Verisign IDN.IDN

ICANN & Verisign have signed agreement on Verisign's IDN.IDN applications (the petitions for .com and .net gTLD alternatives were pending since 13 June 2012).

Contracts were signed (link) 15 January 2015 (点看 example).

This should be great news for IDN.com domain owners, and for mobile handset users. International transliterations potentially infringe on existing .com & .net registrants, and Verisign pledged to protect existing registrant rights at minimal registrant cost. It's unclear if the present explanation on the Verisign webpages (as of 25 January, below) is still fully accurate. I asked Verisign, who replied: "ICANN has told us that we will have to submit a Registry Services (RSEP) request regarding the approach we plan to use."

Verisign's registration policy is explained on their website as follows:
https://www.verisigninc.com/en_US/channel-resources/domain-registry-products/idn/index.xhtml

"Verisign’s proposed approach for these new IDN gTLDs will help ensure a ubiquitous end-user experience, and helps to protect consumers and business from having to register purely defensive domain names in our TLDs. In practice, Verisign’s proposed approach means that the registrant for a second-level domain name in our IDN.IDN, IDN.com or IDN.net will have the sole right (subject to applicable rights protection mechanisms), but not be required to register that identical second-level domain in any of the top-level IDNs, .com or .net as applicable."

"In order to illustrate our approach, we have identified two use cases below:
Use Case No. 1: Bob Smith already has a registration for an IDN.net second level domain name. That second level domain name will be unavailable in all of the new .net TLDs except to Bob Smith. Bob Smith may choose not to register that second level domain name in any of the new transliterations of the .net TLDs.
Use Case No. 2: John Doe does not have a registration for an IDN.com second level domain name. John Doe registers a second level domain name in our Thai transliteration of .com but in no other TLD. That second level domain name will be unavailable in all other transliterations of .com IDN TLDs and in the .com registry unless and until John Doe (and only John Doe) registers it in another .com IDN TLD or in the .com registry."

In mid-2013, Pat Kane offered ICANN more detail about Verisign's IDN.IDN plans:
https://www.icann.org/resources/correspondence/kane-to-willett-2013-07-11-en

Update from VeriSign conference call, 5 February 2015
Jim Bidzos, VeriSign Chairman, President, CEO:
"We have signed the registry agreements for .comsec and 11 IDN TLDs, eight of which are transliterations of .com and three are transliterations of .net"

"While these registry agreements with ICANN are signed, before these domains become generally available, a few more steps remain, including delegation, controlled interruption which deals with potential name collisions, completion of a sunrise period, and finalization and approval of our launch plans. The failure to gain approval, if required, could delay a general availability date or could result in Verisign having to revise our go-to-market strategy for the IDNs."

Ugly Words? Mediocrity...

In researching domain names available in assorted languages, I repeatedly see a pile of castoff words that seem slightly ugly. Domain investors and internet developers perhaps naturally gravitate to words with positive or glowing meanings, and leave behind those that are dirty or painful.

But this is foolish.

In fact, "pain" (for example) is an important & valuable word. Many people need help with pain, and your site built upon such a memorable keyword can both steer sufferers in worthwhile directions, and easily make you substantial advertising and referral money. Plus it's good to help!

Are there "bad" words? If so, they are probably words such as "mild" and tolerable and mediocre... But words infused with assorted types of energy, emotion, and even pathos are GREAT !

One-word Domain Names

"Having the domain we have has really helped us punch above our weight in so many ways. It is something that touches on almost every interaction. And when people come to us, there is an assumption that we are a much bigger operation than we really are. We are a small business (but) we just did a big promotion with Coca Cola, so we had the Wish logo on 14 million cans of Fanta in the UK."

"If you look the part, (with) a name that sounds like where you want to be, you are in so much of a stronger position to take advantage of those kinds of opportunities."

-- Richard Kershaw, Wish.co.uk interviewed at Domain Sherpa

Squatbranding, Tradesquatting

Wake Up ... if you can !

People don't complain enough about corporatization, when bandits in business suits encroach on our lives through squat brands:

squatbranding ™ - to incorporate in generic space; to acquire or arrogate a common word or phrase as a corporate brand.

