A number of weeks ago I decided to stick my neck and develop a survey for the industry to determine who is regarded as an individual of high regard. Unlike other surveys, this was not a popularity contest but based upon actual experience with the individuals nominated.

The questions were divided into three main categories:

1.       How successful in each of the four domain business models people thought the person was whom they were nominating.

2.       How the individual relates to the domain community. For example, do they share openly and try to address big industry issues?

3.       The third area was how the individual conducts themselves one-on-one. This in particular removed the popularity aspect of the survey as individuals were asked to reflect on their actual experience with the person they were nominating.

You would have to be completely deaf to not have heard about the upcoming Merge conference to be held in Orlando from the 14^th-18^th October. It’s shaping up to be a real highlight of the year for not just the domain industry but industries that run alongside it.

Both Jothan Frakes and Ray Neu are the driving force behind Merge. Their experience in running conferences over many years (NamesCon, The Domain Conference, TRAFFIC to name but a few) is clearly evident as they pull together the event.

It seems that almost every day a new top-notch speaker is being announced that will add a significant amount of value to attendees’ experience. Some of the line-up include; Jennifer Wolfe (CEO of Dot Brand), Chris Disspain (ICANN director), David Sams (Emmy winning TV producer) plus a over 52 others.

I have a lot of friends in Florida and many of them have suffered and are suffering as a result of hurricane Irma. Natural disasters are often terrifying and the wake of destruction they leave behind in both property damage and emotional trauma is terrible.

I just received word from Jeff Sass from .CLUB that their new office in Fort Lauderdale has lost its roof and the interior office trashed by the force of the wind and rain. I have the privilege to count all of the .CLUB team as friends and I would like to particularly wish them all the best as they rebuild their office space.

I would also like to mention that none of the actual .CLUB domains have been impacted by this disaster as they are safe and secure in tier 1 hosting environments in multiple locations.....so don't panic. All is good!

I’ve recently been reviewing a number of new gTLDs to better understand the trends and which ones will potentially be of greater value than others. In my opinion, this regular practice is crucial for any investor that is wanting to gauge when is the best time to stomp down their cash and invest in an extension.

Overall, the new gTLDs have not had a spectacularly good year. The number of registrations peaked in April at just over 29.5 million but since then there has been a sharp decline to just over 23 million. To better understand what’s going on I dug into some good and bad examples of new gTLDs.

.CLUB has been the poster child of the new gTLDs and in many respects, rightly so. Backed by a solid team their focused marketing has meant they’ve built what appears to be a good solid base of registrants that are using the extension.

In the rush into the new gTLDs many domain investors have almost forgotten about the ccTLDs. The country codes are full of incredible domains that are in many cases still available at registration fee. The question we need to ask is why?

There is one thing for certain, most ccTLDs have neglected marketing to the domainer community. When you consider that around 30% of registered domains are owned by investors the lack of focus on this market by the registries is at their loss. In addition, domain owners that aren’t keeping an eye on the ccTLD market segment are missing out on a fantastic opportunity.

I remember attending one of the very first TRAFFIC conferences and one of the things that struck me about it was that it was incredibly .COM centric. No one was talking about any of the other extensions….in fact, they were often regarded as being irrelevant.