I just received a press release from the backers of the new gTLD extension .ICU. I’ve received a lot of different releases from different new gTLDs and it was tempting to put this release in the circular out tray beneath the desk….but then a few things caught my eye that caused me to hesitate.

For a start, the people behind .ICU include Kevin Kopas and Lars Jensen. Both founders have massive amounts of experience in the registry and registrar space with contacts that would leave most new gTLDs incredibly envious. Combine the contacts with their unique energy and drive and you have a formidable combination destined for success.

According to the press release .ICU already has over 100 registrars selling the extension and this is growing rapidly on the back of having CentralNic providing the backend services. So it would appear that despite the inevitable ICANN delays the two founders have been very busy indeed!

And then there’s the extension itself, ICU which is an acronym of “I See you”. The first thing that came to my mind when I saw this was the blockbuster movie “Avatar” where the main character would say to one another, “I see you.” For those of you that have been living under a rock, director James Cameron, is currently filming the movie sequels so the term “ICU” will be well and truly in the vernacular.

Each year, venerable venture capitalist firm Kleiner Perkins, releases a slide deck which has become the “State of the Union” for the Internet. Of the 294 slides, a number immediately caught my attention as they directly impact domain traffic monetisation.

There are over 3.6B Internet users in the world which represents 49% of the world’s population. The growth in the number of new Internet users getting online is slowing from 12% in 2016 to 7% in 2017. Eventually, you would expect the rate of growth to asymptote at the rate of population growth globally.

What this shows is the Internet is the single largest marketplace in the world and more than that....it's accessible by everyone. Natural type-in domain traffic should continue to increase at similar rates to the overall growth rate. User sophistication and technological innovations will and has impacted this rate of growth. The challenge as always been how to best remove the junk traffic from the real traffic.....more on this in a future article.

Internet advertising spend for 2017 in the USA continued to move upwards by 21% to a peak of $88B. Since the growth in the number of online users in the USA is almost flat the value per user from an advertiser’s perspective is continuing to increase. This will place an upward pressure on EPC rates and make domains with traffic that much more valuable.

As I write this, I’m sitting in the LAX Qantas club, wearing my traveling clothes of loose jeans and a really comfortable Escrow.com T-shirt that I picked up when I visited their office in San Francisco on the last trip. I’ve just had a shower before the long-haul flight to Melbourne and I find myself in a bit of a reflective mood…..was the trip to Vancouver and the GDD conference really worth it?

In terms of a conference, the simple answer is, I don’t really know. I didn’t get to any of the sessions….in fact, I don’t even think I knew where they were being held. Given the flow of people I believe they were down some long hallway.

What I do know is the people at the ICANN GDD event were top notch. It appeared that all of the movers and shakers of the new gTLD space were present. There were representatives from registrars, registries and a whole host of ancillary businesses from all over the world were present. The reason why I didn’t get to any of the sessions was because I ended up in back-to-back meetings. The best thing about the meetings was the fact that most of them were outcome focused rather than just another chin-wag that goes no where.

I would like to highlight both Kevin and Lars from dotICU (I-See-You). They are two of the founders of dotICU and they both worked incredibly hard speaking to registrars and others about the new extension.....it's clearly an enormous passion for them to evangelise ICU. If their work ethic is any indication of success then I’m sure you’ll see many ICU domains cropping up in the wild.

I also had the privilege of spending some time wth Andrew Allemann from Domain Name Wire (DNW.com). I’m sure he will provide his perspective on the event. For those of you that don’t know Andrew, he’s been writing about domains for around a decade and a half and provides an excellent service for the industry.

Of course it was great catching up with my many friends from around the world. One of the great things about the domain industry is I now have friends in just about every city in the world.. How great is that!

I stayed at the Hilton hotel and the elevator numbers were a lesson in CHiP domains. If you take a close look at it there are a number of floors missing; If you look carefully, you'll find that floors 4, 13 and 14 aren't accessible as it would be bad luck if you ended up on those floors. Either that or there is some secret organisation hidding on those floors....LOL!

Yes, there was a lot of business conducted but I found that in many cases it was more a meeting of minds of friends rather than a sales effort. I think that I will definitely be attending the next GDD and I wouldn’t be surprised if it continues to grow into one of the preeminent ICANN conferences for the year.

I’d better finish up as I think my flight is just about to be called.

Once again I find myself sitting in the Qantas club waiting for good old QF93 for Los Angeles. Although I spend a lot of time in the airline lounge I did find it a little disconcerting when the front desk staff greeted me by name before I'd handed them my passport.

So what am I up to? I plan on hitting all the sites and living it up a little.....I wish. In summary, it's all about work. One of the things I really like about the USA and it's northern cousin is that there's just so much business to be done. I find that I step off the plane at the other end of the 15 hour journey, sniff the air and smile at all the opportunities.

This is going to be a short post.....my flight just got called. I'll see you in LA and at the GDD conference in Vancouver.

CheerS!

I’m jumping on a plane again on Thursday morning to start the journey to the ICANN GDD conference in Vancouver. I attended the Madrid GDD event last year and this year is looking to be even better.

In the past ICANN has helpfully published the list of attendees to help registered participants arrange meetings etc. For some reason, they’ve elected not to do this for the Vancouver event…..which is a bit frustrating.

I’ve now posted the event here in the “Domainers Network” so if you’re planning on attending GDD then you can see who else is attending. Hopefully we will get a reasonable list of people that are willing and wanting to connect.

Here is the link for the event.