information .LINK - throwing in the towel, and advice from a friend

[ThatNameGuy]

Just a few days ago I sent the following email to Yoni Belousov, Vaughn Liley, and Jeff Gabriel of Nova Registry, the new owners of the .LINK extension;

"Yoni etal.....what a waste of time and money to have created a portfolio of 1,500 .LINK domains believing I could help make .LINK successful.

One of my greatest strengths are the people I've gotten to know through Linkedin, and a few of them had reached out to me because they own .LINK domains.

Marek Eckhaus from Prague owns Sex.link
and
Jim Haung from Shanghai owns Free.link

Furthermore, a domain friend of mine Joe N. from Canada was able to help me get domains like; Bicycle.link, American.link and Dollar.link listed @ Dan, but to no avail in that I haven't received a single inquiry much less offer.

I guess you've heard me say, "If it's to BE, it's up to ME", but without some backing that isn't going to happen.

I consider myself sort of a .LINK walk on who could have been a star, but Nova Registry just doesn't see it that way......SAD!

Finally, i'm blind copying a pretty well respected industry leader that was quoted as saying, ".LINK is no worse than .XYZ", but personally I believe .LINK is far better than .xyz.

Unfortunately, we'll never know."


In addition i copied a few domain friends I made around the world, and here is the response Alessandro from a friend from Italy....you might note I've not heard anything back from anyone at Nova Registry;

Richard

There’s a lot of emotion in this industry, and it’s easy to get caught up on “one thing” … It is important that as investors we diversify our portfolios, own Names that make Sense !

There’s this idea that you should only invest in .com and 90% of “The Domain Industry Club“ will tell you the same thing over and over again like a broken record, BUT the truth is you should invest in good names ^ and understand that what we are all looking to accomplish takes time, effort, and determination ^

2,000,000,000 sites online, you cannot limit all of them to .com much less .net or 10 other extensions … the formation of new industries and new business’ continues to rise - and thus GOOD names become more valuable, I believe this to be true for both .com and combination keyword GTLD examples that match perfectly the left and right of the DOT

I was offered $25,000 for mortgage.loans in 2021 @ the ROTD auction with Monte and I was offered $11,000 for easy.credit at the recent ROTD 2023 auction w/ Monte, meanwhile TeamBank in Germany offered me $1000 even though they are a multi billion dollar company, I received a mysterious offer of $125,000 on DAN for e.credit and the buyer vanished, I had some guy in Monaco offer me 3.2 BTC when BTC was trading @ $55,000 so that he could develop e.credit into an online crypto casino … I bet he feels pretty dumb given where BTC is @ … what is my point, GOOD names receive some attention, and not all the time is that attention going to be “Execution” … In fact more times then not, you are going to run into people who will waste your time,

I have watched the Blue Man Group turn down owning blue.com … I’ve personally talked on the phone with the board of Smith & Wesson; while walking the streets of Venice at night … guess what, they didn’t buy sw.com and neither did Nvidia buy ai.com … I couldn’t sell 77.com to 77Bank in Japan, and Weight Watchers waited for my contract to expire to purchase ww.com … the domain industry is cruel, the priceless opportunity of selling BIG names is a rare thing, patience is the name of the game … Like golf, rare to hit a par much less a Hole In One … BUT damn it feels good when ya do !

1500 .link names, say 10% of that are true quality names Richard @ $1000 bare minimum, that’s $150,000, good $$$ to invest with at the moment. Outbound, outbound, outbound, even if 95% of those leads won’t contact you back …

There was a time when I allowed my emotions to play into the industry, ya just can’t do it, either it works or it doesn’t, and if someone doesn’t understand the value, there is no sense in trying to persuade them, this goes for all names …

And if you invest in GTLDs, focus on exact match keyword combinations,

free.link

direct.link

Instant.link

sex.link (shit, sex.xxx sold for $3M)

big.link

cash.link

soft.link

nice.link

Explain the value, build an audience, and people will then come to you … because believe it or not, there are people in the world with the same ideas as you …

So continue walking tall, put that Big Brain of yours to use, relinquish some of your grand names at a discount, and invest moving forward … if you have that BIG name, don’t sell it, you may want to, but don’t do it, you can put a large price tag on that one BIG name, but that’s it ^ focus on everything else, diversify, and move forward >>>

Best wishes !