Shortcut-seeking scum too often plonk themselves down in our common space & claim permanence, saying in essence "Fuck you - now move around me!"

Squatbranded regular words are shamelessly hijacked from common history and our general dictionaries:
amazon
apple
total
mars
delta
caterpillar
intel
orange
target
vail
carrefour ("crossroad")
shell
metro
continental
oracle

They're our words first, not their recent squat brand. The wider community has long prior use of those words - but shortcut-seeking scum try shoving us aside with ® trademark appropriation. We need to push back. Imagine brands such as apple™ paying us more to squat in our common space. We must visualize them sporting the SQUATBRAND mark: (Not a call to deface their operations!)

Those starting a new venture should coin new terms, as did the creators of Localversity or Google.

Ventures that chose to brand on a novel descriptive phrase seem rather OK: Kentucky Fried Chicken, Japan Railways, Smell Museum

Can't complain too much of firms trading on a family name: McDonalds, Honda, DuPont

But we shouldn't need to tiptoe around squatbranded regular words.

Corrupt officials and smutty nobility, if they could, would sell our kids for meat, renting Our Heritage cheaply to the first shyster paying registration. Too often it's a Squatbrand

Property to Develop

Expanding on the vision of Domains as Billboards:
I've been surprised by people antagonistic toward domainers (domain developers & salespeople). The folks upset are often misinformed of business reality.

Many have read about someone 'squatting' on a proprietary name, trying to extort a huge sum from a trademark owner. (Why this troubles people is complex - relating more to easy money envy & comeuppance than with true sympathy for behemoth multinationals).

But such frictions are a tiny segment of domaining. Our world has millions of generic words and new-coined names to profitably link customers with information, goods & services. These words and phrases are from all languages -- each now has an internet address you can own, use, rent or sell.

Businesses increasingly use generic domain names as gateway billboards to their commercial services -- also, when purchased, that path is closed to competitors.

Be the authoritative site for your specialty - buy multiple domains to link your operations with worldwide success.

Get that key real estate now !
help@strongestbrands.com

Domains as Billboards

Memorable domain names are great for attracting multiple people everyday to a product, place or service.

Potent names are billboards -- linking every smartphone, each & all computers to whatever an owner displays.

As with billboards, the footprint is tiny or ethereal. A billboard can be a building wall, or stand mounted in air on a narrow post, but reach millions of consumers and commuters.

With a memorable address, they'll come back for more information.

Get your keywords now -- while still possible -- Buy a memorable catchy domain, and build a stronger brand !

Marketers: Wake Up!

I'm deeply amazed at this late date that so many big corporate marketing departments still don't fundamentally understand the power of internet marketing.

I'll use a few of my own domains as examples. All are generic words & .com domains:

鼻塞

= nasal congestion, stuffy nose (Chinese)
1350 million Chinese people live in dusty, dirty, crowded conditions where colds & sinus problems are continuing difficulties. How many million suffer from 鼻塞 at any one time? Perhaps 50 million people? Maybe 100 million? Maybe more! Many companies sell congestion treatments such as Vicks®, Contac®, Otrivin®, Clarinase®, Nazal®, Afrin®, Bisaitong®, Mentholatum®, Pabron®, etc. Each of these firms should strongly want 鼻塞.com bringing sufferers to them. Basically, each wants 鼻塞 most associated with their product and not linked to one of their competitors. Great key word! (also for sale: 鼻炎薬.com)

眠る

= sleep (Japanese)

Each company selling futon, beds or sleeping pills wants this word linked to them. Nishikawa, Sakuramichi, Maruhachi and other futon sellers are now fiercely competing for market share amongst themselves (西川布団, 櫻道, 丸八, など), but also with Francebed (フランスベッド), Tempur, IKEA, Simmons, dreambed, Hästens, etc. Additionally, companies selling insomnia medication (睡眠薬 such as Nytol®, マイスリー®, etc.) want their name linked to sleep. The hotel industry is also concerned with sleep. Many different industries, many more individual companies. Who'll be the successful one...? This is a powerful word at a cheap price (imagine the cost over ten years). Or imagine when a competitor gets 眠る.com before you buy it - what's the cost then per year? They get an image boost and continually many customers will flow to them instead of going to you.

