How valuable are IDNs

[Michael]

Does anyone here buy IDNs? They have always been somewhat exotic to me...you have to register at special places, you have to know the language etc. I have read about a few people making huge money out of them as they registered them way back when IDNs just started and folks didn't think they would be worth much. The usual story I guess.

[NameSugar]

I've seen some fairly large sales. A quick google search turned up this one:

핸드폰.com (xn--hy1bj30dt7a.com)

Which is Korean and translates to "Hand Phone" sold for $42,250 last year. As far as registrars, most of the big boys do IDNs now, if you're sticking to .com you can use GoDaddy, Name.com, Moniker etc.

I think the obvious play in IDNs is non-latin alphabets but you better be familiar with the language. I would also stick to .com in most cases or the ccTLD of the country if IDNs are available in that extension (some aren't).

The caveat is that if the user's native language characters are that different from the latin characters that it makes a difference in useability, then .com or whatever is probably pretty awkward too. Because of this obvious snag there's already a big push for IDN TLDs or ."idn" which will reset the clock somewhat on the value of most of the best IDN.coms IMO.

With the new vTLDs coming out (possibly) soon, I'd expect these to be some of the first.

So for now I'm holding back for the most part but I do have a few just to play around with for experience's sake. I'm sticking to .com and words in Latin alphabets that use accent marks and some non-english characters.

Here's 2 of my favorites:

çabrasse.com (xn--abrasse-txa.com) to match my cabrasse.com (French)
kováčová.com (xn--kovov-zqac36a.com) to match my kovacova.com (Slovak)

Notice these aren't pure IDN plays, I got them to match existing foreign language .com domains. This way I have the appropriate domain whether the user is on an English keyboard or a native language keyboard.

[Gustavo]

that is a very interesting and well explained answer NameSugar, thank you it was very useful for me too.

[NameSugar]

Glad to help.

Since you're in Spain I assume you are familiar with the Spanish language and from what I hear .es domains are popular there. You might try to get your toes wet with some Spanish character .es IDNs.

[Gustavo]

Yes I am hoping to do that, but I set my self a time table of how I should invest my money. And that includes buying almost nothing in september. A little more in october. And I want to start only with .com, while also searching and learning about ccTLDs. And of course if I find a .es that I know is good I will reg it for sure

[NameSugar]

To follow up, FKA200.com has a post today on some recent "IDN.cn" sales:

卫浴.cn - (Bathroom Vanities) - $3126
机票.CN - (Air Ticket) - $7,150
二手车.CN - (Second Hand Vehicle) - $5,704
高尔夫.CN - (Golf US) - $5,191
塑料.cn - (plastic) - $2310
中药.cn - (Chinese herbal medicine) - $1756
电动车.cn - (electric car) - $1753
数码相机.cn - (digital camera) - $1468
麻将.中国.cn - (Mahjong) - $951
网.CN - (net/network) - $7034
租车.CN - (Car rental) - $3250
杀毒软件.CN - (Kill Virus Software) - $1554
手表.cn - (Watch) - $1490
数码.cn - (digital) - $2193
足球.CN - (Soccer ) - $4415
壁纸.CN - (Wallpaper) - $1102
轮胎.CN - (Tire) - $4765
笔记本电脑.CN - (notebook) - $2330
物业.CN - (Property) - $1930
订房.cn - (book house) - $1875

[predominant]

It would be rather difficult I think, unless you knew the language well enough, as well as the culture, to know wheat they would be going for.

[domainmaster]

What's vTLDs?

[NameSugar]

Originally Posted by domainmaster

What's vTLDs?

"Vanity" Top Level Domains.

Term coined by super-ultra-mega geo-domainer David Castello of Associated Cities to differentiate the flood of new gTLDs (Generic TLDs) expected to be created from the new ICANN proposal to allow anyone with the resources to create their own TLD.

Could also stand for "virtual" TLD.

NameSugar added 2 Minutes and 47 Seconds later...<< Merged Post >>

Originally Posted by predominant

It would be rather difficult I think, unless you knew the language well enough, as well as the culture, to know wheat they would be going for.

