On February 5th, several new gTLDs launched!  From DotWhatever.com, we quote:

“Today at 8am PST, a new phase in domain name branding begins as General Availability for seven New gTLD’s will now be available to the general public for registration:  .bike, .clothing, .guru, .holdings, .plumbing, .singles, and .ventures.  After all of the debates and arguments for those for and against introducing new extensions to the domain market, the new gTLDs are finally here.  But is the general public ready for them?  Do they even know they exist?  The people behind these New gTLD’s are certainly banking that they are and do, and that these extensions will be attractive to businesses and people for their branding potential.”

After about a week for the extensions mentioned, we have the following data on registrations:

From the above, one can see that the dot-com extension dominates registrations.  Second, it appears to this observer the extensions released February 5th are probably not achieving the popularity their sponsors had hoped/projected…  But, of course, it’s still early in the game.

For my part, I’ve registered a handful or two of dot-ventures domains and a number of dot-guru’s.  The dot-ventures names either mirror domains I have in dot-com or seem like good speculations.  The dot-guru names I’ve registered are either “geo domains,” that is domains whose value is/will be linked to a specific geographic location, or a domain with a profession or vocation to the left of the dot.

More to follow, but not right away – there are other subjects worth our time.