It's sex and more sex in the Asian domain name scramble

By Stuart Corner
Friday, 14 March 2008 01:43

Home IT

Whoever said that porn did not dominate the Internet? The 'Landrush' period for .asia domain names has just closed. almost 300 domain names beginning with 'sex' received more than one request for registration and will be auctioned to the highest bidder. And 14 organisations  claimed prior right to use sex.asia.

DotAsia Organisation, the a not-for-profit, community-based organisation set up to administer .asia, says almost 500,000 domain registration applications were received during its three-week 'Landrush' period.  The .asia registry will go live on March 26, after which all new names will be available on a first-come-first-served basis. 45,697 domains received more than one application in Landrush and will go to auction.

"The results exceeded our expectations.  We are very pleased with the enthusiastic demand for the .asia domain. said Edmon Chung, CEO of DotAsia. "This is a testament to the global interest in the thriving Asia Internet marketplace, and the investment appeal for the most prestigious cyber real-estate in Asia. It will be interesting to see which of the domain names would fetch the highest prices in the auction.  I believe we could be in for some surprises."

Of the names receiving multiple requests, "buy.asia" was the most sought after, with over 400 applicants.  Others in the top five were hot.asia, gold.asia, fun.asia, girl.asia.

To date the highest price paid at auction for a .asia domain names at auction is $US20,501 for ace.asia, followed by  tyco.asia at $US7600. These prices fall well short of the millions of dollars paid for generic .com domain names such as flowers.com. Details of auctions held and upcoming at http://www.registry.asia .