.info continues its steady decline

[Tee]

Nice try Safesys, but august is a notoriously extremely slow month for sales of anything - people are on vacation here in the U.S.

So your numbers are lacking this important data.

Sales were on the increase early on as evidence by your own posting.

Check the sales again in the coming months.

 

Originally posted by Tee
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.

do you have a link to those studies? with % of domains used etc The only thing I have seen is afiliases (dubious) pr which was discussed here a while back.

 

So the daily reg volumes dropping by 30% in the space of 6 weeks is part of the plan?

I bet afilias didn't have that in their ICANN application...

 

[Tee]

I'd say your use of the slowest month of the economic year (august) to try and show how info is "steadily" declining is dubious.


Meanwhile .com drops.

 

Originally posted by Tee



Meanwhile .com drops.

would be interested in seeing the stats on that, as according to zooknic think seem to have stabilised in the last month or two,

"Five weeks of positive Domain Name growth;

VeriSign's and Register.com Domain Name Holdings Stabilizing

Berkeley, CA – August 5, 2002

Zooknic (www.zooknic.com) reports that the total number of .com, .net and .org domain names grew by 128,874 in July 2002. This marks the first full calendar month of growth in total number of domain registrations since September 2001. During the last quarter of 2001 and the first two quarters of 2002 the total number of .com, .net and .org registrations shrank by 3.6 million from a high of 30.7 Million in October 2001.

Since the end of June, however, this decline has reversed. Zooknic data indicates that from a recorded low of 27,110,804 on June 23rd, the overall number of .com, .net and .org domain names has increased by 149,274 over the next five and a half weeks. As of July 31, 2002 the total number of registered com/net/org domains is 27,260,078 (See Figure 1). Although there have been scattered weeks of growth over the past six months, July is the first full month of sustained positive growth. This combined with what appears to be the end of the purge of millions of promotional domain names, suggests a turning point in the patterns of growth within the domain name industry."

Not sure how .com alone is going but the above would suggest com/net/org combined is growing at the moment.

http://zooknic.com/pr_2002_08_05.html

 

I'd say your use of the slowest month of the economic year (august) to try and show how info is "steadily" declining is dubious.

The data I posted is from when I got .info zone file access, nothing underhand there.

Meanwhile .com drops

Well, as snoopy posted - that doesn't appear to be the case.

dailychanges.com shows a net of 8,000 .com additions in a 24hr period on september 8th.

 

Originally posted by snoopy
do you have a link to those studies? with % of domains used etc The only thing I have seen is afiliases (dubious) pr which was discussed here a while back.

I have debated posting this here, but I've taken out most of the proprietary data and will give you guys a sample of our new registration "usage" percentages this year.

Keep in mind that we are not a registrar who caters to domain speculators (you can define that as we are not sub-$10), and as such have more domain users than domain buyers as clients.

We recently looked at all new registrations from our customers from January to June of this year. Of these, here are the percentages with active websites. We did not count "domain for sale", PPC "search engines" or other obvious holding pages. We did not count domains that simple redirected to another domain. There had to be bona fide web pages at the destination to be counted as an active domain.

Here are the percentages. I know that some of you don't like percentages, but in the case of .info, this is not 4 of 10 domains, it is a statistically valid sample size...

.com 42%
.net 87%
.org 98%
.info 48%
.biz 78%
.us 65%
.cc 89%
.name 20%
.cc 97%
.tv 96%
.ca 47%
.??.ca 67% (all provincial domains)

You can draw your own conclusions from this information. There is much more data in our study regarding site content (business, personal, large sites, small sites, commercial, non-profit, etc), but in our market, .info is being used more than .com by percent with statistically significant registration counts.

The fact that .info registrations are down to 600 or so a day is not overly disconcerning to us - however I can see where it might deter speculators.

-t

 

Thanks for the data, thats certainly intersting reading - it would have been nice to have reg volumes alongside that but obviously thats commercially sensitive.

If you have the data, could you provide the percentage of .com used sites compared to the total of all used sites.

 

here is the .com data for the last yr

Yesterday -- 21,310,436
July 15, 2002 -- 21,270,830
June 16, 2002 -- 21,243,232
May12, 2002 -- 21,382,537
April 14, 2002 -- 21,581,810
March 17, 2002 -- 22,284,362
February 17, 2002 -- 22,299,727
January 13, 2002 -- 22,746,754
December 11, 2001 -- 23,198,677
November 12, 2001 -- 23,171,002
October 4, 2001 -- 23,291,654
September 24, 2001 -- 23,280,339
July, 14, 2001 -- 22,845,079

plus some earlier data

May 24, 2001 -- 22,606,495
January 18, 2001 -- 21,185,015
July 2000 --14,680,275
January 2000 --8,006,100
July 1999 -- 5,748,100
January 1999 -- 3,425,625
July 1998 -- 1,879,501

 

[DomeBase]

Originally posted by snoopy


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.

agreed

 

[DomeBase]

Originally posted by safesys

Also, domains aren't commodities. They're not a necessity and they are unique.

