Hi folks,
Here's a link that may be of interest to participants in the domain name
debates.
http://www.flywheel.com/ircw/trends.html
The bottom line is that, since I began collecting this data in April
last year, registrations within the InterNIC's "Big 3" gTLDs have
increased 261 percent while registrations in ISO ccTLDs have increased
188 percent. There are some anomalies in the source data which undermine
faith in the precision of these numbers and the utility of using them to
perform analysis on a month-to-month basis, but I accept them as
reasonably credible with regard to long-term trends.
Consequently, it is safe to argue that NSI has significantly improved
its already formidable market position against competing registries.
The highlight of the page is a chart and a table with supporting data.
Text from the page follows.
(Sorry if the graph is hard to view for people running less than
1024x768. There aren't enough hours in this day to figure out the
resolution arcana of Excel's html converter.)
...
Since April 1998 data was collected from www.domainstats.com, a site
maintained by Netnames, International. To this extent this information
is reliable, it shows that the growth in registrations in under .com,
.net, and .org now solidly outpaces growth in registrations within the
ISO ccTLDs. An earlier series of data from 1997 reported by Mark
Henderson-Thynne of NetNames showed that ccTLD registrations slightly
outpaced growth in the InterNIC's commodity TLDs that year.
This substantial change in growth trends demonstrates that NSI is
consolidating a robust advantage in the domain name market.
Please note:
There are some glaring unexplained anomalies in Netnames' reports which
may invalidate this data for fine, short-term analysis.
None of my comments regarding anomalies in the source data should be
taken as criticism of NetNames. The numbers were made available to the
public through the DomainStats site, and I think they reflect a fair
effort to consolidate a complex data set from a diverse array of
sources. One can always hope for more accuracy (and independently
verifiable substantiation of that accuracy), but I am grateful to have
this.
The drop in InterNIC registrations illustrated at the end of 1998 is
unlikely to have occurred as shown, and is probably due to a change in
Netnames' collection and reporting procedures.
Results reported for the InterNIC TLDs at the DomainStats site was
clearly incorrect in April 1999. To smooth over that error I
interpolated that month's series for InterNIC registrations by summing
the prior and following month's totals and inserting the rounded
average. Also, close inspection of the data for certain countries,
particularly Brazil (.br) and South Africa (.az), raises questions about
the up-to-date accuracy of NetNames' reporting, as do occasionally
static reports for other ccTLDs like Germany (.de) and Denmark (.dk).
Please also note that both the ccTLD and InterNIC data for February 1999
is interpolated because I didn't capture the source report from NetNames
for that month. And not all data was captured consistently on the first
of the month, either because the DomainStats site was not available, or
because of my forgetfulness.
Errors and inconsistencies in checksums general reflect small
inconsistencies in sums published at the DomainStats site.
With the exception of the first dates along the X axis data were
collected on or about the first of the month for successive months.
Those first two dates were considerably farther apart, and therefore the
trend lines for those dates should not be as steep as is shown.
Despite these caveats, the information is useful and interesting.
1) Even if Netnames has substantially underreported ccTLD registrations,
it is abundantly clear that the growth of InterNIC registrations
outpaces ccTLD registrations. I estimate the shortfall is approximately
500,000 ccTLD registrations. This is currently less than a month's worth
of business for NSI, but far exceeds the size of the largest ccTLD.
2) Many observers expected that pent-up demand for new gTLDs would go to
highly advertised leased ccTLDs like Niue (.nu). That zone did grow by
640 percent over the study period, but accounts for a small number of
registrations�just over 40,000�and less than 1 percent of ccTLD
registrations. Its impact on non-InterNIC growth is insignificant.
....
That's it. I hope the chart is readable. Constructive criticism is of
course welcome.
Craig Simon
More at http://www.flywheel.com/ircw/overview.html