在线娱乐场

= online casino (Chinese)
These people earn lots of money. When people imagine an online casino, why not make sure they come to you, at 在线娱乐场.com Better than investing in TV commercials, the website keeps working around the clock, every day, year after year.

>> more to come...

Squat Between the Ears

A recent article in The Local (Sweden) explained about a woman who's owned the website Amazon.se since 1997. Now the mega-retailer wants her site, but she's not yet sold out.

[ First report (here) in Swedish by Daniel Goldberg, IDG / internetworld ]

Swedish readers react in part to the fact the Stockholm-based company is in the ultra-posh district of Östermalm. Thus she gets minimal sympathy.

Responses to the English-language article labeled this woman "a squatter" and "greedy" and also "a gigantic pain in the ass" -- but what's the truth?

The woman, a graphic designer, founded her company named Amazon in 1988, long before Jeff Bezos started his firm. Amazon AB was registered as a graphic design company in Sweden on 1988-Sept-19 and got their web domain amazon.se on 1997-July-03.

The mega-retailer amazon.com was founded in Washington State, USA in 1994 and registered their domain 1994-Nov-01. First, clearly the founder of Amazon AB did not choose her company name based on the book giant, as she was in business six years earlier.

Of course, both firms are riding a preexisting well-known term (the Amazon women warriors of Greek myth, and the South American river). Taking advantage of popular generic words is not wholly positive commercially, as common usage continues (we needn't have an apple® a day).

Applying for trademark protection is an administrative process within national jurisdictions. There is no automatic worldwide comprehensive protection. Multiple firms can register trademarks and legally operate in parallel when operations are in different classes of goods or services.

It's very unlikely this woman registered her company name as a website with bad faith intent, or tried to infringe on what's now a monster juggernaut. There's no cybersquatting here. If Bezos & Amazon.com want this woman's site, they can pay. Maybe she'd accept two million euro today -- tomorrow may be different.

Colombo Discovers the World

International Domain Names are similar to Christopher Colombus 'discovering' the New World - welcome to narrow anthropocentric vision. IDN are not 'international' any more than English or Romanization - they are words, characters and languages regularly used by billions of people.

Some may say the characters / letters of IDN are coded, and can also be displayed as xn--(etc.). But all internet and computer characters are codes - every domain also has a numeric IP address, and behind that is always a binary string of ones and zeros.

The IDN punycode is rather a workaround aid to people without quick access to direct character input methods. People in the relevant nation simply input native text from their keyboard.

Recognize now that IDN are simply domains. And as using the web gets easier & more vital each day for people worldwide, the Smart investors are buying key domain names today.

子.com = xn--i8s.com = http://www.%E5%AD%90.com = 198.235.133.226

Open more Windows!

This ain't a plea to buy Microsoft Windows 8.1 -- (which I'm just now getting accustomed to; some good new procedures, but disliking repeated attempts to force Microsoft products into my work, and angry to pay for so much surveillance not to my benefit).

Anyhow, this "Open more Windows" is an appeal to LEARN NEW WAYS

Some people still don't know it's possible to open multiple browser tabs simultaneously.

Some people still don't know they can pull traffic to their website with more than one address:

books.com
book.com
bn.com
barnesandnoble.com

Unleash power - build your brand using MULTIPLE domains.
Build new avenues to transport more people to your business.
Get help now: help@strongestbrands.com

Brand Games

As a domain investor, everyday I imagine how generic keywords can promote marketing. I also seek to develop new brands, and work in assorted languages. My main business is place branding: economic geography and destination marketing. I'm a teacher, investor, and participant.

It's a game. It's creative, and it's fun.

It's usually very profitable for clients. Many are slowly awakening to the realities of the "information superhighway" - during your lifetime, an irresistible internet has developed which offers huge riches. Many types of bricks-and-mortar businesses (shops and business locations) are obsolete. Change or die - which really means ADAPT to the new reality.

Perhaps the old corner bank building can be successfully re-purposed, or the empty offices of the travel agent and those other businesses. Maybe it's better to abandon your dying community and go where people are having fun & prospering.

