OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
Yesterday 22th of July the .Tokyo new domain name extension entered general availability. Tokyo has a metropolitan population of over 35 million people. This was one of the big geo New gTLDs but it didn’t do as well as I expected.
The first day, or rather first hours, registration numbers were not great for the .Tokyo New gTLD. It has a total of 9,598 domain registrations today. These numbers include the Sunrise (trademark) and the Landrush domain registrations. .Tokyo increased it’s registrations by about 8,700 domains on it’s first day.
I was expecting that .Tokyo would do better than .berlin that had almost 32,000 domain name registrations after it’s first day. Of course .berlin was offering free domains to residents and Berlin is the same in English and in German. (Tokyo is 東京 in Japanese)
(I am always comparing the same first hours for all New gTLDs. The hours between General Availability and the first zone files update.)
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Its a shame. I thought it had that nailed down. Do you think it might have something to do with the marketing? Everything I have seen seems to be promoting the extension in english to english speakers..while inhabitants of tokyo obviously speak japanese..
“Its a shame. I thought it had that nailed down. Do you think it might have something to do with the marketing? Everything I have seen seems to be promoting the extension in english to english speakers..while inhabitants of tokyo obviously speak japanese..”
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Not many domainers speak Japanese, and domainers are the target market for new tlds.
This is not quite true. Although some registries target domainers with their ads, they do it because it is the easiest target group
to reach. That is because 50% of domainers buy New gTLDs. Try doing this with law firms and immediately you drop to 1%.
But in reality most of New gTLDs, including the premium ones, are bought by end users.
I guess end user’s are the real test of adoption. If you had to make a move or any member here wanted to make a move on one gTld they think the owners are making a mess of, and you think you could make it work, which one and why? @K, I was going to email you privately on this one but I thought I should throw it in open. 😉
Some new gtlds shouldn’t have come out in the first place.
As for the ones that already out I don’t think I would make a move on any of them because the ones that are messed up are done and
the ones that are doing good are not for sale or very expensive.
Well said.
tokyo is solid .. time will tell