IDN Status update for 2017

[alibuba]

Hoping we can all comment our opinions on what the status of our investments are and how we predict this year will follow through.

-How is traffic developing
-How is public knowledge adapting to idn
-How is local idn registration growth
-How are cpc levels, better or worse
-How are the idn investors coping, are we holding, are we selling, are we banking big on traffic, are we developing

All opinions and foresights are welcome

[dave_5]

I have only Hebrew IDN's. Dropped 70% in the last year. Still waiting to see when Hebrew will be released. If the premium fees are ridiculous, will drop more.

Been holding IDN's for over 14 years with 30k of dollars invested in fees.

Lost hope.... :(

If someone wants to buy premium Hebrew domains with Bitcoins. please msg me.

[IdnHost]

From the looks of it, it seems cannabis related ascii domains have a greater chance of gaining any traction in the near future. Idn's are old news, although I haven't completely lost hope just yet. Dropped about 70-80% as well from whatever I had.

[123]

Today, near future, mid-term.. mostly dead. Long-term?

Who knows..

[blackpower]

I mostly have Portuguese (plus 2 or 3 Russians)
Hold now less domains, generally portfolio almost pays for itself, even with awful cpc...
This January I made a first serious web project, let's see how it performs (address in my signature).

[jose]

Dropped 90% of my domains, IDN and ASCII. Let go most of my sites, from 4 hosts and 50 sites, to 1 host and around 5 sites only. Holding only the domain names that pay for themselves when parked.

I still managed to make some money over these years selling freshly registered IDNs on the secondary market like this forum.

It was a nice ride. Too pity I never managed to meet you guys in person. It's more than time to move on, apps are my world now and I am doing great. Did you know you can invest in apps just as you did on domains and websites? Just check Flippa.

[Thomas.T]

Guys, save your money and invest in stocks instead. Many companies have been consistently increasing their dividend payout year over year for the last 40+ years (eg. Coke or Procter and Gamble)

If you're interested, I'd highly recommend you follow Chuck Carnevale and read all his articles @ http://seekingalpha.com/article/3960762-dividends-true-contribution-total-return-may-surprise

Also, you can find a list of US & Canadian companies with 25+ Straight Years Paying Higher Dividends @ http://www.dripinvesting.org/tools/tools.asp

And for those that still want to invest in IDN's, I have Photography.com in Chinese (xn--p3t29j.com). PM me your offer if interested.

Happy investing everyone!

[123]

but blue chips don't offer high returns, boring :)

[jose]

but blue chips don't offer high returns, boring :)

http://www.fool.com/investing/2017/01/26/the-top-large-cap-stock-to-buy-in-2017.aspx

[mxfusion]

http://www.fool.com/investing/2017/01/26/the-top-large-cap-stock-to-buy-in-2017.aspx


Really? I have a FB account which i don't use. :-o I still use linkedin though.

[andre]

All opinions and foresights are welcome

There are some positive developments that will have and are having a positive effect on IDNs.

① Universal Acceptance Steering Group https://uasg.tech They are very active in getting out the IDN & EAI message to the technical community. They attend many conferences, hold workshops, reach out ...etc.. I am on their ua-discuss mailing list and if you want to contribute you can join at https://uasg.tech/mailing-lists-for-each-subgroup-have-been-established/
② EAI Email Address Internationalization: DataMail is the first company that allows users to create an internationalized email address (I am not counting experimental email systems). I have an all Chinese email address 小山@电邮.在线 thanks to DataMail http://电邮.在线 Gmail has supported EAI for some 2 years but does not yet allow users to create internationalized email addresses.
③ I have directly contacted a small number of email software companies and some of them are actively working on upgrading their SMTP to SMTPUTF8 and will be releasing their upgraded systems this year.
④ Chrome is now treating IDNs more equally compared to ASCII domain names. Displaying the Unicode form is now the norm and displaying punycode is now the exception. This is the default, the user no longer needs to delve into the preferences to add preferred display languages in order for the Unicode form to be displayed.
⑤ 닷컴 has fared much better than I expected eg http://schappo.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/domain-name-registrations.html

There still remains the negative, which is the lack of Software/Internet Internationalization teaching in the various UK Computer Science/IT/ICT/Networking curricula. Generation after generation of UK students graduate only understanding ascii text processing, thinking only ASCII domain names work and having never written any internationalized software/Apps/websites. I am still a solitary voice in the UK.

I do not know what effect all this will have financially but I do believe usage of IDNs and internationalized email addresses will grow because of the positives above.

So, my recommendation to this group is: whenever and wherever you can, educate people on IDNs and EAI

André 小山 Schappo
http://schappo.blogspot.co.uk

[alibuba]

I agree, we are talking about a worlds awareness in this. So its only right we watch the outcomes in these specific improvements. I do feel that they will benefit.

Its all about if local usage WANT idn somehow we started this bet on the fact that we speculate the NEED in this for local users and companies but its flipped the switch on how much desire their is and i feel ppl lack compelling reasons because of the lacking aspects which are being corrected as you've pointed out above. Once these are in more mainstream we should see more desire for usage.

In time people. We did have some major mess ups along the way with ICANN and Verisign implementing poor com translations and timeframes that have been hilariously stressing to talk about.

Any word on Arabic com? I have high hopes for this one. I feel if any do push the boundaries of popularity its gonna be Arabic com.

