Earlier this morning, I received an email and a press release from .XYZ founder Daniel Negari announcing that his company “has received official approval from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), a Chinese governmental agency in charge of domain name industry.” Here was Daniel’s reaction to the news on Twitter:
In case anyone is curious, I am dancing right now. Boooooooom!!! @xyz #GenXYZ https://t.co/21hPpxB7mg
— DanielNegari (@DanielNegari) December 5, 2016
In scrolling through my Twitter feed this morning and reading my news alerts, it looks like the operators of the .VIP and .Club extensions also received this MIIT approval as well. .Club CEO Colin Campbell also shared the news on Twitter this morning:
.CLUB one of first new gTLDs to receive MIIT approval. Live sites in China are coming https://t.co/dEfwmsBm1r pic.twitter.com/i9VEuoeYSQ
— Colin.club (@ColinDotClub) December 5, 2016
I can’t read the page on the Chinese-government website that Colin linked to because it is entirely in Chinese, but I am sure it was the notice of approval. I did not see any official statement from the .Club registry discussing the news.
It looks like Minds + Machines put out a press release announcing the MIIT approval for .VIP.
From what I understand, this approval means registrants of these three domain extensions can now build websites that are hosted in China. Based on what I have read, this is big news for each of these registries.
According to nTLDStats.com, these three extensions are in the top 10 of new gTLD extensions (by registration volume). Among the three registries, there are a little over 8 million registered domain names. .XYZ has the most registered domain names with nearly 6.7 million. I presume that the government approvals could lead to an increase in registrations for these three extensions.
Great News for the .Club extension, Congrats!
From the M+M press release: Dr Mao Wei, a luminary of the Chinese domain industry and Board Chairman of ZDNS, MMX’s technical partner in China, commented:
“We congratulate dot VIP on its approval and believe it has the potential to become one of the most popular, significant top-level domains in China.”
This is huge news for dot-VIP. And while this extension will never – and should never – hit the multi-million registration mark, the quality names that effectively leverage this extension should do very well.
Here’s a press release from the .Club registry” http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/club-among-first-foreign-domain-name-registries-approved-by-chinese-government-300372886.html
When it comes to China, one of the biggest “no-brainer” TLDs is also one of the least talked about now:
.Gold
That is no surprise right now because of the high registration pricing.
However, the importance of gold in China and the status of China regarding gold is well known among those who know anything at all about the global gold market. Moreover, there are the virtually limitless figurative applications of the word “gold” beyond its literal reference to gold itself.