With half a million .Asia domain registrations to date, it can’t be more crazy than this. So much so, the planned auctions have been postponed to what appears to be an indefinite date. The Landrush had closed on March 12, but due to the overwhelming number of domain registrations, it seems all those domains with more than one applicant will have to take a while to sort through. All 45,697 of them!
So with Pool.com being chosen as the auction organizer, I think things will be getting dirty with some of these highly coveted and contested generic domains. I expect the final auction prices on some of these to reach high figures, and glad I’m just a curious onlooker right now 🙂
I think there are several reasons for the frenzy. It’s pure speculation. It’s gambling. Most buyers willing to pay large sums of money are probably end users running short on ideas on how to spend their money. Owning a nice .Asia domain seems to have become a hobby for them. Check out the auction ticker page here when the auctions actually get going…
My take
I don’t think .Asia has what it takes to be used for anything other than on topics related to Asia, travel, entertainment, or celeb names. And the domain has to be generic enough to be of any present value. It should take off a whole lot more than .EU, because of the large potential user base in Asia, but seriously, I don’t foresee .Asia taking over major sections of the Web in Asia.
Still, I’m waiting for the Asia Go Live phase to commence, when some normalcy should have been restored by then. When the Go Live phase goes into effect, all available domains in .Asia will be placed on a normal “first come, first served” basis, just like the case with other TLDs and registrars elsewhere.
If you had asked me last year if .Asia stood any chance, I would have said “No.”