State of the Domain Q1 2003 Report just out

[Anthony Ng]

State of the Domain Q1 2003 Report just out:

https://www.sotd.info/sotd/content/documents/SOTDQ103.pdf

NetSol's market share of CNOBINU further drops to only 25.34% and below the 8 million mark.

Regarding GoDaddy & eNom's duel, the former has superceded the 2 million mark, replacing MelbourneIT and becomes #4 on the chart.

 

[TheBansche]

#4, right on schedule! At this rate they'll be #2 by Q4-'03, and will surpass NSI to become #1 in total registrations by Q4-'04.

Hey, take a look at NSI's slide in dot-US. I know it's not a popular extension, but GEEZ!!! They lost almost 45% of their names in a single quarter.

I'm really rooting for GoDaddy in this thing. Back when I worked for NSI, I used to ride senior management all the time about buying them out and using them as a flanker brand like Verisign did with Thawt. Did they listen? NOOOOOOO!!!

"What does The Bansche know? He's only a Senior Business Analyst on our corporate intelligence team. Why should we listen to him? Besides," they'd go on, "Godaddy is too expensive. $100 Million dollars? Sure we've lost more than that on real-estate transactions before. Yea we've got 10x that much cash collecting dust in our corporate checking account, but we'd rather wait till the price drops. They'll cave in eventually, you'll see! They won't last. Let's loose $300 Million buying an obscure telco instead. "

Whenever I talk to the few friends I have back in the Registrar, they're STILL in denial!!! They keep telling me about how GoDaddy can't be making any money at $8.95 per domain. And even when I remind them how Doug Wolford (former General Manager of the Registrar) used to preach about UPSELL, UPSELL, UPSELL, and explain to them how WELL GoDaddy plays that game, they still don't get it.

Those former MCI loosers who run Network Solutions now won't get it until the glorious day this report plainly states that they are #2 in the space...and maybe not even then.

Long live Bob Parsons!

 

[play]

Positive Jumps:

wwdomains from 40 to #24 (godaddy left hand)
000domains from 73 to #47
moniker ex mrdomreg from 55 to #40 moniker has improved so much. What a good domain and website does..

On the Minus side:

Netsol
Register
Bulkregister
Stargate
DomainDiscover

 

[actnow]

The stats were very interesting.

But, what was most obvious to me was - the big, get bigger.

And, also, the 80 - 20 rule.

Tomorrow, with a fresh mind, I was going to analyse the numbers a little closer.

Also, when looking at the numbers, I had to remind myself that the new drop policy came into effect.

GoDaddy was really growing. Are they structured to be "the low cost producer"? Low overhead. Whereas, NS I would assume has a large infer-structure?

Does GoDaddy outsource their computer operation? I would assume that is one of the major cost areas within the structure?

 

[mole]

Originally posted by TheBansche
And even when I remind them how Doug Wolford (former General Manager of the Registrar) used to preach about UPSELL, UPSELL, UPSELL, and explain to them how WELL GoDaddy plays that game, they still don't get it.

Ah! I wonder when eNom is going to upsell other products besides their email packs.

 

[TheBansche]

Originally posted by actnow
GoDaddy was really growing. Are they structured to be "the low cost producer"? Low overhead. Whereas, NS I would assume has a large infer-structure?

Does GoDaddy outsource their computer operation? I would assume that is one of the major cost areas within the structure?

From what I know, I'm pretty sure GoDaddy handles everything in house. Frankly, I think that's cheaper than outsourcing. At NSI, for example, we tried to outsource allot of our services until we reallized how much cheaper it was to bring everything in house...email, websites, domains, everything in the same data center. We built a little satelite data center for dot-com Mail in our customer service building, but aside from that everything was housed in the same rack-room. You could almost stand in front of the A-Root server, fall over, and hit your head on the racks for ImageCafe (I'm joking).

Anyway, hosting everything yourself makes it easier and cheaper to roll out new services, and makes for more efficient support. I think those guys do it all themselves and just run a really tight ship.

Besides, NSI's infrastructure is a LIABILITY, not an asset!!! Remember that NSI was founded in 1979. Their database infrastructure, reporting and support systems are so antiquated, it's rediculous. Everything has to be done in such a was as not to upset the intricate balance of systems that keep everything running.

For the year before and the year after I left, their biggest engineering project was "WorldNic Migration," which was their attempt to sunset InterNic and migrate all those old names into a database infrastructure that was only 4 years old instead of 10. The sheer size, age, and patchwork nature of NSI's systems makes it nearly impossible to release new and innovative products in a timely and cost effective manner and it's a BEAR to maintain. Frankly, GoDaddy has the ADVANTAGE in that they were able to design an infrastructure from SCRATCH using the latest techniques and technology. NSI has to spend almost half it's energy just keeping it's crappy old systems running, and the other half trying to move to something newer. All that is time and energy GoDaddy is able to spend innovating and streamlining it's operations.

Q4-2004!!! Mark my words.

 

[hhunterjr]

The stats for .us on page 2 are more accurate than the stats for .us on page 35.

On page 35 of the report, an accurate count would show .us as being in the top 10. Probably around #6 at that point.

By April 3, 2003, .us had way over 500,000 registrations and IS A POPULAR DOMAIN already. It's just that many speculators either have outdated thinking patterns or feel threatened by .us.

 

[TheBansche]

Originally posted by hhunterjr
The stats for .us on page 2 are more accurate than the stats for .us on page 35.

On page 35 of the report, an accurate count would show .us as being in the top 10. Probably around #6 at that point.

By April 3, 2003, .us had way over 500,000 registrations and IS A POPULAR DOMAIN already. It's just that many speculators either have outdated thinking patterns or feel threatened by .us.

I for one never meant to imply that .US was in decline, only that NSI is uncompetetive in the dot-us space. I got TheFlag.us in pre-reg. and am still hoping it becomes valuable someday. It's my base domain and one I would probably never sell.

 

[DaddyHalbucks]

.US will never amount to much, but it is an OK alternative for .COM wannabees.

 

[Validweb]

Have you got any data backing up your opinion? if so I wish you would share with us.

You may not be aware:

a).de is the number 2 domain, last time i checked. More .de's registered than .org and .net combined. This despite the fact you need an address in Germany to register .de
I don't think the Germans are more patriotic than Americans

2)www.kids.us A federally mandated web site for all us children. Hardware and software configured to only view this site. Americans will grow up thinking .us is the norm, just as people today think of .com today, IMHO

I think .us will be huge, but any body who's got some firm facts otherwise, I'd much appreciate seeing them.

kind regards