The Lowdown
May 2022 Archive

Welcome to the 
Lowdown from 
DN Journal - your source
for notable news and information from all 
corners of the global 
domain name industry! 

The Lowdown is 
compiled by DN Journal 
Editor & Publisher 
Ron Jackson.

Nominations for 2022 .ORG Impact Awards Open with $105,000 in Prize Money to Be Awarded

The Public Interest Registry (PIR), administrators of the .ORG domain, are now accepting nominations for the 4th annual .ORG Impact Awards. These awards were created to recognize and reward outstanding mission-driven individuals and organizations from the global .ORG Community for their positive contributions to society. Over the past three years, the .ORG Impact Awards have recognized more than 120 outstanding .ORGs across more than 40 countries, with prize donations totaling $220,000. The prize pool for 2022 alone has been increased to $105,000 with a $35,000 donation going to the .ORG of the Year Award Winner and $10,000 each to the various category winners.

To nominate an organization or individual for a .ORG Impact Award, visit www.orgimpactawards.org. The categories for the 2022 awards are:

• Health and Healing

• Quality Education for All

• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

• Environmental Stewardship

• Hunger and Poverty

• Community Building

• Rising Star

• .ORG of the Year

The top five entries per category will be named as finalists on September 20, 2022, and will be eligible to win the .ORG of the Year award. Winners will be announced on November 15, 2022.  

Winning organizations have the flexibility to use award funds however they see fit in order to advance their missions. All finalists will also receive a free digital toolkit to help promote their accomplishment on social media.

In 2021, over 600 organizations from 40 countries around the world submitted entries. The winner of the 2021 .ORG Impact Awards .ORG of the Year was ADES, a Madagascar-based organization that takes a holistic approach to sustainability by fighting climate change and poverty at the same time. ADES produces climate-friendly solar cookers and energy-saving stoves that protect the climate, increase biodiversity, and also trains and employs the local population to provide a path out of poverty. 

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Momentum for Return to In-Person Domain Events Continues to Build With New Show in London This Summer

After more than two years without major in-person domain conferences due to the global pandemic, 2022 continues to bring better news on that front. We've already seen some real world regional domain shows this spring,  as well as the global Cloudfest event in Germany for the hosting industry. The first NamesCon Global event with a live audience since January 2020 is coming up this summer (starting August 31 in Austin, Texas) and now we have word of a new meetup coming to London, England August 23 & 24.

The London Domain Name Summit (LDNS) will be held at the award winning Yum Sa restaurant (rated 5 stars by Trip Advisor who also ranks them in the top 40 among over 17,000 London restaurants). In addition to the restaurant, Yum Sa has indoor and outdoor space to accommodate  business meetings like LDNS, an art gallery and a private meditation room (that might come in handy if you need to think especially hard about closing a business deal)! 

The LDNS website describes the event as an opportunity to connect in person and share ideas with domain name buyers, sellers, investors, developers, lawyers, registrars, hosting providers and more from all over the UK, Europe around the world. Exhibit space has also been set aside for a dozen service providers (information on sponsorship packages is available on the show's website). 

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New Owners of .HipHop Relaunch Domain Devoted to the Music and Eclectic Culture It Represents

The .HipHop top level domain is getting a major makeover from the TLD's new owners - domain industry veterans Monte Cahn, Jeff Neuman and Scott Pruitt, in tandem with public accelerator-incubator Digital Asset Monetary Network, Inc. Under their guidance, .HipHop has been reintroduced with lower wholesale pricing and an end-user focused marketing strategy.

Collectively known as Dot Hip Hop, LLC, the new owners purchased the rights to operate .HipHop from Uniregistry in June 2021 and received formal approval from ICANN in March 2022. With very little end-user marketing since the initial launch in 2014, combined with relatively high registration prices, the .HipHop gTLD had minimal adoption by registrars and end-users. However, the hip-hop movement continued to grow exponentially during that time, as recently evidenced by the 2022 Super Bowl Halftime Show featuring Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, Kendrick Lamar and 50 Cent. 

Dot Hip Hop, LLC intends to leverage the popularity of hip-hop while lowering the standard wholesale registration price by 80%, and aggressively marketing directly to potential end-users, which include DJs & MCs, songwriters & musicians, creative writers, digital artists & NFT creators, 

Image from Bigstock

dance studios & dancers, recording studios, music labels, the fashion & apparel industry, promoters, events, marketing agencies, activists, fans, and more. 

The company's re-launch annoucement noted, "Hip-hop is, and has always been, more than music. Hip-hop represents an eclectic culture, which has defined several generations around the world for nearly 50 years, and will continue to do so for many years to come."

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Kate Buckley Books $206,850 for One of Year's Three Biggest 3-Letter .Com Sales To Date

The headline on our latest bi-weekly domain sales report that came out Wednesday evening (May 11), read 3-Letter Domains Re-Stake Claim to Top of Sales Chart - Group Posts 4 of 6 Biggest Sales on Elite List. It could be that the 3-letter fun is just getting started! Less than 24 hours after that report came out, I got a note from Founder and veteran broker Kate Buckley at Buckley Media letting me know that she had just closed a $206,850 sale of GBR.com.

In addition to being yet another new 3-letter .com sale, this one was especially notable because it is almost four times bigger than the one that took the top spot on our latest all-extension Top 20 Sales Chart Wednesday - ODC.com at $57,611. The $206,850 paid for GBR.com is also more than what was paid for all four of the 3-letter domains that landed among the top six reported sales over the previous two weeks. 

