.info continues its steady decline

I've been watching .info reg volumes with interest lately, seems the registration volumes are decreasing steadily.

25/7/02 - 899051
28/7/02 - 901765 - 2714 added over 3 days = 904 per day
3/8/02 - 908936 - 7171 added over 6 days = 1195 per day
9/8/02 - 913431 - 4495 added over 6 days = 749 per day
15/8/02 - 917947 - 4516 added over 6 days = 752 per day
21/8/02 - 922376 - 4429 added over 6 days = 738 per day
27/8/02 - 926629 - 4253 added over 6 days = 708 per day
2/9/02 - 931256 - 4627 addded over 7 days = 661 per day
8/9/02 - 935052 - 3796 added over 6 days = 632 per day

People who are comparing .info with the early days of .com would do well to remember that the number of reges increased in that tld at the beginning.

lets assume, optimistically, that 630 is where the dropoff goes flat - thats just 229,950 reges per year.

Anyone still honestly think .info will surpass .com or even come close?

worrying stats there, both in terms of the drop off (I wouldn't have thought its dropping off as fast as that) and the actual volume, 632 per day? Based on those stats you'd have to assume its going to start shrinking as soon as the two years are up on the initial registrations.

[DomeBase]

Originally posted by safesys
Anyone still honestly think .info will surpass .com or even come close?

I do not think that .info will ever equal or surpass .com. I think that it might give .net or .org a run for the money.

Funny, when regs go up some people say -- "That means nothing. Just speculators and defensive registrations." Then when regs go down some people say -- "See... it's dying." When no .infos are offered or sold on DNForum then some people say -- "See, .INFO has no value". Then when .INFOs appear on the domain wanted adds, rank #2 on DNForum poll with up to half votes of .COM, and one sells for over $15,000, some people say -- "Opinions of DNForum members are biased, you need to ask the general public." Go figure


Here's my two cents -- pessimistic and optimistic...

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Glass half empty perspective: Info regs tapering off. Remaining sunrise squatters in limbo. Many inactive websites. Little public awareness in U.S. Lack of marketing by registry is puzzling. Extension will start to die.

Glass half full: Number of regs is one statistic. Other stats to watch include resale activity, expert expectations, and trends in active websites. Only two months ago some people were saying that .COMs are the ONLY names with any resale value and there were few (any?) adds for .info names. Look at the trends in domains wanted and domain sales on this board. There seems to be an uptick in interest and .info sales -- including one for over $15,000. Also, interesting that .INFO came in second in the DNForum extension investment poll (currently around half the votes for .COM). .COM is clearly the leader (no duh), but is this data concerning .INFO that of a dying extension?

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We shall see.

[fizz]

DB, I'll go for the glass half full

>>There seems to be an uptick in interest and .info sales -- including one for over $15,000

I missed reading about this sale - please enlighten me.

"People who are comparing .info with the early days of .com would do well to remember that the number of reges increased in that tld at the beginning."

Yeah, but people who are comparing .info, which must compete with many, many extensions, including many new gtlds and including .com itself, which .com didn't have to, in a terrible economy, to early .com reges, should reconsider their presentation.

.Com had relatively no competition in a high flying fools market. It should have probably sold and done better than it actually did. You couldn't ask for a better situation - little competition, insanely positive economy......

.Coms basically just drop now.

.Info is growing in an extraordinarily difficult market.

I think its clear what gets discussed on that members only message board - how can we maintain the relative illusion of very high .com value to benefit us as steady .com investors in an increasingly more competitive, and increasingly much less valuable .com environment?

[DomeBase]

Originally posted by fizz
DB, I'll go for the glass half full

>>There seems to be an uptick in interest and .info sales -- including one for over $15,000

I missed reading about this sale - please enlighten me.

I promised to keep specifics confidential, but got permission to post the figure. I respect and understand those who doubt transaction figure without specifics.... although it is not uncommon at these high levels. The top LR2 bids at Directi do have publically available statistics and some are in this range.

domain values are determined by end users who don't frequent boards like this - so there's no reason for anyone to pretend things are not as they really are - it won't influence a thing.

What we say in here has no real bearing on real world values - but at 632 reges per day, I'd say end user interest in .info is extremely low - especially seeing how there are no expiries coming into play yet to act as an offset in creating that figure.

I don't doubt there have been reasonable level sales in .info - but thats not something I'd pin an argument to.

The real measure is end user interest - if you have interest in registrations then you're more likely to have interest in premium purchases.

The figures show little (and declining) interest in registrations...

Yeah, don't believe the .com (also known as economy death) hype. I and many others get offers for info names all the time. They are just not high enough yet, but they are getting close.

And once the sales come in (15k is ok), then you will see registration explosion.

Beware of people down playing new make sense tlds like .info.

They have a lot to lose if .info and .biz is successful.

They ignore the poor economic environment or .coms own incredible flaming destruction in discussing tlds and label us as hyping speculators. Of course we want our investments to succeed, but a simple look at the facts shows .com basically a recovering disaster and info and biz actually being used by many relative to reg numbers.


