There are now more than 138 million domain names registered worldwide, according to the new Domain Name Industry Brief (PDF) by VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN). This is a 31% increase over the same quarter in 2006. Country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) grew to about 51.5 million, 36% more than the same quarter last year. The number of new domain name registrations hit an all-time high in the second quarter of 2007 with 14.5 million new registrations.

From VeriSign’s press release:

Not surprisingly, as domain name registrations increased, so have the demands on the registry infrastructures that enable users to register domain names, access Web sites, send emails or conduct commerce and communications. VeriSign’s registry infrastructure continued to experience heavy demand, processing a peak of 30 billion Domain Name System (DNS) queries per day in the second quarter. The VeriSign DNS continued to maintain operational accuracy and stability for 100 percent of the time as it has for the past nine years. As part of its commitment to continually strengthen its infrastructure, VeriSign in February announced Project Titan, a major initiative to expand and diversify the capacity of its global Internet infrastructure by ten times by the year 2010.

“As the Internet grows and becomes more global, so does the challenge to ensure that businesses and Internet users throughout the world can rely upon it,” said Raynor Dahlquist, vice president of Naming Services at VeriSign. “VeriSign is focused on ensuring that as the Internet develops, it remains accessible and operational around the world.”

William Tan, who is senior software engineer at NeuStar and operator of IDNSearch.net, wrote on CircleID that ICANN had been testing IDN top-level domains. Tan says he found out from ICANN’s IDN Program Director Tina Dam that ICANN was doing a live IDN TLD test. As part of the test, ICANN translated the domain extension .test into eleven languages and ten scripts.

ICANN published the following annoucement on its website:

ICANN today finalized the IDN .test Evaluation Plan and continued taking steps toward insertion of IDN strings in the root zone. Recent changes to the plan are based on comments received on the IDN public forum and also from consultations with ICANN Technical Advisory Committees. This last version was approved by the ICANN Board at their 14 August 2007 meeting. The resolution directs ICANN Staff to implement the IDN .test Evaluation Plan, and report back to the ICANN Board following the conclusion of the evaluation.

Specifically, the Board approved the delegation of eleven evaluative top-level domains representing the term ‘test’ translated into: Arabic, Persian, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Russian, Hindi, Greek, Korean, Yiddish, Japanese and Tamil. Following this ICANN Board approval, the delegation request will now go through standard IANA procedures for insertion of top-level domains into the root zone. The technical evaluations of IDN TLDs and their usability in various applications will proceed following their delegation.

This is a major milestone in the IDN Program Plan and signals a significant step forward towards Internationalization of the DNS. It is currently anticipated that delegation of these TLDs and the evaluations, as described in the plan, will commence in September 2007. More information about this project will be made available at http://icann.org/topics/idn. If you have any questions about ICANN’s IDN Program please contact Tina Dam, IDN Program Director at tina.dam@icann.org.

Still today there are always opportunities for newcomers to become a successful domain investor. Four-letter domains are a current investment opportunity, in my opinion.

Many 4-letter domains can still be bought at prices in the low-mid $XXX range, although there have been lots of LLLL.COM sales in the last two months. Most valuable are CVCV.COM domains (consonant/vowel) and VCVC.COM domains, because they’re easy to pronounce as one word and they’re brandable.

Notable sales have been, for example: ADEL.COM ($10,100), BOOQ.COM ($10,000), ZAYO.COM ($7,500), RIPA.COM ($6,000), FARU.COM ($4,000), VAMI.COM ($3,100) and others.

Four-letter domains have seen a steady increase in value since last year and I think their value will continue to go up fast. Compared to the history of 3-letter .com domains, we might see 4-letter domains regularly being sold at 4- or 5-figure prices too in a few years. That’s why LLLL.COM domains are currently hot and why I think buying them now is a good idea.

General manager of public participation at ICANN, Kieren McCarthy, made a post about new generic top-level domains on ICANN’s blog. He asks a good question, namely, what new generic TLDs would be useful and successful as the Internet continues to evolve?

Billions of dollars have been spent on promoting the DotCom brand, so I don’t see how a new gTLD could become as popular as .com anytime in the near future. However, a good gTLD could become the next .net, in my opinion. But what will make a new TLD successful? One gTLD I like is .info, although I must admit I don’t own many .info domain names. It’s a TLD that sort of makes sense to me, because information is what most people are looking for on the Internet. So .info is a very good extension for a Wikipedia-like website. The introduction of .biz, on the other hand, did not make any sense to me, as there has already been a TLD for businesses, which is good old .com. Anyway, none of these newer gTLDs have really been successful so far. DotCom, DotNet and DotOrg are just too big, aren’t they?