Ok... how about fine art? or land? Should we ignore the valuations of art dealers or real estate brokers because they are not "end users"?

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.

I certaintly agree that buyers buy based on value to them... a tautology.

I also agree that buyers will not pay more than they can afford... another tautology.

I also agree that what we post here has little impact on market for domain names. Thus, demand for .INFO is, by definition, based on value, not hype. Glad that we are in such agreement on this!

 

[DomeBase]

Originally posted by safesys
using percentages is pointless

Originally posted by safesys
So the daily reg volumes dropping by 30% in the space of 6 weeks is part of the plan?

:razz:

 

Just one caveat, I am talking end user sales - not reseller sales.

Reseller sales can be influenced by hype as has been witnessed in the past.

But yes, end user sales by and large are based on perceived value - which can be influenced by the media etc, but not by what we discuss in here.

 

Dome, I trust you don't really need me to spell out the importance of context to my comments re percentages?

 

[DomeBase]

Okay, here is it with context...

Originally posted by safesys
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 safesys
So the daily reg volumes dropping by 30% in the space of 6 weeks is part of the plan?

I bet afilias didn't have that in their ICANN application...

Normally I would not be quite so assertive... but your thread title about the continued decline of .INFO got my dander up. That causes me to try to find logical holes and inconsistencies. I do try to do it in good taste... could not resist the juxtaposition of statement that using percentages is worthless shortly followed by point made with percentages. It's the debater part of me.

I have a tremendous respect for you and the other mods, without whom a discussion forum like DNF would devolve to the lowest, loudest element.

Didn't anyone get my joke about "end users"? ahh well...

 

[DomeBase]

Originally posted by thewitt


You can draw your own conclusions from this information. There is much more data in our study regarding site content (business, personal, large sites, small sites, commercial, non-profit, etc), but in our market, .info is being used more than .com by percent with statistically significant registration counts.
-t

Thanks for sharing this thewitt. Interesting data. Let me put on my pro-.COM hat for a moment and try to put a negative spin on this data... ahhh... I've got it...

"This shows that .INFO is dying because people know that it has no resale value and is only good for being used. This confirms that only .COM has any lasting resale value."

 

... of course the other way to view it is people are willing to register a .com protectively (because they are inherently desirable) whereas with .info they register them only if they have a use for them from the outset.

having said that - 42% vs 48% - not really that much of a difference there. More surprised by the .org, .tv and .cc stats.

 

It was interesting data, and we collected it really as an exercise to characterize our customers and not to drive any specific market study. We believed that the majority of our customers were registering domains for use and not simply as domain "holdings," however we did find some surprises in the data. We also tied the data back to our customers, so it has different meaning for us than it would for many.

As far as how .com compares with the rest of the domains we register in total - historically we register almost 20 to 1, .coms to everything else combined... They are clearly the highest quantity of domains we register.

I'll talk with my partner and see if we can publish more of this study data. I'm sure we can pull most of the business sensitive data out of there. Volumes are certainly sensitive, however relationships of one TLD to another are not - at least in my opinion.

-t

 

it seems that the internet/domain market & registration continuosly evolves...new issues...new happenings...new advances/applications ,:eg: 9/11, paid for postioning (overture), 3g phones, upcoming tablet, paypal, escrow.... the cream "good .com " names will and has risen to the top...It will be almost impossible to have two internets :1) commercial and 2) Info-martive.... 2 I beleive the .info was the best contender if it only appeared 7 or 8 years ago...Net Sol or whover slowed down the new extensions from coming to fruition made and gave .com it's supremacy in the one and only one channel= the internet ....
I feel that the slow down on dot com new registrations has a lot to do with many speculators abandonding the race "the type of speculator" that registred poor or mediocre names hoping to find somebody "less knowledagable" (I didn't say stupid)...." to re-sell their names to....
In the other hand the re-registrations of dot-com's dropped names seems to be increasing although I have no numbers at least there is an appearance of more interest.
.....in regards to other extensions "numbers don't lie".

 

[RacerX]

aren't you trumping your NEW.net junk while you are at it Tomsters?