.Asia – The Rest Get To Go To Auction

Depending on your viewpoint, I was either “entitled”, one of the lucky ones or wasted $130 on a .asia. Yes about a month ago I was allocated prosperity.asia. No, I didn’t have to go to auction because I already had the company name and registered the .asia as a part of the Sunrise 3 round.

Like most Australian domainers, I have been bombarded with email from US registrars telling me how this thing is “the next Internet landrush”.  So, what do the numbers actually say? Well, last night the .Asia / Pool.com team emailed me with some interesting figures.

• From February 20, 2008 to March 12, 2008 (the .ASIA Landrush Period) they received 473,633 domain name applications.

• 45,697 domains received more than one application during the Landrush Period.

For those that didn’t participate, the remaining domains will be made available on a first-come, first-served basis on March 26, 2008.

What The Future Holds For Domainers

The domaining industry is still in its infancy. With that, comes a variety of issues that impact upon private domainers, domaining companies and those that feed from the industry. Some of the issues that come to mind include:

• Lack of understanding of the industry amongst the media and the general public.
• Introduction of legislation by governments.
• Trademark and copyright issues.
• Lack of active industry associations.
• A few bad eggs….

Over the next few weeks I’ll be discussing these issues at length and what we can do as individuals and as a group, to combat these threats.