By: OpenSRS Team on July 18th, 2008
Posted in: OpenSRS Services
Tags: .ME
Comments: 0

The widely anticipated launch of the .ME domain on Thursday made waves across the Internet, and some of those waves were negative. Over here at Tucows, all systems were go, and resellers were able to register names without difficulty as soon as the Registry opened for business. All in all, it was a successful launch from our perspective.

No so for Go Daddy, they caught some heat on the tech-blog TechCrunch which broke the story that “many users [had] reported getting confirmations (and credit card charges) for their domains, only to receive the following cancellation notice about an hour later.”

And the social networking news blog Mashable picked up the story saying, “it appears GoDaddy is buckling under the pressure and is about to have an ugly mess on its hands.”

GoDaddy later responded to the Mashable blog post saying that the problems were as a result of “system issues in our communication with the registry.” GoDaddy will, of course, refund customers who had failed registrations.

Even today, a Twitter search reveals many unhappy GoDaddy customers who thought they had registered sweet .ME domains and have since been told otherwise.

By: OpenSRS Team on July 17th, 2008
Posted in: OpenSRS Services
Tags: .ME
Comments: 0

At 1500 UTC today, the .ME Registry opens for business. You can check http://tinyurl.com/melaunch to find the time where you are. The .ME domain is the ccTLD assigned to Montenegro, a small country in Southeastern Europe. Like Tuvalu with their .TV domain, Montenegro is a small country that sees potential value in the .ME extension and is hoping for similar success. There are no residency or citizenship requirements for .ME domains.

As you would expect, OpenSRS is ready to go at launch. If you are a Tucows Domains Reseller, you’re all set to start selling.

According to the .ME Registry, including both sunrise and landrush, a total of more than 30,000 domains have already been registered. Auctions for names with more than one competing buyer are taking place now.

The Registry also set aside a list of premium names that will be auctioned off later in the year. The list includes names like love.me and buy.me among others. Lists of both the premium names that will be auctioned, and reserved names that won’t be allowed to be registered, are available at the Registry website.

By: James Koole on July 8th, 2008
Posted in: Industry News
Tags:
Comments: 0

A couple of news items of note this week demonstrate the continued growth in the domain name industry. First, .ES, the ccTLD for Spain, crossed the one million registrations mark recently. The Registry relaxed rules for ownership of .ES a couple of years back leading to a dramatic rise in the number of registrations. The .ES Registry operator has some stats that show the uptick in domain registrations.

Interestingly, .ES domains outsell .COM domains in Spain. This data comes from a report by Sedo (in Spanish).

Meanwhile, according to Verisign’s latest Domain Industry Brief, domain registrations continue to rise in the first quarter of 2008. The report shows a 26% increase year over year, and a 6% increase over Q4 2007. In total, Verisign reports over 162 million domains across all TLDs.

The report also shows impressive growth among ccTLDs. As a group, they showed 33% growth in the past year. Verisign atributes the growth to special promotions run by the various ccTLD registries, including .ES which has been offering free domains to Spanish youth.

That report can be found at Verisign’s website.

We’ve been ramping up our efforts around Registry promotions at Tucows lately. We’re trying to make sure that resellers are aware of any special pricing that has been offered to us (that we in turn pass on to our resellers). Check the current list and you’ll note that .MOBI has just been added with special promotional pricing beginning on July 8th, 2008.

By: OpenSRS Team on June 27th, 2008
Posted in: Announcements
Tags: Holiday Hours
Comments: 0

Next week provides the opportunity for Tucows staff on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border to celebrate the creation of our respective countries.

On Tuesday, July 1st, Canadians celebrate Canada Day and as a result, our offices in Toronto will be operating on holiday hours. On Friday, while our American friends are celebrating Independence Day, we’ll be business as usual with the exception of the Platypus team at our Starkville, Mississippi office.

Holiday Hours for Canada Day, Tuesday, July 1st:

• OpenSRS Support: Regular business hours
• Platypus Support: Regular business hours
• Payments, Compliance, Service Bureau and Special Processing: Closed

Holiday Hours for U.S. Independence Day, Friday, July 4th:

• OpenSRS Support: Regular business hours
• Platypus Support: Closed
• Payments, Compliance, Service Bureau and Special Processing: Regular business hours

Have a safe and enjoyable holiday!

By: OpenSRS Team on June 26th, 2008
Posted in: Industry News
Tags: ICANN
Comments: 0

The 32nd International Public Meeting of ICANN has been taking place this week in Paris. As usual, Tucows was an active participant.

The big news out of Paris today was that ICANN approved new guidelines that effectively pave the way for the creation of hundreds, or even thousands of new domain extensions (the part after the ‘dot’). You can read more on the story here.

I gave Adam Eisner, Tucows’ Product Manager, Domains, a ring via Skype to get his take on the news. In addition to talking about the new domain name extensions, and how that whole process will work, Adam touched briefly on the issue of domain tasting and how ICANN is moving to reduce or eliminate the controversial practice.

Click the play button to have a listen:

[audio:http://www.opensrs.com/images/wordpress/uploads/2010/03/icann_paris.mp3]

ICANN’s 32nd Meeting wrapped up today. You can read the official news release here.