February State of the Domain Report Documents Tapering of Five Months of Shrinkage in COM, NET and ORG Names.

Business Editors

PORTLAND, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 25, 2002

February report shows loss of approximately 565,000 names from CNO zone files while BIZ and INFO growth rates taper off; NAME posts

62,000 in first six weeks

Domain name infrastructure and data provider SnapNames(TM) reported today in the February period edition of State of the Domain that the total number of registered COM, NET and ORG (CNO) domain names continued to erode, while BIZ and INFO registration growth rates have decreased by 30%. Early projections show that the erosion in CNO names may be slowing, and that new domain name sales and renewal rates are already showing signs of improvement after five months of continuous decline.

Highlights of the report also include:

-- Shrinkage in the zone file (the master file of all names registered under a top-level domain, or TLD) continues to be a result of non-renewal of "promotional" names that were given away by some of the largest registrars in the heyday of the domain name speculator boom one to two years ago.

-- Marketplace leaders continue to see their dominant positions weaken. VeriSign Registrar alone lost approximately 756,000 names, while Register.com and BulkRegister lost approximately 84,000 and 38,000 names, respectively. Rankings in the roster of top ten registrar marketplace leaders, stable for the past year, are trending strongly toward additional fluidity by the second or third quarter of 2002.

-- A handful of savvy smaller players continue to aggressively add to their positions. Fastest-growing GoDaddy continued its push into the top ten by adding almost 75,000 names in February.

-- The growth rate of additions to the BIZ and INFO zone files has slowed from approximately 1,500 to 1,000 names per day. Utilization rate (activation of live web sites) in these new namespaces so far is in the range of 1% to 3%.

-- Since NAME registrations were made available on January 15, slightly more than 62,000 registrations have been sold. Of these domain name registrants, 71%, or 44,256, also accepted complementary e-mail service (the NAME registry is the first ICANN-governed TLD to "unbundle" the web site name from the e-mail domain). Present accretion rate in NAME is approximately 750 names per day.

The report also provides an on-the-scene recap of the March 2002 ICANN meetings in Ghana with a special focus on ICANN CEO Stuart Lynn's reform recommendations. Also included this month is an in-depth public service article on the business challenges and new technologies surrounding the issue of fraud prevention for domain name registrars and registries. The free report is available at www.snapnames.com/stateofthedomain.html or by e-mail request at [e-mail].

Data highlights

Table 3: Total Registrations per gTLD (CNO, INFO, BIZ/Feb. 2002)

                      Registrations             Change
gTLD          As of 1/31/02  As of 2/28/02       Net

COM            22,610,316      22,187,641    (422,675)
NET             3,953,210       3,846,007    (107,203)
ORG             2,468,091       2,418,123     (49,968)
CNO Total      29,031,617      28,451,771    (579,846)

BIZ               520,274         554,638      34,364

INFO              711,758         740,559      28,801

NAME                   NA          62,334(a)       NA

Totals         30,263,649      29,809,302    (454,347)

(a) Reflects registrations sold as of 2/26/02 and processed 3/12/02.

About SnapNames

SnapNames.com, Inc., the provider of domain name infrastructure technology and authoritative industry data and analysis, uses its patent-pending technology to facilitate an equal-opportunity secondary domain name marketplace. For more information, visit www.snapnames.com or call 800/385-4075. SnapNames is headquartered in Portland, Oregon.

EDITORIAL NOTES

Editors and reporters are invited to the State of the Domain Industry Conference, July 22-23, 2002, in San Francisco. The premier event for industry executives, the event id designed to provide a discussion and networking forum for venture capitalists, investment bankers, and analysts. Please contact Mason Cole (see CONTACT information) for more information.

-- Full market share information for all ICANN-accredited registrars is available in the report.

-- State of the Domain is published monthly. Each quarter-end edition includes data from both the month and quarter prior. o SnapNames compiles data in the public domain in order to present information on registrar market share as well as trends in new domain name sales versus expirations. SnapNames does not warrant the accuracy of information in State of the Domain. Please read the report for further disclaimers and for information on our methodology.

-- For a free subscription to State of the Domain, please e-mail [e-mail].

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