[discuss] Re: Register.com and the Testbed charges effect

[william@dso.net (William X. Walsh)]

My money is on the prepay requirement as the #1 cause of this drop.



On Tue, 8 Jun 1999 09:43:03 +0100, Ivan Pope <ivan@NETNAMES.COM>
wrote:

>Here's a quick and very interesting effect from Register.com introducing
>charges via the Testbed for any journalists out there:
>
>Register.com has always made a lot of its huge number of registrations. On
>their site they claim 745,900
>Domainwatch (http://www.domainwatch.com) has them at 549,593 and in the No.1
>slot globally (You'll need a subscription to see all the data I'm about to
>use).
>
>Domainwatch has them adding 35,057 names to their DNS over the last seven
>days. And 109,147 over the last 30 days. Which averages between 5,000 and
>6,000 per day.
>Yesterday Domainwatch has Register.com adding 47 names to their DNS.
>Register.com have disappeared totally from the 'Top Gainers' chart at
>Domainwatch. They are now in at No.3 in the 'Top Losses' chart with a loss
>of 43 names from their DNS.
>
>No. 2 in the total DNS chart is Worldnic (i.e. NSI) with 159,844 total names
>in the DNS.
>Worldnic went to No.1 in the 'Top Gainers' chart with the addition of 995
>names.
>
>I make no claims for the accuracy of Domainwatch's data.
>There is a discrepancy between Domainwatch's claim of 745,900 and
>Domainwatch's total of 549,593.
>
>The total collapse of Register.com's registration numbers may of course be
>down to first day glitches. It will be interesting to watch this.
>
>However, in all my examinations of Register.com's actual entries in their
>DNS I have never been able to throw up any registrations that actually point
>to working Web sites.
>
>There are tens if not hundreds of thousands of names that start with 800- or
>almost any prefix you can think of.
>
>The 47 names that went in yesterday all seem to be useful real world names!
>47 x $52 (i.e. $70 - NSI fee $18), hardly a world shattering income.
>
>Is this the beginning of the end of the Register.com phenomenum?
>
>Comment from register.com would be interesting.
>
>Cheers,
>Ivan
>
>Ivan Pope
>NetNames
>Managing Your Internet Identity
>
>http://www.netnames.com
>180-182 Tottenham Court Road
>London, W1P 9LE
>+44 171 291 3900
>+44 171 291 3939 (Fax)


--
William X. Walsh
General Manager, DSo Internet Services
Email: william@dso.net  Fax:(209) 671-7934

The Law is not your mommy or daddy to go crying
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