Alessandro


Finally, while I still believe in the .LINK extension, without committed support from the Registry and it's owners I just decided to throw in the towel.......VERY SAD!!!

ps. thank you Alessandro

 

[Nodws]

Will NEVER spend a single cent of VANITY or New TLDs.
the only value is imaginary given by a potential buyer

 

[chenzen]

.

 

[ThatNameGuy]

Will NEVER spend a single cent of VANITY or New TLDs.
the only value is imaginary given by a potential buyer

I hear you, especially as long as registry's like Nova Registry (owner of .LINK) jerk their biggest promoter and fan around like they have.

They could give a shit that I invested in 1,500 .LINK domains, approximately $10,000, PLUS hundreds of hours of my time.

As an fyi.....it was all I could do to SHAME the bastards at Nova Registry to even talk with me about plans that I had to help promote .LINK. Thank God i could afford to take the loss, but like the assholes at GD, the assholes at Nova Registry are no different

 

[Joe N]

I hear you, especially as long as registry's like Nova Registry (owner of .LINK) jerk their biggest promoter and fan around like they have.

They could give a shit that I invested in 1,500 .LINK domains, approximately $10,000, PLUS hundreds of hours of my time.

As an fyi.....it was all I could do to SHAME the bastards at Nova Registry to even talk with me about plans that I had to help promote .LINK. Thank God i could afford to take the loss, but like the assholes at GD, the assholes at Nova Registry are no different

I understand your feeling of frustration. I hope you'll go back and read some of my previous posts, as I think a lot of what I raised might explain why they reacted that way (or failed to react).

 

[BaileyUK]

And I've spent well over $200,000 on .com domains. So you ba***rds best make me a big rich player and allow me in.

Now if only...

 

[jberryhill]

1500 domains! That's quite a few.

But in the time that Nova Registry has managed .link:

...registrations have gone from 126K to around 240k. That's an increase of 190%

By way of comparison, new gTLDs overall:

...have gone from around 26M to around 31M. An increase of 123%

So, despite whatever criticism you might have of them, they have so far outperformed new gTLDs generally by a wide margin.

The .link registry has sold 240,000 domain names. How many have you sold?

 

[ThatNameGuy]

1500 domains! That's quite a few.

But in the time that Nova Registry has managed .link:


...registrations have gone from 126K to around 240k. That's an increase of 190%

By way of comparison, new gTLDs overall:



...have gone from around 26M to around 31M. An increase of 123%

So, despite whatever criticism you might have of them, they have so far outperformed new gTLDs generally by a wide margin.

The .link registry has sold 240,000 domain names. How many have you sold?

Glad you chimed in Sir Berryhill.......thanks for providing a perfect example of how statistics LIE. Prior to purchasing .LINK from Frank Schilling and Uniregistry .LINK had as many as 400,000 DUM (domains under management). I didn't buy my first .LINK domain until May of 2022 at which time total reg's had gone from 127K to 200K (no idea where the additional 73K domains came from? Unless they were insiders, domain investors like myself didn't learn about Yoni Belouslov's purchase until Andrew Allemann wrote about it May 18th 2022 on Domain Name Wire (aka DNW).

When I pointed out the lackluster growth of .LINK a few months ago to Jeff Gabriel CEO of SAW.com and one of the new owners of .LINK, he shared the same charts and graphs that you shared here. Then he attempted to point out to me what a great job the new GM Vaughn Liley was doing to turn .LINK around

I should have suspected something was amiss when Liley, .LINK's GM was trying to discourage me from adding additional domains to my portfolio and much to his chagrin, i didn't listen.

Sir Berryhill, since my post here about "throwing in the towel" .LINK has dropped/lost almost 7,000 domains so it appears even their lackluster performance may have come to an end.