Kate, who represented the seller in the GBR.com transaction, knows the inherent value of top tier domains inside out and - as her regular appearances on our top sales charts over the years has shown -  has a long history of maximizing the proceeds from sales of those assets. We will be charting this latest sale when our next bi-weekly report is issued May 25th. As of this writing, the GBR.com sale is the third biggest 3-letter .com sale of the year to date, joining a trio that includes the March sale of GCP.com at $550,000 and the April sale of LWN.com at $475,000 (you can review all of 2022's top 100 sales to date here).

Kate said the buyer did not provide any specifics about their plans for GBR.com other than indicating it would be used to launch a new project. The domain is currently under WhoIs privacy and not resolving.

Kate Buckley

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New Article from Jeanette Eriksson Presents Latest Perspectives on New TLDs and Online Branding Strategies

Jeanette Eriksson has been a leading figure in the new TLD space for almost a decade now. The former Vice President of the .GLOBAL registry, who is now the VP of Marketing and Online Brand Protection at Desktop.com, is also a freelance author and consultant. Several weeks ago Jeanette began working on a deep dive into where new TLDs stand now, gathering perspectives from thought leaders as well as recommendations for online branding strategies for today's environment. The engrossing end result was made available to all today when Jeanette re- published the information as a free LinkedIn article (the piece was originally published by World Trademark Review and was accessible only to their paid subscribers).  

As most of your are aware, a new round of TLDs is in progress at ICANN, so this information is especially timely. In this piece, Jeanette analyzed the interests of five key stakeholder groups, shared commentary she received from a wide range of industry veterans and assembled the top takeaways for brand owners.

At the start, from her own experience during the first round of new TLDs, Jeanette noted, "Opinions live on long after the ICANN processes are concluded. It is thus worthwhile identifying some of the roles and underlying mechanisms that affect how these domains are presented to brand owners and the general public. Understanding this helps us interpret the information we are presented with, and can ultimately lead to better decision making for clients and ourselves.

I was one of the people Jeanette asked about those wide ranging opinions of new gTLDs that continue to create debate nearly 10 years after they were introduced. She published my thoughts on that:

“On the business side of it I think there 

Jeanette Eriksson
VP of Marketing & Online Brand Protection Desktop.com

has been too much sniping between legacy domain advocates and the new gTLD advocates with both spending too much time denigrating the other - rather than focusing on their own strengths. I think this came from each side feeling the success of the other would come at their expense - but that hasn’t been the case. .com is stronger than ever in registrations and the aftermarket. They have also become pricier in the aftermarket which has created opportunities for strong new gTLDs to serve markets that need more affordable options. The growth in demand for domains in general has left room for everyone to succeed on their own merits. When Verisign took over the .com registry in 2000 only 20 million .com domains existed. There are over 156 million now. That hasn’t left many viable terms available in .com that SMBs can afford. New gTLDs provide them with options and if our concern is the health of general economies, more options is a good thing for everyone.”

The above barely scratches the surface of the extensive ground covered in Jeanette's article, so don't miss this opportunity to read the entire piece here.

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New 2022-1Q Premium Domain Sales Reports from GGRG and Guta Provide Key Aftermarket Data

I just finished going through two of my favorite quarterly reports on results from the domain aftermarket that broke down what happened in key parts of the premium market in the opening quarter of 2022. One is the 23rd edition of the GGRG.com brokerage's Liquid Market Report and the other, also from a leading domain brokerage, is Guta.com's Premium Domain Sales Observation Report. The thing that makes these two reports special is they give very specific market segments in-depth treatment that you don't get from more general overviews of the market. 

In both cases, GGRG and Guta cover top tier premium domains - but there are differences there too. GGRG Founder Giuseppe Graziano, who is based in Europe, tackles always popular ultra-short acronyms or numeric domains (like two and three letter .coms, 3-number domains, and other widely valued groups).  Guta Founder George Hong's focus on premium domains also includes the one-word dictionary domains that are such hot commodities now. George, who has offices in both the U.S. and China, is in a position that also gives him special insight into the both the English and Chinese language markets.  

One of the many interesting data points in Guta's 2022-1Q report is a decline in the number of one-word dictionary domain transactions in each of the last four quarters. Transactions hit an all-time high in 2021-2Q at 114, dropped to 90 in 2021-3Q, slipped again to 59 in 2021-4Q and, in the most recent quarter, came in at 46. If you follow our bi-weekly domain sales report, you know there has been no apparent decline in the prices being paid for top tier one-word domains, in fact they were up considerably from the previous year (we reported 11 seven-figure one-word sales in 2021 vs. only two in 2020). The declining number of completed transactions could stem from domain owners demanding more money for their assets in a market where they are in high demand, or just less inventory being available for sale.

Dictionary word domains are not followed at GGRG where, as noted above, the focus is on short acronyms and numerics. GGRG's Liquid Market Report for the opening quarter did see a significant drop off in dollar volume for that group with one of the industry's bellwethers, Escrow.com, reporting a 53% decline in dollar volume for this class after posting their best quarter ever in GGRG tracking the previous quarter.  GGRG also reported seeing a sharp drop in median prices: -59% for 3Ls, -19% for 4Ls and -14% for 4Ns. At the height of the China boom a few years ago, those kinds of domains were market leaders but they have cooled considerably since that frenzy subsided.

Both of these report are free of charge, so check them out for yourself for all of the data in detail.

GGRG.com Founder Giuseppe Graziano

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Guta.com Founder George Hong

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