Place Appeal is essential - choose well!

gTLDs? Thank You!

We're now at the start of a huge expansion of internet addresses, with new gTLDs (generic Top Level Domains) such as .construction, .directory, .zone, .today, and .guru joining the older .com, .net, .gov, .info, etc. domain addresses.

One byproduct is a huge boost in advertising monies for the industry. More people are being exposed to news about domains, and this will attract greater investment in domain names, and ultimately spill-over positively to existing investors. Demand for good .com brand names will rise as sites are upgraded and supplemented. Smaller businesses are beginning to recognize what big firms already learned about keyword & category-killer domains (and what often helped create big firms): a garden-supply company wants garden.com (in addition to their local name).

But the most interesting possibility with new gTLDs is that new attention will generate innovation and systemic developments. The domain name industry needs better mechanisms for buying and selling, more liquidity , easier ways to offer advertising, better systems to increase parking revenues. Surely in adding many thousands of new investors, we'll also attract a few entrepreneurs with great ideas and better domain investor tools.

"Non-standard" characters?

International domain names, or IDN, use characters outside the normal abc of the English-language keyboard. The IDN has two alternative approaches: one with the "local" characters and one with standard English characters prefixed by "xn--" For example, the Swedish for easy is "lätt"
lätt.com (is equal to:)
xn--ltt-qla.com

Option two doesn't seem easy, but those domains are attractive in original form, and type easily on local keyboards where the characters are used constantly.

It's also a kind of clubbishness:
Lätt differs from latt

The uninitiated struggle; the cognoscenti party hearty.

Ever-more-important !

The internet is ever more important. Some details change each few years, but the internet phenomenon is not going away -- it grows central to more businesses, and ever more a key part of daily life.

Position yourself to take advantage of this change.

Develop ambitious brands.

Remember?

Ultimately, it's best when people can easily remember your address. Your place of business or personal website is permanently arranged inside their heads, a familiar, quickly-remembered address.

Sure, people can keep notes or bookmarks. But better you flash forth as foresight.

Familiar names provide trust & respect.

Short, easily remembered names are greatly valuable.

Selling to China

People in Europe, the USA, Japan and elsewhere are starting to awaken to the fact that China is an economic powerhouse. Not only are incomes per capita rising, but more & more Chinese rich people are shopping the world.

Remember: just 1% of China is about 14,000,000 people.

Remember also that it's not essential to rename your company or to put your online activities wholly in Chinese. You can tap into this key market by providing gateways to the savvy Chinese consumer and opinion leaders, and follow-up later with a bigger presence.

Buy a few IDN domains and link them to your overseas website. A generic name supplements your company name, as books.com and book.com funnels customers to Barnes & Noble booksellers, who also use domains bn.com and barnesandnoble.com Sadly I don't own 书.com or 本.com ("books" in Chinese / Japanese) but I do own such names as 食料.com (food) and 子.com (child).

Many Chinese wine sophisticates and quality restaurants are looking to stock their cellars; some would like to buy whole vineyards. Perhaps they could find your business via champagnebrand.com or 赤霞珠干红.com (CabernetSauvignon). Now's the time to plan -- enjoy your future with China.

Billion Brains brand

Domain names are often compared to real estate, but I daresay we gain entry to the mind. A key word or an easily recalled phrase with already a spot in the brain makes a great domain. We can buy one character Chinese & Japanese .com domains that two billion children hand practice writing, often hundreds of times.

Wonderful domains already reside in each brain. My domains colonize real estate in each mind. Highly valuable branding, and certainly a great avenue for marketing & business development.

買

원

子

lividly

Going GONE

Interested in buying a domain name? Don't squander unique opportunity.

Each year around the world, millions of new businesses are formed. Most seek dynamic domain names, and many now seek more than one name. Generic descriptive names supply authority while channeling added online business. The generic name supplements your company name, as books.com and book.com funnels customers to Barnes & Noble booksellers, who also use domains bn.com and barnesandnoble.com

If you're watching a domain name, buy it.