Now do you believe my comments about statistics LYING. Prior to learning about the domain industry in 2017, i use to trust most everyone i had business dealings with, but the domain industry is a totally different story

 

[jberryhill]

Btw, if anyone wants to see some real comedy gold... Mr. "They won't let me tell them how to run their business" was publicly threatening to sue them for some imagined grievance last year:

https://www.namepros.com/threads/who-to-sue.1281459/

Now back to my original question....Who to sue? So far you've seen just just two names involved in this transaction NameSilo and Sedo, however there are a lot more. Without going into details here are other names associated with the domain Invest.link;

Uniregistrty - Frank Schilling
Afternic - a Go Daddy company
Dan.com
Nova Registry LTD

While i haven't met with my lawyer yet.....who would you sue? All the above? By starting this thread I'm just trying to shed light on an industry that needs critical exposure.

So, gee, maybe posting on a message board that you want to sue someone is not the best lead up to an "I want to be a part of your marketing" pitch.

 

[jberryhill]

...registrations have gone from 126K to around 240k. That's an increase of 190%

Also... this is why you don't let your lawyer do your accounting, but the point is clear.

 

[ThatNameGuy]

I understand your feeling of frustration. I hope you'll go back and read some of my previous posts, as I think a lot of what I raised might explain why they reacted that way (or failed to react).

Joe.....your were right when you said; "Remember that registries generally don't like domainers." What was i thinking And to think i even own the domain iLuvEveryonecom.

You may recall that I liked a lot of the new gTLD's from the get go after seeing how a local charity uses PingPong.gives to raise over 100K a year for diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. As it turns out I took significant positions in .homes, .realty, .online and lately .link. I took these positions because they made good business sense (a businessman all my life) to me, and ironically they still do.

However, when Jim Schrand the CEO of Dominion Enterprise expected me to pay 85K for HomeSweet.homes when I'd already done him a big favor, I should have known the likes of Go Daddy representing gTLD Radix would attempt to rip me off by stealing Reservations.com and turning around and try to sell it back to me for 500K

Finally, because Go Daddy is the entity with the deepest pockets, a Class Action law suit led by me as the lead plaintiff appears to be the only way to make my mark in the domain industry. Fortunately GD exposing themselves in several ways have invited my intent to prove justice through courts. Maybe for every domain they valued @ over a thousand dollars when I purchased them, and now they value them at <less than $100, they'll settle the Class Action suit for at least a thousand dollars per domain.

Sir Berryhill, since you started a thread somewhat similar to this post about the unethical practices at Go Daddy, maybe you'd be interested in a Class Action suit against them. What do you say

 

[ThatNameGuy]

Also... this is why you don't let your lawyer do your accounting, but the point is clear.

This from Andrew Allemann DNW announcement posted on 5/18/2022;

".Link has close to 200,000 domains in the zone, down from a peak of over 400,000 in 2016. However, that peak was partially driven by self-registrations at Uniregistry."

Sir Berryhill.....where did the additonial 73K registrations from 127,000 to 200,000 come from prior to this news wire? Were they yours? Maybe Jeff Gabriel of SAW.com can explain. I know they weren't any of the 1,500 .link domains I registered since I didn't start registering .link domains until after reading this. Do you understand the question Sir Berryhill?

 

[bmugford]

This from Andrew Allemann DNW announcement posted on 5/18/2022;

".Link has close to 200,000 domains in the zone, down from a peak of over 400,000 in 2016. However, that peak was partially driven by self-registrations at Uniregistry."

Sir Berryhill.....where did the additonial 73K registrations from 127,000 to 200,000 come from prior to this news wire? Were they yours? Maybe Jeff Gabriel of SAW.com can explain. I know they weren't any of the 1,500 .link domains I registered since I didn't start registering .link domains until after reading this. Do you understand the question Sir Berryhill?

You can see the current numbers here -

https://ntldstats.com/tld/link

Here is the full chart -

 

[bmugford]

Finally, because Go Daddy is the entity with the deepest pockets, a Class Action law suit led by me as the lead plaintiff appears to be the only way to make my mark in the domain industry. Fortunately GD exposing themselves in several ways have invited my intent to prove justice through courts. Maybe for every domain they valued @ over a thousand dollars when I purchased them, and now they value them at <less than $100, they'll settle the Class Action suit for at least a thousand dollars per domain.

