.US, Going to be popular?

[Dan]

I was wondering if the .us extension will end up becoming something like the .biz extension, like not nearly as popular as .com? My impression is that it would be more popular than .biz but still under .com.. hmm. Anyone have any ideas?

We've seen as high a pre-registration rate so far as we did the early .biz domains. It will be interesting to see if they keep coming in at the same rate once the initial domain grab is over.

One thing about the .us extension, it lends itself to more speakable domain names like toysr.us that are not exactly a trademark, but might be candidates for UDRP disputes anyway.

It will be fun to watch at any rate.

-t

cctld's play a different role to gtld's - they let companies be patriotic or define the scope of their activities - so it could well carve a niche of its own as the us has never really had a usable cctld and with .com being less us-centric than it used to be.

With it being a relaunch, and with the current patriotic feelings - it should be good, but there is always a chance that over speculation could kill it before it gains momentum.

.com is a good speculative domain because significant volumes of end users were registering and using the domains well before speculation with domains became as widespread and understood as it is now.

IMO, .biz and .info will struggle to get the momentum of end user usage/promotion needed to make the speculative registrations valuable. Its catch 22.

Hopefully, people will WANT to register their company names in .us to show their roots - which you don't get with .info or .biz.