Without a doubt. Speakers of multiple languages have a HUGE advantage in this arena. In domaining in general actually.

[LaVa]

i may be wrong, but i think as time will go the idn domains will have less and less value.

i think it's just a 'hype' for some specific terms, in korean for example, and i'm not korean so i dont know if a korean will type in his own language the words 'search engine' and add .com rather than typing 'yahoo.com' when he wants to visit a search engine, for example...

But that is a good point for me to ask a question about idn domains

is there any WIPO case known to have been into existence between a domain and his 'idn' version, for copyright or trademark issues.

For example, any big company which would have an unusual character in its name, and would have used the non-idn version of it and would have to fight against some squatter which would have used the 'real' idn name afterwards. and what the result would be? (i guess the company would win, of course, but may be i'm wrong or may be this never happened, and sorry, i have no single example of name in my head for now lol, but i'm sure this case will happen soon or later if it didnt already)

[NameSugar]

Originally Posted by LaVa

i may be wrong, but i think as time will go the idn domains will have less and less value.

Well it's an opinion so it's hard to be "wrong". I personally agree with you in the long run for the reasons I stated above, mainly that when IDNs move to the right of the dot these will become the natural choice for those who would use them. So I agree but for entirely different reasons.

Originally Posted by LaVa

i think it's just a 'hype' for some specific terms, in korean for example, and i'm not korean so i dont know if a korean will type in his own language the words 'search engine' and add .com rather than typing 'yahoo.com' when he wants to visit a search engine, for example...

It's not really a question of would they because they currently do.

I don't know your nationality but you obviously speak English so we're pretty much in the same linguistic frame of mind. Try to imagine for a second if the internet was invented by Russia, China or say, Saudi Arabia. English speakers would probably start to recognize the most common Cyrillic words but it would still be a huge PITA for us. (This scenario by design also has to assume they would be the dominant economic culture so we would in fact adopt this new-fangled "internet" thing.) We would insist on "Latin" IDNs so we can use the internet as easily as they could and lot of them would probably wonder what the big deal was.

Originally Posted by LaVa

But that is a good point for me to ask a question about idn domains

is there any WIPO case known to have been into existence between a domain and his 'idn' version, for copyright or trademark issues.

For example, any big company which would have an unusual character in its name, and would have used the non-idn version of it and would have to fight against some squatter which would have used the 'real' idn name afterwards. and what the result would be? (i guess the company would win, of course, but may be i'm wrong or may be this never happened, and sorry, i have no single example of name in my head for now lol, but i'm sure this case will happen soon or later if it didnt already)

Good question and yes it has happened. The short answer is that IDNs answer to the same rules and processes as other disputes but the decision can become more complicated given the nature of the problem.

An example of a fairly straightforward decision regarding an IDN is the WIPO case for "monografías.com" (xn-monografas-r8a.com), a Spanish language IDN. WIPO found for the complainant along very common dispute issues like bad faith registration and fair use. As far as I can tell the fact that it was an IDN didn't even come up.

But that one is a Latin character domain. Cyrillic, Arabic or Kanji characters would make a more interesting example. I'll try to find one.

The first (and still biggest) concern was over non-latin characters that resemble or are identical to latin characters. These can be used to make a domain that is very hard to distinguish from it's non-idn counterpart. The potential to use these for phishing and fraud became apparent almost immediately since that's exactly what happened. Sedo had a big problem with these early on as some people thought they had landed a premium domain when they had actually won a confusing IDN. Now they have a handy dandy "IDN" graphic next to the domain. They still need to change their fonts so "vv" doesn't look like "w" but that's another story.

[LaVa]

thank you very much namesugar !

your example with the weird i is great and i look forward to see if you can find any example with the "Cyrillic, Arabic or Kanji characters"

[stizzard]

Originally Posted by NameSugar

Glad to help.

Since you're in Spain I assume you are familiar with the Spanish language and from what I hear .es domains are popular there. You might try to get your toes wet with some Spanish character .es IDNs.

Yep you're right about the .es domains - there seems to be a pretty good market at the moment. I have a few friends who buy and sell them regularly. I have a couple myself too.