 

[ThatNameGuy]

Thanks Brad.....that would make for a couple hundred thousand dollars which isn't much ALL things considered. That's just for me, but the "Class" would be looking at a couple hundred million all things considered

 

[jberryhill]

Do you understand the question Sir Berryhill?

Not really, no. Not having been knighted or received any other royal honors, I don't understand the use of "Sir" either.

Brad posted the history of .link registrations, and there are a couple of features I can certainly recognize and explain. As many folks here know, I was counsel to Frank Schilling and his various domain businesses since very near the start of his career in domains in 2000, until April 8, 2020 when the $150M sale to GoDaddy closed. That record of advice speaks for itself.

While the Uniregistry registry operation continued to run .link for short while after that, the TLDs were sold at auction in mid 2021. It's also worth noting that Jeff Gabriel managed the Uniregistry brokerage operation from around 2012 until shortly before the GoDaddy sale, and that Vaughn Liley was engaged by the registry operation from, I believe, around 2014 forward, so I've known and worked with them for a decade. Finally, for the purpose of transparency, I have advised Saw.com on occasional transactional matters. I am not engaged by Nova Registry in any matter or in general.

Your question, as I understand it, is along the lines of "where did registrations come from prior to a DomainNameWire article in May 2022."

Well, golly, the graph shows a fairly modest launch with a big rectangular structure which I've indicated by a horizontal arrow. As noted in the DNW article, that huge chunk of registrations corresponds to the "North Sound Names" portfolio. Initially, Frank had not planned to speculate in his own TLDs. It is fair to say that demand for new TLD registrations was lower than anticipated. So, as shown in the diagram, he did indeed register a huge quantity of names. That, incidentally, required a substantial trademark risk management effort.

Absent that "mesa" structure, the registration profile would have been a fairly simple rise and fall, corresponding to the initial interest, and subsequent lack thereof, in new TLDs generally:

The demise of the "North Sound Names" portfolio was probably more of a function of competing factions within Uniregistry. The brokerage preferred having a lot of names to sell at negotiated prices. The registry camp wanted to have tiered premium pricing at the registry level to boost their revenue numbers. Eventually, Frank sided with the registry, and the in-house portfolio was dropped.

Additionally, in 2017, Frank increased the prices in the Uniregistry TLDs, in some instances dramatically, which, absent the North Sound Names block, would probably be the peak in the pre-2020 curve. In fact, you can see a big drop in the middle of that block, which was probably around the time of those increases.

Significantly, those increases, among other issues, led to GoDaddy's decision not to carry any Uniregistry TLDs, and I believe that only recently have a few made it back in under their new owners.

As is well documented, Frank finally decided to get out of the registry business as well. GoDaddy didn't want the registry piece, and neither did anyone else, so Uniregistry had the well-documented auctions of their TLDs (and the further direct sale of .hiphop). Apparently, the idea of also selling corresponding TLD "NFT" tokens, along with advertising the auctions in a way that suggested "ownership" of the TLDs caused a number of problems closing those auctions, since both of those promotional ideas are red flags to ICANN (which should have been obvious to their legal counsel).

So, the auction sale of the Uniregistry TLDs, including .link, is shown by the vertical downward-pointing arrow. There is a sharp dropoff prior to the sale of the TLD. As I was no longer engaged by Uniregistry at that time, I wouldn't know what that might represent. If I had to guess, I would suppose that Uniregistry's impending sale of the TLD likewise ended a pricing promotion with one or more registrars at that time.

In any event, under the management of Nova Registry, the growth of .link has exceeded that of new gTLDs in general, and they apparently do not want your assistance in running their business. That would be a wise choice on their part in view of the fact that prior to approaching them with your "help" you were threatening to sue them back in 2022 on a public message board.

