Afilias

VeriSign, Inc., the registry that operates .COM, .NET, .NAME, .CC and .TV, published its first quarter revenue figures in a press release earlier this week. The company saw its revenue top $200 million for the quarter, marking a 13 percent increase from the first quarter in 2011.

Part of that revenue growth can be attributed to a 7.7 percent year-over-year increase in domain name registrations. But in that same press release, Verisign also revealed that it applied for 14 new gTLDs, including 12 transliterations of .COM and .NET, and that it has partnered with other new gTLD applicants to provide back-end registry services for an additional 220 new gTLDs.

Other registries have not yet revealed how many applications they will be providing back-end services for, but this information will eventually become public when ICANN posts the public portions of the new gTLD applications, namely the responses to Questions 1 through 30a. We expect other major registries such as Neustar, Afilias, Nominet and PIR to all make a big showing, but it will be interesting to see just how the numbers turn out for these players.

When it comes to ICANN’s New gTLD Program, there are a lot of unknowns. Businesses are asking questions about batching, evaluation processes, Contention Sets, and when the next application round will be held. Some, however, have already started looking beyond the application and evaluation phases to the future and the potential for game-changing innovation and technological advances that, some say, owning a new gTLD promises. (more...)