[andre]

Blog article giving an overview of the UASG work http://www.thedna.org/making-new-internet-domains-work-everyone/

and

a link for subscribing to the ua-discuss email list https://uasg.tech/subscribe

André 小山 Schappo

[clipper]

Verisign's quarterly call is next Thursday and perhaps there will be a comment relevant to why they haven't launched another IDN since the two Koreans.

But with the current climate of protectionist policies and anti-globalism in Europe and the US we may see doors shutting faster than new markets opening.

[Drewbert]

I think their IDN guy got hit by a bus and no one's noticed he's not turning up to work in the morning. That can happen when your office is in the basement.

[Drewbert]

This January I made a first serious web project, let's see how it performs (address in my signature).

Nice.

Let's hope it's a money-spinner!

[andre]

Another positive is that RFCs are going Unicode.

RFC 7997: The Use of Non-ASCII Characters in RFCs https://tools.ietf.org/pdf/rfc7997.pdf

RFCs are currently restricted to ASCII, but with RFC 7997 we should see a transition to Unicode RFCs.

So, for example, RFC authors will be able to write Domain Names such as http://இந.இந்தியா instead of having to write ascii domains only.

When RFC authors write about EAI (Email Address Internationalisation) they will be able to give real examples such as 小山@电邮.在线

André 小山 Schappo

[Rubber Duck]

Verisign's quarterly call is next Thursday and perhaps there will be a comment relevant to why they haven't launched another IDN since the two Koreans.

But with the current climate of protectionist policies and anti-globalism in Europe and the US we may see doors shutting faster than new markets opening.

Trump lives in dreamland. He is expecting Germans to buy Chevies?

As for May, does she really think that the German's are bothered about losing Britain when that means the end of Japanese competition in Europe?

[clipper]

Trump lives in dreamland. He is expecting Germans to buy Chevies?

As for May, does she really think that the German's are bothered about losing Britain when that means the end of Japanese competition in Europe?

I don't know what they think (I'm pretty sure Trump is only interested in television ratings and Twitter stats), but it used to be difficult for US webmasters to get affiliate agreements with foreign companies (with a few exceptions); it may become impossible over the coming years.

[clipper]

Just to confirm that nobody cares:

Gray W. Powell - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Understood. Okay. That's helpful. And then could you give an update on foreign language versions of .com and .net that you're introducing? Just how many are up and running today? What kind of traction are they seeing? And then, just what's the schedule for the remaining domains going forward?

D. James Bidzos - VeriSign, Inc.

Todd, do you want to...

Todd B. Strubbe - VeriSign, Inc.

Yeah. Well, we currently have three of the transliterations of com and net generally available. That's two of the Korean or Hangul transliterations, one for com and one for net, and then the Japanese or Katakana script of .com. At this point, we're not providing any additional details on other launches. As we mentioned last quarter, we do continue to work on our licensing process to operate the Chinese IDNs, and we will update as we develop our plans further.

Gray W. Powell - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Got it. Okay. Thank you very much.



Jason Velkavrh - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc.

Got it. Thanks. That's helpful. And then a question on the new gTLDs, the .com, .net transliterations. Realized it's a small base and early, but just curious there. What are you seeing there in terms of renewal rates for those that have lapsed versus what you see for .com and .net?

Todd B. Strubbe - VeriSign, Inc.

We haven't really – the general availability for the earliest ones was not until second quarter of 2016, so we're not up to our first year.

D. James Bidzos - VeriSign, Inc.

Yeah, we haven't lapped yet.

Todd B. Strubbe - VeriSign, Inc.

Yeah, don't have (26:30)

Jason Velkavrh - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc.

Got it. Okay. Do you have an expectation for that to be any different or do you expect that to be around the same?

Todd B. Strubbe - VeriSign, Inc.

I think it's too early to tell. They are such a different product.

D. James Bidzos - VeriSign, Inc.

Yeah, we don't guide to the renewal rates, but there is only a few more months and that information will be available.

Jason Velkavrh - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc.

Got it. Okay. That's all I had. Thanks for the questions.



http://seekingalpha.com/article/4044588-verisign-vrsn-q4-2016-results-earnings-call-transcript

[Drewbert]

Ah. So maybe they're waiting to see what the renewal rates on .コム are, before they launch any more? Does that make sense?

[Jay]

Ah. So maybe they're waiting to see what the renewal rates on .コム are, before they launch any more? Does that make sense?

I think so.

[sbe18]

I think so.


I agree that Japanese data is likely to be more pertinent for them than the Korean.

Accurate transliteration counts for something.

So maybe the Russian, Hindi and Arabic might have 2017 windows.

[clipper]

I agree that Japanese data is likely to be more pertinent for them than the Korean.

Accurate transliteration counts for something.

So maybe the Russian, Hindi and Arabic might have 2017 windows.

I don't think they care much about the inaccuracy in translation. They have their products and they're stuck with them.

Much more important would be the number of renewals at regular price after initial registrations were offered at a discount (Korea offered .net + .com at one price, while Onamae had Japanese .com at >$1).

Their renewal data on Japanese will start rolling in June (general availability at one year), so if we see another launch by September, I'd say we're lucky.

[clipper]

I think the most troubling part of the conference call was the fact that the analysts didn't even know to ask the right question, or when the renewal dates were. It's the analysts' job to hold the executives' feet to the fire. In the case of IDNs, they have no idea and don't care.

It's just another far-flung potential revenue stream that will not likely impact revenue going forward. It would've been nice to get a bone thrown in terms of cost/benefit over the short term, which is what those guys are really good at.