So, maybe that answers your question, to the extent I can make any sense out of it, and maybe it doesn't. I'm not sure I understand your question, nor do I understand what is your gripe with Nova Registry anyway. I buy a lot of Shimano bicycle parts, but I don't make a pest of myself to their management about how I think they should run their business, nor do I think that most businesses are generally open to the idea of having someone wander in and anoint them with whatever it is they demand, regardless of whether they represent some subfraction of their business. As an IP lawyer, I can generally speak to the inadvisability of businesses doing that sort of thing, because it happens fairly often that someone will show up on the doorstep with a bag full of ideas which that business may have already pursued or have been pursuing, and then that person will later claim their ideas to have been "stolen".

If you are unhappy with your .link domains, perhaps you might simply let them expire and return to your other pursuits of revolutionizing the game of golf with your "9time" concept, solving world hunger by chasing after the USOC with your "Olympic" domain names, or any of the other outstandingly successful ideas which have continued to flow out of you like piss into a river for the last 100 years or whatever.

 

[ThatNameGuy]

Not really, no. Not having been knighted or received any other royal honors, I don't understand the use of "Sir" either.

Brad posted the history of .link registrations, and there are a couple of features I can certainly recognize and explain. As many folks here know, I was counsel to Frank Schilling and his various domain businesses since very near the start of his career in domains in 2000, until April 8, 2020 when the $150M sale to GoDaddy closed. That record of advice speaks for itself.

While the Uniregistry registry operation continued to run .link for short while after that, the TLDs were sold at auction in mid 2021. It's also worth noting that Jeff Gabriel managed the Uniregistry brokerage operation from around 2012 until shortly before the GoDaddy sale, and that Vaughn Liley was engaged by the registry operation from, I believe, around 2014 forward, so I've known and worked with them for a decade. Finally, for the purpose of transparency, I have advised Saw.com on occasional transactional matters. I am not engaged by Nova Registry in any matter or in general.

Show attachment 241648

Your question, as I understand it, is along the lines of "where did registrations come from prior to a DomainNameWire article in May 2022."

Well, golly, the graph shows a fairly modest launch with a big rectangular structure which I've indicated by a horizontal arrow. As noted in the DNW article, that huge chunk of registrations corresponds to the "North Sound Names" portfolio. Initially, Frank had not planned to speculate in his own TLDs. It is fair to say that demand for new TLD registrations was lower than anticipated. So, as shown in the diagram, he did indeed register a huge quantity of names. That, incidentally, required a substantial trademark risk management effort.

Absent that "mesa" structure, the registration profile would have been a fairly simple rise and fall, corresponding to the initial interest, and subsequent lack thereof, in new TLDs generally:


Show attachment 241650

The demise of the "North Sound Names" portfolio was probably more of a function of competing factions within Uniregistry. The brokerage preferred having a lot of names to sell at negotiated prices. The registry camp wanted to have tiered premium pricing at the registry level to boost their revenue numbers. Eventually, Frank sided with the registry, and the in-house portfolio was dropped.

Additionally, in 2017, Frank increased the prices in the Uniregistry TLDs, in some instances dramatically, which, absent the North Sound Names block, would probably be the peak in the pre-2020 curve. In fact, you can see a big drop in the middle of that block, which was probably around the time of those increases.

Significantly, those increases, among other issues, led to GoDaddy's decision not to carry any Uniregistry TLDs, and I believe that only recently have a few made it back in under their new owners.

As is well documented, Frank finally decided to get out of the registry business as well. GoDaddy didn't want the registry piece, and neither did anyone else, so Uniregistry had the well-documented auctions of their TLDs (and the further direct sale of .hiphop). Apparently, the idea of also selling corresponding TLD "NFT" tokens, along with advertising the auctions in a way that suggested "ownership" of the TLDs caused a number of problems closing those auctions, since both of those promotional ideas are red flags to ICANN (which should have been obvious to their legal counsel).

So, the auction sale of the Uniregistry TLDs, including .link, is shown by the vertical downward-pointing arrow. There is a sharp dropoff prior to the sale of the TLD. As I was no longer engaged by Uniregistry at that time, I wouldn't know what that might represent. If I had to guess, I would suppose that Uniregistry's impending sale of the TLD likewise ended a pricing promotion with one or more registrars at that time.