To win control of a unique resource, you must pay more than anyone else in the world. By definition. Comparative statistics mean little. And there may be only one perfect name for you. Consider cost vs. value over months & many years. Your great domain name is a tireless worker. Your domain is a 24-7 always-smiling staffmember. In my opinion, a decent business hoping for effective online positioning should prepare the cost of a small truck: US$30,000 still now buys a great domain. Own a mobile business asset that can increase in value. Do not delay.

As a possible buyer window-shopping a unique item, expect no warning. When a name's sold, it leaves the market - perhaps forever. You're suddenly shut out - permanently.

New Domain Sales Platform

Functions & dimensions I'd like in a domain sales platform: (unranked)

Interested people & potential purchasers can register to "watch" the domain auction. They are notified if price rises, and/or at 30 minutes before auction closes, the amount of top bid.
Auction extends 10 minutes if there are bids within the final period (auction ends only when no bids for final 10 minutes).
Auction house reliably handles pre-screening of bidders
Payment and escrow are reliable, easy, and integrated with sales platform

Investment Domains

Last week the two-character domain KK.com sold for US$2.4 million to a buyer from China (link). Other huge domain sales include IG.com (sold a few months ago for US$4.7 million) and FB.com sold for US$8.5 million.

These transactions are not purchasing systems developed on the websites - these domains attracted buyers aiming at redevelopment. In other words, the names are highly-attractive billboard space.

Some 20 years ago, each multi-million dollar name changed hands at below US$50.

Now, as more of our world comes online, the pace of change grows. China is building its muscle, and single-character .com domains are likely to become success stories.

Chinese firms are developing, and tens of millions of people form new venture business (just 1% of China is 13 million people). Further, the rest of the world wants to sell to China, Japan, and other Asian consumers.

Only a few thousand single-character international domain names exist for .com development. Each of these has elegance and already space in the minds of billions. I can see development where $15,000 investments are worth $500,000 in five years. Very nice valuable nest eggs for retirement...

Here are a few good domain possibilities.
If you're an existing business: Buy 'em Now !
If you're a new service: Buy 'em Now !
Now you can Buy into 2 Billion Brains...

蛸.com Octopus

隣.com Neighbor

血.com Blood

疾.com Disease

蔥.com Scallion

岸.com Beach

請.com Invitation

etc...

Own a Door to History

Just a few years ago, the Soviet Union, USSR, was a powerful nation. Until the Soviet collapse in the early 1990s, top US intelligence and major news around the world claimed the Soviet Union was hugely vigorous, mighty, growing and supremely powerful. Perhaps the USA was more powerful, but this story employed millions of people & generated trillions of US$ in military spending & business. Nearly 300 million people lived in the Soviet Union.

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Russian: Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик, tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik) abbreviated to USSR (СССР) or the Soviet Union (Сове́тский Сою́з)

Collapse was cruel.

I offer two domain names for the Soviet Union, in Chinese and in Japanese:

苏联.com

ソ連.com

Each is available for sale at US$25,000

(Of course) I paid even less. Both China & Japan have been important Soviet allies, enemies and rivals. The Soviet Union was a grand nation inspiring fear & awe. Amazing it's now so little valued and even largely forgotten...

"...Ozymandias, king of kings --- "

New .com Promise (Verisign)

As described in the previous posting here at abcBrand (link), the infrastructure operator for .com domains: Verisign corporation (NASDAQ: VRSN), has applied to ICANN for an additional nine (9) forms of .com in international scripts

Because .com is the most popular & valuable aggregate of domain property rights, Verisign must be careful about eroding or diluting previously-purchased rights, and could be held liable to rights holders for any breakdown in reliability or value.

The solution proposed by Verisign is partially described here (link):
http://www.verisigninc.com/en_US/products-and-services/domain-name-services/value-added-products/idn-domain-names/index.xhtml

"A registrant of an IDN.com or IDN.net or registrant in one of our new IDN TLDs will have the sole right, subject to applicable rights protection mechanisms, but not be required to register the same second level name across all or any of our IDN TLDS, including .com or .net TLD as applicable."

Verisign continues with two examples (quote):

Use Case No. 1: Bob Smith already has a registration for an IDN.net second level domain name. That second level domain name will be unavailable in all of the new .net TLDs except to Bob Smith. Bob Smith may choose not to register that second level domain name in any of the new transliterations of the .net TLDs.

