Dot Club wrote on their blog today that they will no longer scoop up deleting .club names that they deem as valuable. The only exception being registry reserved names. Hopefully down the line they would even allow those domains to drop. The chance of getting something truly premium builds a modicum of excitement around an extension.
That’s the one thing I think is happening with a lot of new gtlds, investors have grown weary and some disgusted. Registries that allow names to drop will have a leg up IMO. I know this was true with .tv when it was just Verisign running the show at WWW.tv. Picking up LCD.tv on a drop for $30 in 2004 was what grew my enthusiasm for the extension even though I knew most names were premium. The hunt for the outlier gets fans of your extension to pay more attention.
From the Dot Club Blog:
As you may know, in the past, as a registry we have often recovered certain valuable deleting names and reserved them for release as tiered premium names through the registrar channel. While a common business practice, we have heard from many in the domain investing community who would prefer for such names to naturally flow through the deleting and dropping process, remain available for all drop catching services, and if not picked up then enter general availability.
We have listened, and effective October 1st, we will no longer recapture deleting names as the registry. Names that were previously Registry Reserved that happen to drop and delete, would remain reserved.
