Top Level Domain Holdings which owns Minds & Machines who are one of the major applicants of new GTLD’s is getting press coverage in the FT.com which shall be interesting to see what the markets thinks of their business strategy.
If we look at the chart shares in TLDH as of last trade Top Level Domain Hldg Ltd (TLDH:LSE) traded at 18.52, 8.97% below its 52-week high of 20.35, set on Nov 18, 2013.
It shall certainly be interesting to see what happens to these shares over the next six months and also what shall happen with the other shares of large domain registration services who are invested in these new GTLDS.
Are you Long or Short on new GTLDS?
I am going to set up a tracking portfolio of domain registration services and companies invested in GTLDS and start reporting moving shares Quarterly and report back to the Domain Industry – Would you be interested in reading this information?
Read the full story here.
Top Level Domain Holdings will this week start selling unusual web addresses with suffixes including “.horse” and “.cooking”, as the Aim-quoted company capitalises on sweeping changes to the architecture of the web.
The Dublin-based company is taking advantage of new internet regulations that will result in the number of “generic top-level domains” such as “.com” expanding from about two dozen to more than 1,000.TLDH, which has a market capitalisation of £125m, has applied for more than 60 new domain names – making it the fourth-largest applicant for the new suffixes behind Google, Amazon and Donuts, a newly established internet registry company.
The company says 25 of its applications are uncontested and are moving towards launch in the coming months, pending final approval from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann).
Antony Van Couvering, chief executive, announced on Monday that TLDH would this week start taking reservations for three of these uncontested domains – “.horse”, “.Casa” and “.cooking” – as well as for two other suffixes controlled by a third party: “.CEO” and “.best”.
Addresses in the new domains will cost upwards of €30 a year. TLDH is taking reservations on a “first come, first served” basis through its subsidiary Minds+Machines.
“People laughed at us for getting ‘.horse’, but we think it’s very good as we’ve been able to tap into the excitement that exists in the [horse-riding] community,” Mr Van Couvering said.
The company is in competition with Google and Amazon for suffixes such as “.app”. It is also working with London & Partners, the city’s promotional body, on the suffix “.london”, which is due to go live in summer 2014.
While some existing domains such as “.museum” and “.travel” have languished in obscurity since their launches in 2001 and 2005, Mr Van Couvering said that was because their operating remits were too restricted.
“We feel that we will be profitable very shortly after we launch,” he said.
Unlike other web registrars, which charge the same price for each address, TLDH plans to charge a premium for the best names. That means the most highly prized addresses such as “www.arabian.horse” could cost upwards of thousands of euros a year.
Icann has received more than 1,400 applications for new domains and will process them in batches over the coming months. The new domains can be in languages including Arabic and Chinese.
There are only about two dozen “generic” top-level domain names, such as “.com” and “.org”, plus a few hundred two-letter country extensions over which Icann has little control.
Great post Robbie,
it’s good to see the FT feature the Domain industry in the shares, I am a big fan of the FT and will keep an eye out for it, along with your tracking information, I am very interested!!
Best, Howie.