GoDaddy now offers .cn domain names

GoDaddy, a technology provider dedicated to small businesses, has brought the total number of domain name extensions it offers to 421 with the addition of the "dot cn" (.cn) domain name to its lineup. This is the country code for China and represents a growing Internet audience looking to get online.

There are more than 1.6 billion Internet users across China*, more than 600 million of whom are in the country. China has registered more than 16 million .cn domain names** but only also has a 50.3%** Internet penetration rate, showing more room to grow.

"Having the ability to offer cross-border commerce with China is important, especially in the Asia Region," said Roger Chen, Vice President of Asia, GoDaddy. “We are pleased to offer the .cn domain name to small businesses to address this growing need.”

“GoDaddy is one of our most important partners; we are looking forward to expanding our .cn domain name business worldwide with GoDaddy,” said CNNIC President & CEO, Xiaodong Lee.

The addition of .cn domain names is part of a larger Asian expansion for GoDaddy. The company recently announced its launch in 11 Asian markets. GoDaddy is now supporting 10 languages and 14 markets across Asia, including: Hong Kong (English and Traditional Chinese), Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia (English and Malay), Philippines (English and Filipino), Singapore (English and Simplified Chinese), South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

In addition to providing domain names, GoDaddy offers associated services such as email addresses linked to the domain name, website creation, and Office 365 provision.

Interested?

Read the TechTrade Asia blog posts about GoDaddy's Asian expansion and about its globalisation strategy

Register a .cn domain name through GoDaddy

*InternetStats.com – November 15, 2015
**CNNIC 37th Statistics Report

GoDaddy is focused on building big, beautiful business identities for small businesses

Irving.

GoDaddy may have started out as a domain name provider, but it now much more. GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving explained that the company's vision is focused on shifting the emphasis to the small businesses which typically to make up the majority of companies in an economy.

According to Irving, small businesses are an underserved yet giant opportunity, even the ones so small that may only have a staff strength of one. "Small businesses are treated as enterprises or consumers and nobody really builds tools for them," he explained.

The business landscape has also changed. Where a simple website and an email address would have sufficed in the past, today's business is expected to maintain a social media presence, complex websites, understand search engine optimisation, market through email and more.

In addition to helping people "get a great name", which is still 52% of the business albeit shrinking in terms of its contribution, GoDaddy has also expanded its support of small businesses to helping them with business identities, from email addresses connected to the domain name to website creation. GoDaddy has also been an Microsoft Office 365 partner since early 2014.

Customer support is a priority for GoDaddy, which understands the small business owner is unlikely to be tech savvy and may need more hotline help for relatively basic tasks. The company has a team of 3,400-plus people in India, China, Europe and the US whose job is to resolve customer problems, no matter how long it takes. "Technology companies don't tend to talk to customers. If you're a giant company and you've got millions of dollars to spend you have a security guy who is yours. With a small business you're left to visit a website for help," Irving said of the typical tech vendor. "(Small businesses) just want to talk to somebody in the local language."

GoDaddy started looking outside of the US fairly recently. "Three years ago we were in English with US currency and US payment types. In 2016 we rolled out to Asia, and for the rest of 2016 we're going to MENA," Irving said. "Regardless of what country you enter, people want to talk with someone. The need for super simple software is everywhere. The problems are pretty homogeneous."

Localisation, Irving shared, includes offering local numbers, local language versions of a website, as well as the "nuanced differences" required by markets including the need to ensure that the imagery on the website truly represents that market.

Today, GoDaddy manages 61 million domains and has 13+ million customers, hosted in data centres around the world including its only Asian data centre in Singapore. Twenty-six languages are supported, as are 44 currencies, in 53 markets. The company has simplified Office 365 installation to a single setup screen against 22 from Microsoft, and can populate a small business' DNS details to create a related email address in under 100 seconds - a task that used to take an IT person 24 hours, Irving noted.

"GoDaddy is the natural on ramp for people to get their business online. We will educate the market on our brand and build awareness for the services we can deliver; we're here to stay," he said. "We will offer locally relevant products, that help small businesses grow and succeed."

Interested?

Read the TechTrade Asia blog post about GoDaddy's Asian expansion

'Dot World' domain name in Chinese, Japanese and Korean now in sunrise period

The DotWorld_IDN Registry, operated by Stable Tone has launched the sunrise period for the DotWorld_IDN top level domain (TLD) in Chinese, Japanese and Korean. This sunrise application period will end on November 10, 2015.

During the sunrise period, prior rights holders with a registered mark in the Trademark Clearing House, as well as rights holders with a nationally registered trademark around the world can register DotWorld_IDN domain names ahead of the public launch. The public launch will open on November 17, 2015, allowing DotWorld_IDN domains to be available for registration by anyone on a first-come, first-served basis.

The two-character domain extension, 世界, pronounced "shijie" in Chinese; "seikai" in Japanese and "segye" in Korean, means the "world" across all three languages, and can target a population of over 1.5 billion.

"We are taking care to ensure that trademark rights holders have a chance to register their brand names with priority in the DotWorld_IDN TLD," said Jason Du, CEO of Stable Tone. "DotWorld_IDN domains are a must-have for brands looking to grow and prosper in China, Japan and Korea."

Namesphere, a sister company of DotAsia, will work with the DotWorld_IDN registry, promoting the  TLD in Asia and beyond.

Interested?

Register a .世界 domain

Landrush for .global, .website and .press domain names today

Online brand expert IP Mirror has announced that several top level domain (TLD) names will be in the landrush phase as of August 27 Singapore time (GMT +8). 

During the 'sunrise' phase for a domain name, trademark owners have an opportunity to register their trademarks, whereas others can come in during the landrush phase to obtain any of the remaining available names at a premium.  

According to the company, .global as the domain descriptor implies a property which reaches an international audience. The landrush phase for the domain name is between 27 August and 4 September, after which registration opens up to the general public on a first-come-first-served basis on 9 September.

The top level domains .website and .press are also beginning their landrush phases on 27 August. 

NetNames opens online brand protection services to companies in SE Asia, Australia

NetNames is offering Southeast Asian and Australian corporations more direct access to its online brand protection services through the acquisitions of Adicio, its long-time partner in Singapore, and WebIP, a corporate domain name management firm in Australia. 

According to NetNames, online brand protection services are used by global brands to prevent counterfeit sales and other forms of online brand infringement.  

Chan Loy Lye, Founder and Managing Director of Adicio, who will continue to lead the business under the NetNames brand, said: "Our partnership with Netnames enabled customers to register domains across every territory worldwide. Extending this to encompass brand protection services comes just at a time when customers are aware of the threats of online piracy leading to the need to safeguard their intellectual property." 
Gary McIlraith, CEO of NetNames said: "We are seeing growth in the number, scale and global reach of brands domiciled in the Southeast Asia region and we believe that there will be an increasing demand from corporates in the region for the comprehensive and integrated set of online brand protection services that NetNames provides to many large companies in Europe and the US." 

In addition, companies in Singapore and Australia will also have access to NetNames' global domain name registration platform, enabling them to work with a single partner to register and manage domain names with direct accreditation in virtually every domain registry worldwide.