In any event, under the management of Nova Registry, the growth of .link has exceeded that of new gTLDs in general, and they apparently do not want your assistance in running their business. That would be a wise choice on their part in view of the fact that prior to approaching them with your "help" you were threatening to sue them back in 2022 on a public message board.

So, maybe that answers your question, to the extent I can make any sense out of it, and maybe it doesn't. I'm not sure I understand your question, nor do I understand what is your gripe with Nova Registry anyway. I buy a lot of Shimano bicycle parts, but I don't make a pest of myself to their management about how I think they should run their business, nor do I think that most businesses are generally open to the idea of having someone wander in and anoint them with whatever it is they demand, regardless of whether they represent some subfraction of their business. As an IP lawyer, I can generally speak to the inadvisability of businesses doing that sort of thing, because it happens fairly often that someone will show up on the doorstep with a bag full of ideas which that business may have already pursued or have been pursuing, and then that person will later claim their ideas to have been "stolen".

If you are unhappy with your .link domains, perhaps you might simply let them expire and return to your other pursuits of revolutionizing the game of golf with your "9time" concept, solving world hunger by chasing after the USOC with your "Olympic" domain names, or any of the other outstandingly successful ideas which have continued to flow out of you like piss into a river for the last 100 years or whatever.

Speaking of "piss into a river".....your words not mine, the diatribe I just read fits perfectly. That said however, I'm impressed that you care enuf to follow me like you do. And as for your "bicycle parts" analogy, you should know that I registered Bicycle.link last June, and i even had a potential buyer for it, a friend, college classmate, lawyer and new CEO of ConteBikes.com, one of the fastest growing bike shops in America.

If, and only IF the folks at Nova Registry had been even slightly accommodating, my buddy might have invested in me via the domain Bicycle.link. That's hindsight however, "IF my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle"

Finally, i guess you responded to me here on NamePros because I copied you on the email I'd sent a few hours ago to Jeff Gabriel (one of Nova Registry's new owners) originally titled, "Seriously, WTF!!!"

Thanks for the diatribe Sir Berryhill

 

[bmugford]

Speaking of "piss into a river".....your words not mine, the diatribe I just read fits perfectly. That said however, I'm impressed that you care enuf to follow me like you do. And as for your "bicycle parts" analogy, you should know that I registered Bicycle.link last June, and i even had a potential buyer for it, a friend, college classmate, lawyer and new CEO of ConteBikes.com, one of the fastest growing bike shops in America.

If, and only IF the folks at Nova Registry had been even slightly accommodating, my buddy might have invested in me via the domain Bicycle.link. That's hindsight however, "IF my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle"

Finally, i guess you responded to me here on NamePros because I copied you on the email I'd sent a few hours ago to Jeff Gabriel (one of Nova Registry's new owners) originally titled, "Seriously, WTF!!!"

Thanks for the diatribe Sir Berryhill

Why do you expect everyone to partner with you?

Maybe they are not interested in what you are selling.

It is unclear what you really expected the registry to do.

Many people have invested orders of magnitude more than you on domains, and they don't expect to become partners (or whatever) with the registry.

I sold (2) .US domains for like $11K+ in the last couple days. Should the registry partner with me now?

Judging by the registration numbers, .LINK seems to be doing fine.

However, it seems pretty dead as an investment.

Brad

 

[ThatNameGuy]

Why do you expect everyone to partner with you?

Maybe they are not interested in what you are selling.

It is unclear what you really expected the registry to do.

Many people have invested orders of magnitude more than you on domains, and they don't expect to become partners (or whatever) with the registry.

I sold (2) .US domains for like $11K+ in the last couple days. Should the registry partner with me now?

Judging by the registration numbers, .LINK seems to be doing fine.

However, it seems pretty dead as an investment.

Brad

Brad....according to ntldstats.com, .LINK ranked 24th in size when i first learned about them, and although they haven't dropped, they haven't moved up either. At best their growth has been lackluster.

