Amazon, Epik, in-person meetings: Thoughts

Here are a few things I’ve been thinking regarding in the domain industry lately.

Could Amazon sell its fresh TLDs? When will Epik pay its clients? And the importance of in-person meetings.

Will Amazon sell its fresh TLDs?

When Amazon noted its latest earnings, it stated it was going to shut down some of its initiatives to trim costs. I have to wonder if the firm will decide to sell off some of its fresh top level domains. It has done very little with its domains. I’d call its efforts to date experiments, and none of these experiments seem to be bearing fruit. I’m sure fresh TLD firms have called in the past regarding extensions like .joy, .talk, .like, and .hot. Maybe they ought to try again as Amazon discovers austerity.

Epik

A couple of weeks ago I interviewed Epik’s CEO regarding what’s going on at the firm. One of my big concerns is that the firm isn’t paying people it owes money to. A bunch still haven’t been paid. The only conclusion I can draw is that the firm doesn’t right now have the money to pay everyone what it owes them. While I’m hopeful that the firm’s fresh management team can turn the firm around, the best way it can prove it is by paying people what it owes them, even if that means raising some outside funds. And yesterday.

In-person meetings

I’m at the ICANN Contracted Parties Summit in Los Angeles. This annual (ahead of Covid) event brings together registrars and registries to talk regarding topics that are impacting them.

It’s only the second in-person domain event I’ve been to since the pandemic hit, and I’m reminded of the importance of getting together in person. I’ve had a lot of great conversations and gotten ideas for stories. These are conversations that wouldn’t have happened in a remote setting.