Sponsored TLD .mobi saw some good sales shortly after it was introduced, but one hasn’t heard much about it since then. I know, there are lots of domain investors who have spent thousands of dollars on .mobi domains, in the hope of reselling the domains for a big profit. Although it’s true that many people have made money from .mobi by successfully reselling these domains already, I think there is no need for a .mobi TLD, because it’s possible to visit any .com website via modern mobile phones and pocket PCs. Mobile phones such as the iPhone can display normal websites, so special website formats for mobile devices are not required. Therefore, I don’t see any successful future for .mobi. DotCom is just as good a TLD for mobile Internet surfing. The iPhone even has a .com button, which is just another example of the massive branding machine behind the world’s most successful top-level domain!

All of this only shows that new gTLDs have failed in the past, and this doesn’t really answer the question which new top-level domains people would adopt.

In his article, Kieren McCarthy looks at past TLD introductions too:

• .firm: for businesses, or firms
• .store: for businesses offering goods to purchase
• .web: for entities emphasizing activities related to the WWW
• .arts: for entities emphasizing cultural and entertainment activities
• .rec: for entities emphasizing recreation/entertainment activities
• .info: for entities providing information services
• .nom: for those wishing individual or personal nomenclature

This list is interesting for a number of reasons. For one, it is striking that the new gTLDs first approved follow the same pattern as outlined in the report, but without the actual same strings being approved. For example, in the first round, announced November 2000, there were also seven new TLDs.

The .firm and possibly .store TLDs were dealt with through the .biz TLD. The .web TLD has had a long and chequered history and just didn’t happen. The .arts became .museum; .rec was presumably left to dotcom because of the dotcom boom; .info was approved; and .nom (the only TLD that was not patently English) became .name (which patently is). Which left the TLDs that still seem unusual today: .aero, .coop and .pro. It is intriguing that expansion of the Internet was viewed then as an attempt to reflect society in a very sociological, almost paternal, manner: we have business, we have culture, recreation and then personal space.

The next round of approvals in the gTLD space (March 2004) were sponsored, implying an effort to get away from the massive boon in the commercial nature of the Internet, but even so they reflected a commercial edge: .jobs, .mobi, .tel, .travel. There came appreciation of the global nature of the Internet with the approval of .asia and .cat. And the thorny issue of one of the Net’s biggest benefactors - pornography - came in the form of the (rejected) .xxx top-level domain.

Now, what might be the new generic top-level domains of 2008? And which of these TLDs would have the potential to become popular among the majority of Internet users? As with every controversial subject, there are different schools of thought, of course.

One possibility would be the introduction of typo TLDs. Yes, TLDs like .XOM, .CPM and .NT. But why register such TLDs? Well, such domain extensions would be crucial to own for any company that wants to protect its trademarks on the Internet. As of now, domain extension typos are being wrongfully monetized by search engine giants Microsoft and Google. MSFT and GOOG are making millions from these domain name typos! Wouldn’t it be better to let companies register typo TLDs, or why not introduce a global wild card that will automatically forward .XOM and .CPM typos to .COM, .NT to .NET, etc.?

Another possibility is that big Internet companies like Google will launch their own top-level domains. For example, .Google or .GOOG. They could then forward these domains to services they offer. Freemail, web hosting or subdomains, for instance. Google could give away website packages with an email address, web space and a .GOOG domain name for free or at a small annual fee. I’m sure such an approach could come closer to challenging .com than other new gTLDs have come. Google has millions to spend on branding their company’s TLD and they can feature it for free on their existing services. In addition, Google has skilled people and a great infrastructure to offer a .GOOG TLD. Thinking outside the box here, but why not?

A generic TLD I did not like was .TV, but I think this is a promising TLD since Demand Media took it on from VeriSign earlier this year. Demand Media is actively promoting this TLD, and it is offering tools for registrants to easily launch their own online TV channels. That’s a good idea and it might reanimate .TV. The future will tell.

These are the thoughts I had about new generic top-level domains this morning. What do you think? Can new gTLDs still be a success or is .com too big for any other new domain extension to prosper? Which generic TLD would you like to see, or more importantly, which new generic TLD would you register?