Maybe they should have partnered with me. You're right, having dropped 7,000 domains in the last 10 days, "it seems pretty dead as an investment."

 

[jberryhill]

I copied you on the email

I would have no idea. I blocked your email address ages ago when you used to send unwanted emails to lists of various people.

And, wow, you almost sold a domain to someone. That’s really exciting. But, somehow, other people manage to develop domain names without requiring the registry to get involved. It’s too bad that you and your friend couldn’t figure out how to do that.

 

[Lox]

Maybe they should have partnered with me.

I think, you are too passionate. Just invest in stock. CentralNic, Verisign, etc. You can still play w a small number of one-two word names ... but be a disciplined DN investor.

Regards

 

[ThatNameGuy]

I think, you are too passionate. Just invest in stock. CentralNic, Verisign, etc. You can still play w a small number of one-two word names ... but be a disciplined DN investor.

Regards

"too passionate", ironically i happen to own the domain PassionSells.xxx (not .link). I do agree with your assessment Lox, and like Larry Davids "Curb your Enthusiasm" too much passion can be a detriment

Thanks for the advice Lox, and I'll do my best to "Curb my Passion"

 

[ThatNameGuy]

I would have no idea. I blocked your email address ages ago when you used to send unwanted emails to lists of various people.

And, wow, you almost sold a domain to someone. That’s really exciting. But, somehow, other people manage to develop domain names without requiring the registry to get involved. It’s too bad that you and your friend couldn’t figure out how to do that.

Lol....."I rarely read PM's, send email instead."

 

[anantj]

If you are unhappy with your .link domains, perhaps you might simply let them expire and return to your other pursuits of revolutionizing the game of golf with your "9time" concept, solving world hunger by chasing after the USOC with your "Olympic" domain names, or any of the other outstandingly successful ideas which have continued to flow out of you like piss into a river for the last 100 years or whatever.

Holy crap. This was beautiful

 

[ThatNameGuy]

If you are unhappy with your .link domains, perhaps you might simply let them expire and return to your other pursuits of revolutionizing the game of golf with your "9time" concept, solving world hunger by chasing after the USOC with your "Olympic" domain names, or any of the other outstandingly successful ideas which have continued to flow out of you like piss into a river for the last 100 years or whatever.

Sir Berryhill as an fyi for....according to ntldstats.com your friends at .link dropped/lost another 1,289 DUM (domains under management) today alone. Since starting this thread about "Throwing in the Towel" just 10 days ago, .LINK has lost almost 4% of its DUM portfolio.

Regardless of whether i had anything to do with it, Brad Mugfords comment, "it seems pretty dead as an investment.", seems spot on!

I bet too your former buddies from Uniregistry are happy you showed up here to defend their reputation

 

[VRdommy]

Personally, if the initial post was about .LINKED
I can only say that I have some that I use for websites dealing with ham radio.
But I don't need them. For those folks the IP address is just fine. They bookmark the same way.
It's a convenience thing. Not needed in a close knit community.

As an investment instrument for .LINKED,
I find little use of them. And the use I see is like any other gTLD. Where it can compliment the name.
So there is use. Just not widespread. But perhaps something can happen to change any of that in the future.

If the initial post was actually about the domain industry and sales using .LINKED by example....
I can only say what I have already been saying for over 10 years. Since it use to be that SEO use of key terms made some value in a name.
Facebook came along and changed that for many. They didn't need a domain at all or nothing exactly to what they were or doing.
At the same time, Google was changing search to remove the SEO value of a name in domains. Some of which was a reaction to search traffic theft arguments.

Given that history, how could anyone suppose gTLD's were going to help that 'a lot'.
Yes, there are a bunch once again where the gTLD compliments the name.
It did lower demand for some .com's since there were clever alternatives.
But anyone should have been able to see that it was going to be a struggle to keep the registries afloat.

If not for domain investors, many gTLD's would be under water as we speak. But at some point, all those holdings will have to show value or suffer some fate. But when. Survival of the fittest I guess.

It is what it is even if I don't like it or even if I do. We can't change it, just react to it if you have been paying attention.