The truth is, they don't want info or others to succeed, because then they make less money and their investments lose value.

[fizz]

Originally posted by DomeBase
I respect and understand those who doubt transaction figure without specifics....

DB, who could ever question the honesty of a person who says 'Okeedokely good neighbor'? LOL

The top LR2 bids at Directi do have publically available statistics and some are in this range.

For those interested the bids between 2k-35k are here:

http://www.dnforum.com/showthread.ph...info#post22008

632 reges a day Tee.

You can say what you like about speculation - but speculation needs there to be a base desire for the item. If people aren't buying them at reg fee - it doesn't bode too well for premium purchases.

agree that the numbers tell it all, its very clear that the demand just is not there. Hard to say that registrations will jump up in the future when high value sales go through, when the statistics seem to suggest a different outcome.

In my view its simply .ws/.cc/.tv all over again, new extensions bought mainly by speculators with very little development by corporates.

[DomeBase]

Originally posted by safesys
domain values are determined by end users who don't frequent boards like this

OK... here we go again. So the value of grain is not influenced by commodity exchanges because traders are not "end users"?

Or how about folks at WalMart who purchase "preparation H" in wholesale? Don't they influence the price of "preparation H"... or is that only by "end users"?

(sorry could not resist)

[DomeBase]

Ok... let's consider the issue of percentage of registrations by speculators as an indicator of extension health or weakness...
What would you say about an extension for which 32% of registrations have been deleted?

"In my view its simply .ws/.cc/.tv all over again, new extensions bought mainly by speculators with very little development by corporates."

Those were nonsense extensions. Country code extensions marketed to mean something. The one that made a little sense, well not really on a computer, was .tv. .TV was "restricted" in a sense due to the uneven pricing stucture. Not to mention that .television makes next to no sense on a computer.

You are comparing apples and oranges.

.Info is a general unrestricted tld that means something.

Something like "information", more powerful than sex practically.

Again, once the first sales start to happen, which they are beginning to, you will see a similar buy up phenomena with info that happened with .com, but with probably less intensity.

.Info is actually being heavily used (endusers) versus reges, not by major corporates yet, but the ground is being laid for that to occur (recognition and succesful use).

While .com offers nothing but having been first, watch out when info, which makes sense on a superinformation highway, gets the buzz of speculator crush due to a few high publicity resales.

We are talking hype (maybe my name is worth a lot cause someone elses was) plus substance (usefulness of an information extension - rememberability and trust).

Watch out indeed.

Originally posted by DomeBase
Ok... let's consider the issue of percentage of registrations by speculators as an indicator of extension health or weakness...
What would you say about an extension for which 32% of registrations have been deleted?

I doubt many people would argue that .com isn't a highly speculated extension, just like almost every other extension out there. But the key point is it is that a big chunk of registrations are being used by businesses, so there solid demand for better domains by business aswell as by speculators. Compare that with extensions where almost all of the registrations are owned by speculators and corporate demand is low. eg I would imagine previous failed extensions like like .tv/.cc/.ws/new.net probably have 90-95% deletion rates.

using percentages is pointless - could have 1 registration in a tld and have it being used - that would be 100% - but would it mean there is the chance of a nucleus of marketing to promote the tld? Nope.

Also, domains aren't commodities. They're not a necessity and they are unique. Buyers buy based on the value to them and what they can afford - you won't get a buyer to pay more than they can afford just because the price has been uptalked in a domain forum.

Originally posted by Tee
"In my view its simply .ws/.cc/.tv all over again, new extensions bought mainly by speculators with very little development by corporates."

Those were nonsense extensions. Country code extensions marketed to mean something. The one that made a little sense, well not really on a computer, was .tv. .TV was "restricted" in a sense due to the uneven pricing stucture. Not to mention that .television makes next to no sense on a computer.

You are comparing apples and oranges.

.Info is a general unrestricted tld that means something.

Something like "information", more powerful than sex practically.

The reason why its .cc/.ws.tv all over again is because its the same people buying them (speculators) whilst business once again sticks to .com and their country codes. Once again registration numbers appear to be dwindling quickly after the initial hype. Personally I don't see the meaningfulness of an extension or the fact that its an "official top level extension" as good enough reason for business to adopt it in favour of more widely used extension.

Originally posted by Tee
.Info is actually being heavily used (endusers) versus reges, not by major corporates yet, but the ground is being laid for that to occur (recognition and succesful use).

I do hope you're not basing that argument on the data put out by afilias who clearly need to get those reges up.

632 a day.

I'm not basing it on velocity of registrations. I'm basing it on use of extension right now. Many studies have shown a very high use of info with many original sites. Check the search engines, there are many sites.

Whats .com doing?

Dropping by the thousands? In decline?

In my opinion, relevance is important when you have many choices. .Com has branding relevance, and also crash and burn relevance With a large environment of tlds, relevance becomes more important to standout against all the nonsense.

And info is as relevant as it gets.

Just wait till some sales happen. I said around fall.

We are coming up on it, right on time.