-hearted approach with their customers during these trying times. They also believe that what works for the cities in need of .FUN,  can also add appeal for industries across a wide range of verticals. Not just for young brands and startups but also lawyers, dentists, even tax companies can look better… at least more .FUN than usual!

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GoDaddy Acquires DNAcademy and Hires Michael Cyger to be Company's First Director of Education

DNAcademy Founder and Lead Instructor Michael Cyger has long been regarded as the best educator in the domain industry. In addition to countless individual domain investors who learned the trade through his DNAcademy courses, major companies like GoDaddy, Sedo, Uniregistry and many others used Cyger's services to train their new brokers and sales specialists. GoDaddy liked what they saw so much they decided to buy the whole company and add Cyger himself to the GoDaddy team as the industry giant's first Director of Education - Domains. 

In addition to being a smart acquisition for GoDaddy and a fitting reward for Michael's amazing work, it is a BIG win for the domain investment business as a whole. Having the world's biggest registrar put domain investment training in a product line up seen by millions of customers will give domain investment a huge boost in visibility and credibility in the mainstream business world.

In their official announcement, a GoDaddy release said, "GoDaddy remains focused on its mission to empower entrepreneurs and make opportunity more inclusive for all. We believe DNAcademy’s mission - “help students from all disciplines achieve their domain name goals” – enhances our robust tool set to make opportunity more inclusive for all by sharing proven methodologies and resources to help our customers succeed at every stage of their domain name journey.

Michael Cyger
Founder and Lead Instructor
DNAcademy

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XYZ Registry Continues to Grow with Acquisition of 10 More TLDs Upping Their Total to 33

XYZ Registry continues to grow by leaps and bounds. They just acquired 10 more TLDs in one fell swoop to increase the total number of global domain extensions they administer to 33. While XYZ is nearly a decade old now, 21 of their TLDs have been added in just the past two years. The latest 10 newcomers, all acquired from Uni Naming & Registry Corp. (founded by Frank Schilling), include .Game, .Guitars, .Audio, .Christmas, .Diet, .Flowers, .Hosting, .Pics, .Mom, and LOL.

With over 3.8 million registrations, the registry's flagship TLD, .xyz, is now the world's 4th biggest gTLD, trailing only the Internet's original big three -.com, .net and .org. 

The registry's announcement of the acquisition noted, "These 10 TLDs were specifically selected for 

Image from Bigstock

their growth potential, which aligns with the XYZ Registry's mission to serve the needs of worldwide digitalization that is expanding exponentially. The .Game domain name, for example, is ideal for members of the fast-growing $167 billion gaming industry.  Members of the $21.6 billion dollar  music industry can make themselves heard with .Audio and .Guitars. Even North America's biggest holiday is covered with .Christmas, as 2020 Christmas spending crossed $850 billion in the United States alone."

XYZ CEO and Founder Daniel Negari said, "We're dedicated to making short, memorable, and intuitive domain names available to every where in the world. With these latest ten additions, I feel confident that every business, individual, or group can make their mark online with the XYZ Family of domains. I am particularly excited to make the world .LOL!" 

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NamesCon Endorsed Charity EFK.org Makes Aid for Ukrainian Children Its Top Priority 

Domain industry givers have a long record of supporting worthy charities. Entrepreneurs for Knowledge at EFK.org has become especially well regarded in that area with their efforts to build new schools for underprivileged children around the world. Soeren von Varchmin, the Chairman of the Supervisory Board for both NamesCon (the domain industry's premier conference) and Cloudfest (the world’s #1 conference for cloud, hosting and internet service providers) is also a Board Member at EFK. In that role he has been at the forefront of rallying donors from our industry to get behind the school-building effort.

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine having now created a dire situation for Ukrainian children, Soeren and the entire EFK team has shifted their fund raising focus to address to address that emergency issue. To put donated funds to work immediately, EFK has partnered with the long-established Voices of Children Foundation, (VCF) a non-profit organization based in Sloviansk, Ukraine - and to make sure every dollar, euro or crypto donation goes to the needs of those children, the EFK board members are covering the overhead costs of the foundation itself, including all employees. As noted on their website, VCF will use the money to continue providing non-stop assistance to affected children and families from all over the country, providing emergency psychological assistance, and assisting in the evacuation process."

For those who have been shocked to see what is happening in Ukraine (home to thousands of domain, internet and tech related services providers) and wondering how you can help and who you can trust to use the money wisely, this joint effort between EFK and VCF could be exactly what you are looking for. Separate pages have been set to collect payments in US dollars, euros and cryptocurrency (Coinbase link).

In a related noted, on his Facebook page this past week, Soeren noted that widely known- domain industry veteran Mark Kychma (Founder of DNPric.es), has left the safety of his London home to return to his hometown of Lviv, Ukraine to work as a volunteer, helping refugees get to the country's western border and across to safety. It is stories like these that restore your faith in humanity when your eyes give you so many reasons to despair. 

Soeren von Varchmin
EFK, NamesCon, Cloudfest

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Name.com Teams Up With Titan to Pair Free Premium Business Email Trial With Every Domain Registration

The global pandemic made doing business face to face extremely difficult which, in turn, triggered a huge rush of businesses establishing or strengthening their online presence. The boom that ensued in new domain registrations and aftermarket sales is still underway. A lot of those buyers are relatively new to the web so domain registrar Name.com has gotten together with premium business email provider Titan to offer a promotional package designed to make it easier and faster for those enterprises to get up and running on the web.

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Their joint offering provides premium business email free for three months with every new domain registered. The business email package includes 10GB of storage per user and comes with an integrated shared calendar and contacts apps. This partnership is part of a developing trend in the domain business to provide integrated solutions that remove much of the friction involved in establishing a brand and business on the internet. 

For registrars, the benefits are equally attractive. Titan's data across multiple web presence providers shows that domains and hosting customers that attach Titan's email service are 3 times more likely to renew their subscriptions in subsequent periods, multiplying retained customers and revenue. 

In partnering with Name.com, Titan has further expanded a slate of partnerships that already included global brands like WordPress.com, Newfold Digital, Hostinger, and Namesilo. Those efforts have helped Titan grow its user base more than 30% every quarter for the last three quarters. Gaurang Sinha, Titan's Director of Go-to-market said, "We have focused on two key aspects in our business - that our users get the fastest, more reliable business email platform available, and that our hosting and registrar partners see 2x the revenue outcomes compared with legacy solutions."

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