Update on New TLDs

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Latest New TLD Launches:

HEXONET continues to launch more new TLDs on our regular Tuesday schedule, including several highly anticipated new TLDs this past couple of weeks:

.AUDIO, .BIO, .CARE, CASH, .CLINIC, DENTAL, .DISCOUNT, .FAIL, .FINANCIAL, .FITNESS .FURNITURE, .FUND, .HIPHOP, .INVESTMENTS, .JUEGOS, .SCHULE, .SURGERY, .TAX, .VEGAS, .WTF, .YOKOHAMA

What are the Top 10 New TLDs Worldwide?  

As of June 23, 2014, over 1.2 Million  new TLDs have been registered globally. Here are the top 10.

  1. .XYZ
  2. .BERLIN
  3. .CLUB
  4. .GURU
  5. .PHOTOGRAPHY
  6.  .EMAIL
  7.  .LINK
  8. .在线 (Dot Chinese Online)
  9. .TODAY
  10. .TIPS

New TLDs and Contention Sets

HEXONET often gets inquiries from our customers regarding highly anticipated new TLDs like .hotels, .blog and .shop.  Some of the most popular TLDs are still waiting on allocation from ICANN since they contain identical or confusingly similar strings to other New gTLDs (Contention Sets). These contention sets must first be resolved via community priority evaluation, direct negotiation, and a private auction not affiliated with ICANN, or an ICANN auction (aka auction of last resort) before they are allocated to a winning applicant. 

To date, most of the auctions that have taken place have been private auctions not associated with ICANN.  In fact, ICANN actually encourages applicants to resolve contention sets themselves. Some of the contended strings that have been won by successful bidders in private auctions include: .yoga, .gift, .coupon, .poker, .pizza, .fashion, .diet and .deals.

On June 4, 2014, the first ICANN auction (through its authorized auction services provider, Power Auctions LLC) occured to resolve a contended new TLD.  Two applicants, Afilias Limited and Beijing Tele-info Network Technology Co., LTD. applied for the gTLD 信息, (xn--vuq861b), which is a Chinese Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) for "information" or "info." These two applicants were unable to resolve the contention set between themselves, and thus proceeded to an auction, which is the method of last resort to resolve string contentions as prescribed in Module 4 of the Applicant Guidebook. Beijing Tele-info Network Technology Co., LTD. prevailed in the auction with a winning bid of $600,000 USD.  The next ICANN auction is scheduled for July 9, 2014 and will be between Minds + Machines and Amazon for .coupon.

The following links are excellent articles on current contention sets and the different auction types: