A volatile few months coming

The Domain Name Commission has released their February newsletter with .nz domain name stats for January 2011.

January saw 7423 new registrations with a net growth in .nz of 2729 compared with 7317 / 3161 for December 2010. It's easy to see this as New Zealand being on holiday in January, but when compared with the figures from last year where they were 6509 / 1949 in Dec 2009 and 7093 / 2931 in Jan 2010 it shows a jump in renewals and registrations early 2010 and a reversed change in 2011.



I really don't know what to make of these figures, but they show that the total .nz registrations continues to grow. It also shows that we have a situation close to one wher for every 2 new registrations, one old domain name is dropped. It's important to note that this doesn't mean that half the new names are dropped after one year as we have no easily accessible information about the age of dropped domain names. It does suggest that there is still a lot of volatility in the New Zealand economy probably stemming from the recent recession ... just looking at all the empty shops and offices with "For lease" signs tells us that anyway.

I don't wish to trivialise the loss or physical pain and discomfort of Canterbury residents in any way, but in late February and early March 2011 the rest of New Zealand has also gone through a lot of psychological trauma from the Christchurch Earthquake. In a lot of ways we are all Cantabrians today. Some businesses will go to the wall because of this event. The February and March registrations are likely to be affected by this as well. I will be having a look at the figures when they come out, but I don't want to make any predictions either of them or based on them.