Lights 1 and 2 Letter .Info Domain Names — ICANN Green

Here comes 1.info.

The ICANN Board approved a resolution granting Afilias the right to register one and two character .info domain names during its Board meeting last Thursday.

.Info registry Afilias made the request in February. It plans to model the distribution of the short domain names similar to how Neustar handled the release of one and two character .biz domain names:

1. Requests for Proposal, where anyone can submit a proposal for developing a particular name. Afilias will award domains to RFPs that meet its goal of broadening awareness of .info.

2. Auction of any domain not given during the RFP

3. Open registration

Neustar’s release of the short domain names resulted in some good sales, particularly ones that could take advantage of the .biz extension. e.Biz sold for $66,001. Most one character .biz domains sold for regarding $5,000 to $15,000, whereas the typical two character domain sold for under $1,000.

The biggest lift in Neustar’s case was inking a deal with Overstock to launch O.biz through its RFP process. It will be interesting to see if Afilias is able to get any big name firms to sign on.