What's Going On At ICU?

In June I wrote an article on the new gTLD ICU and I believed that it would be successful not necessarily because of the extension but because two of the founders, Kevin Kopas and Lars Jensen. I thought it was time that I checked in on their efforts and to see if my belief in the both of them was warranted….

For a start, I don’t think anyone has clocked up as many frequent flyer miles as either Kevin or Lars....and that's saying something coming from an Australian like me. In their efforts to promote ICU I think they’ve attended just about every conference imaginable around the world.

If you ever bump into them (and you will) then just ask them what time zone they were in last week. I wouldn’t be surprised if you receive a confused expression, followed by silence and then a reply of which one do you mean? I sometimes wonder whether ICU will be successful simply because of their brute force effort.

Putting aside all of the anecdotes, what are the numbers telling us? I hopped into ntldstats (great site btw) and checked out whether the dynamic duo have managed to get things moving forward. The first thing I noticed is that ICU has cracked the top 50 most popular extensions in just under 3 months….not a mean feat in itself.

As can be seen from the chart there was clearly an initial surge in early registrations and then a constantly increasing number since June. In fact, you could say the graph is getting slightly steeper as time goes by. My guess is this is the result of more registrars taking on ICU and exposing it to a wider market.

The top end total registrations of roughly 76,000 was what really grabbed my attention. That’s an astounding number and the trend seems to be continuing upwards. The number of registrars that are selling the domains is also filling out without a single registrar holding more than 30% of the registrations.

In addition, 32% of the domains are already in the wild! Let’s face it, the length of time between buying a domain and building a website normally takes longer than the length of time the registry has been live for! I wouldn’t be surprised if 32% heads to 50% in a hurry…..which is good news for the domain investors out there.

It’s clear that ICU is committed to targeting the entrepreneur market and have built a site that features many of them. You can check out http://inthewild.icu/ and get a sense for the growing breadth and depth of real world users.

So was my prediction of believing in both Kevin and Lars right? Absolutely. I’ve learned over the years that businesses are built by people and if you have the right people then the business will grow. As can be seen by the stats, Kevin and Lars have the right stuff.

Another example of a team with the "right stuff" is the incredibly successful group at .CLUB. It’s clear to me that Kevin and Lars are taking a page out of the .CLUB book and working themselves ragged to ensure that ICU is even more successful than it already is.

Congratulations to you both! See you in Barcelona!