Use Case No. 2: John Doe does not have a registration for an IDN.com second level domain name. John Doe registers a second level domain name in our Thai transliteration of .com but in no other TLD. That second level domain name will be unavailable in all other transliterations of .com IDN TLDs and in the .com registry unless and until John Doe (and only John Doe) registers it in another .com IDN TLD or in the .com registry.

Will this proposed system work smoothly? I hope Verisign can appropriately track owners and their rights. Will it be possible later to split & transfer one or more transliterations? In other words, might we see .com held by company A, with the Japanese .コム (.com in Japanese) held by another firm?

IDN .com Power

The last post introduced why .com is more powerful than nation-specific domain names.

But the internet has many generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) changes developing. Verisign has nine applications for new .com formats in assorted languages (link). A similar format introduces three new .net forms.

Verisign also promises that when one form of .com is registered, only that registrant will have the right to register the other nine - they'll be unavailable to other potential registrants.

Again, only this first registrant has the option to purchase any or all of the other nine .com forms, but is not required to do so.

It's unclear, however: can the names be 'unpacked' later & sold separately, or what residual rights (if any) to the reserved forms can be transferred.

These forms may be preferable to using country-code cc-TLD such as .ru or .cn -- but promise to substantially raise costs for those who will supplement many .com addresses with .ком or .点看

.com

(present Western)

.ком

Cyrillic

קום.

Hebrew

كوم.

Arabic

.कॉम

Devanagari

.คอม

Thai

.コム

Katakana

.点看

Simplified Chinese

.點看

Traditional Chinese

.닷컴

Hangul

Need IDN .com

IDN, or international domain names, are non-Western characters with two alternate addresses. The "international" character(s) with the final tld string (for example, .com)
子.com
and also a Punycode string starting xn-- (plus tld string)
xn--i8s.com

In many cases, first IDN registrations are in non-Western nations, where businesses or individuals register & use country-specific TLD such as
.cn (China)
.ru (Russia)
.jp (Japan)

But this is changing quickly !
Global businesses use .com
The .com address is primarily attractive to global customers.

Let me explain why:

Characters used in China are used to a large extent also in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, etc. (and to a lesser extent in Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, etc.) Very few in other nations enjoy using the .cn country code, nor do Chinese people want to type .jp -- but they're OK with .com

Similarly, the Cyrillic script used in Russia and in many Russian domains are often the same characters in assorted other nations: Bulgaria, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Mongolia, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia, Tajikistan, Ukraine -- all use the same characters.

Why draw attention to foreignness in your activities? That final country code (cc-tld) is very often an unhappy reminder of historic injuries. Typing the final characters can feel disloyal.

Because of imperial rivalries and historical frictions, customers prefer to use their own nation's country code, or use the "neutral" .com

Any site can then redirect or point to the same content as on a national-focused page. So it's far better to prepare for global business:
Buy your IDN .com

士.com
ключ.com
нажмите.com

Chinese Buying Frenzy

The market for .com domain names has greatly heated-up in two areas:
1) numerical domains
2) Chinese single-character domains

Short (smaller) numbers have been selling strongly. Chinese buyers are also snapping-up the .com form of Chinese character domains. Such domain names are more useful in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan & elsewhere than .cn names.

Good single-character .com Chinese & Japanese names can still be purchased for under US$25,000 -- but not for long. There are only a few thousand such domains for the entire internet world. They provide their owners instant recognition, interest & authority. Some firms move or build their web home on the domains, others use them as forwarders to another (often country-specific) home address.

Korea for Sale

Korea-related Brand Domains For Sale

곧

굴

근

꼴

꽉

꽝

끈

농

눈물

늘

도박온라인

돈벼락

돛

들

떼

뚝

뜰

띠

록

막

밑

뱀

번

벼

벽

비밀

빈

뺨

뿔

셀

쇠

싹

싼

쌍

안

언

원

잼

쪽

츄

카이로

캄

커밍

타일랜드

텀

톤

틀

펌

핀

휜

흠

More at: StrongestBrands.com/korean

Russia For Sale

Russia-related Brand Domains For Sale

More at: StrongestBrands.com/russian