Hi,

Can someone tell me what .nu stands for, as far as domain names?

Also, why are the generally so expensive?

Thanks!! I appriciate it. :)

Its a country called Niue. I dont know why they are so expensive. Probably because of ICANN :)
(45$ for two years. Its not very expensive :) )

.NU stands for Niue, though some countries sell it as "New". Because it means "now" in Dutch and "new" in Swedish, lot of Dutch and Swedish sites see .NU as alternative for .com or their own ccTLD.

Niue is not a country, it's an island governed by Australia.

Originally posted by Gerrit
Niue is not a country, it's an island governed by Australia
Yes, i didnt mean it .... :erm:

Originally posted by jtimbre
Hi,

Can someone tell me what .nu stands for, as far as domain names?

Also, why are the generally so expensive?

Thanks!! I appriciate it. :)

.nu (Niue) domains, enabling you to get the shorter, catchier name that was taken in the .com domain, that is the reason they're so expensive.

Internet is an important source for revenue for Islane Niue. When it was granted . nu domain, it set up one brother island Tuvalu and it's successful .tv domain leased for 12 years for 50 million.
Over 100,000 . nu domains have been registered. It means "Now" in swedish and to some "New".

Originally posted by etechsupport2
.nu (Niue) domains, enabling you to get the shorter, catchier name that was taken in the .com domain, that is the reason they're so expensive.

Not really correct (I'm too polite to say "nonsense"!)

I've been around long enough to remember the days when .com domains cost $100 a year. The price of .com has come down over the years because the worldwide .com registry can afford to offer cheap domains due to sheer economics of scale. The price of most ccTLDs has not come down to the same extent because their markets are smaller and their overheads-per-domain are larger. The general rule is that the smaller the community, the more expensive its domains.

.nu is marketing itself as a pseudo-GTLD and can therefore afford to charge less than some "real" small island ccTLDs. However, as a "for profit" company (most ccTLDs are run by non-profit organisation) it obviously needs to charge more than an organisation that merely needs to break even (such as .uk, probably one of the cheapest ccTLDs around). As I understand it much of the profit is put back into the Niue economy.

BTW, there is no connection between .nu and .tv. .tv is run by Verisign, .nu is run by another company (also a US company, but not Verisign).

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Lubeca

"The general rule is that the smaller the community, the more expensive its domains".

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I disagree. :cool:

I should perhaps have been more specific...:

1) The general rule does not necessarily apply to pretend-GTLDs - which tend to be more expensive than .com but cheaper than they would be if the registry were simply serving the local community

2) By "community" I don't necessarily mean "total size of population". I mean "Internet community". Some countries have large populations but only small Internet communities

As I live in Sweden I have seen the history of .nu in this country.

If we goes back 5 years a Swede must have a comapny registerd to be abls to register a .se domain. At that time a .se also was round 25$ per year.

So we needed an altenative. And at that time someone started to promote .nu (that means .now in Swedish). That was free for anyone to register and with a price in the same range that the .se was.

After that .se have been free and the price dropped but I feel like the .nu have stayed at the same price as before.
But man here have there .nu and as it's known they keep it.
But I don't se so many new registrations anymore.

And I think that it was the same story in some other countrys here in Europe.

Hans