Last Wednesday marked the start of the sunrise phase in seven first new gTLDs (all of which belong to Donuts), namely bike, .clothing, .guru, .holdings, .plumbing, .singles and .ventures. Before that, trademark owners included in the Trademark Clearinghouse were able to secure their domains during the pre-registration phase. The preliminary results of the last week are now available – and have been an object of many discussions in the domaining community.
So far, it seems that the businesses don't generate much demand for new gTLDs. Through 7 domain zones, there are 1164 registrations, which is quite a humble result, with 560 domain names in .clothing and 44 in .plumbing.
However, many experts note that it is not wise to draw conclusions: firstly, these numbers are probably not final, and, secondly, domain names that have been blocked by trademark holders do not show up in zone files. Donuts offers this service to companies, and the fees are considerably lower than the registration fees.
The registrations have lived to the expectations in terms of audience: .clothing is preferred by the clothing companies, while .bike is popular among bicycle and motorcycle businesses. However, there are some notable exceptions: in .guru, scientology.guru and other "religious" domain names stand next to Apple's apple.guru, iphone.guru, ipad.guru and mac.guru.
Experts say a porn producing company has also secured a name in .plumbing.
