After exactly 10 days and almost 100,000 registrations later, it appears that the XYZ promotion at Network Solutions is coming to an end.
As analyzed by the experts at HosterStats, the Network Solutions ‘DNA’ of .XYZ registrations does not match that of any other gTLD; the mass campaign to inflate the XYZ numbers via robo-registrations led to more than 116,000 .XYZ domains being in the zone file in total.
Domainers collectively regard this practice as a mockery of the the gTLD launch and an abuse of the system. DNJournal used strong words to define the practice, calling it “papering the house.”
As one can see from the nTLDStats web site above, the daily rate of .XYZ domain registrations with Network Solutions maintained its peak during the length of the promotion, and eventually hit bottom on June 13th.
If any of these 98,620+ XYZ domains at Network Solutions were registered by live humans, the rate would have been maintained for days, weeks and months.
Network Solutions automatically allocated free matching .XYZ domains to accounts holding .com domains with an “opt out” clause, some of which were expired or pending deletion; a clear indication their registrants never intended to retain the .com, much less accept the .XYZ freebie.
The game of numbers was also played by domain investors who registered .XYZ domains and attempted to offload them on venues such as Flippa.com. Citing nTLDStats as the source of XYZ registrations, with or without knowledge of the massive Network Solutions promotion, is definitely a misleading way to promote and achieve sales of an unproven gTLD.
Now can i go back to watching Game of thrones …
I’m going to call it like it is:
.XYZ is a crappy, meaningless, extension, launched with crappy, misleading, tactics. The whole thing calls into question Daniel Negari’s personal ethics, his judgement, and his integrity.
Idiotic. All of it!
“Our success has been unreal. So much so that I am HAPPY to announce our acquisition of Yahoo’s former office in Santa Monica, California.” – Daniel Negari
How does one come up with funding for that? Numbers look impressive to investors?
Lol I posted a comment on this flippa listing ( https://flippa.com/3082585-xyz-great-for-domaining-designed-by-domainer-w-100-m-in-domain-trades ) the facts about the real registration numbers of .xyz and said potential buyers should conduct their own research before buying. And my post got deleted short after.
This is what I posted on that Flippa listing:
“98,000+ .XYZ registrations happened at Network Solutions, as part as a freebie opt-out promotion. Basically .com domain owners at Network Solutions got a free .xyz domain to match their .com, those domain owners didn’t even have to accept this .xyz, it went to their account automatically unless they clicked a link to deny the free .xyz domain. As a result, 84% of all .xyz registrations are freebies that domain owners didn’t request (and most of them are not even aware they got this freebie).
You can see network solutions stats here of the .xyz extension: http://ntldstats.com/tld/xyz
You can see the freebie email proof here (screenshot) that Network Solutions send out: http://www.thedomains.com/wp-content/NS_Loyal_Customer_Email_24th_May.png
In other words, out of 116,700 total .xyz registrations only around 18,700 (116,700 – 98,000 freebies) of those are user-initiated and paid. The rest is bogus.
Looking only at real user-initiated /paid registrations (18,700) the .xyz extension is currently stuck at the 12th place of the new gTLD rankings (not number 1).
The only reason .xyz is number 1 on http://ntldstats.com/tld is because ntldstats did not (yet) subtract the 98,000+ freebies from the total .xyz registrations.
Here are some different blog posts concerning the .xyz promotion:
http://domaingang.com/domain-news/bullshit-xyz-campaign-network-solutions-coming-end/
http://www.thedomains.com/2014/06/04/network-solutions-has-no-idea-what-i-am-talking-about
http://onlinedomain.com/2014/06/04/news/xyz-is-dead-disaster-daniel-negari-exposed-xyz-down-to-34th-place-where-is-deals-xyz/
http://www.ricksblog.com/2014/06/walls-jericho/
So to all bidders, conduct your own research before bidding.”
It’s deleted now. Oh well. I’m sure it was read by many.
Also there’s some guy there (mavenllc), who replied to my comment (before it was deleted) stating :
“Those complaining about the free .xyz promotion are not the people who received the free domain, it’s domainers who are invested in .com.”
So naive… Yes I’m a domainer and yes I’m against .xyz yet I have invested in many other new gTLDs. Also there’s much more than just domainers complaining about the fake .xyz registrations. Let’s start with lawyers.
What a trip. Always somebody trying to get over on someone with domains.
Squatters & hustlers. Good grief. I kinda like my xyz
domain, but it fits my niche.