OPENSRS: agosto 2010

sábado, 28 de agosto de 2010

Educating Customers and Boosting Sales

Posted: 27 Aug 2010 07:54 AM PDT

It's sometimes easy to forget that domain names aren't something that the average person is familiar with. Working in the hosting or Internet industry, understanding how different domain extensions work work is just part of daily life. For those familiar with how domains are bought and sold, the concept of premium domain names and the domain name aftermarket is fairly basic.

But for the general public, these things can be confusing – they often have no clue that they can easily buy a .co or .us domain name, or that they might be able to get a perfect domain name for their business through the domain name aftermarket.

To help educate customers, we created a pair of example videos that explain in simple terms exactly what the different domain name extenstions are and also what premium names are.

Have a look:

Help Your Customers Buy From You!

We talk a lot about offering suggestions to your customers using our Name Suggest domain search API rather than just offering a yes/no answer with domain availability. It really provides a boost to sales if you pair those results with some information to help potential customers make sense of the different kinds of results that are presented when they do their domain searches.

It's something that's not all that difficult to create and build into a search results page, but it can really pay off in terms of improved conversion rates on domain searches, and the purchase of associated services like hosting or email.

Take a look at the videos and think about some of the different things you can do on your own site to help educate and guide your customers (both potential and current) through your specific sales processes.

viernes, 27 de agosto de 2010

Enter our Service Guy Postcard Contest and become famous!

Posted: 26 Aug 2010 09:38 AM PDT

We recently decided that we ought to have some nice postcards to send to our resellers, but the problem is that we don’t have enough designs for them. In the spirit of Community, we thought we’d reach out to you, our resellers, and ask for your help in exchange for the opportunity for your creativity to be forever immortalized in an OpenSRS Postcard!

All you have to do is snap a photo of Service Guy and submit it. We’ll choose the best five for our postcards, and your photography skills will become renowned across the globe as your beautiful designs circulate.

Sounds great! How do I enter?

Entering is easy:

Take a photo of your OpenSRS Service Guy in a creative setting (see our example shots for inspiration)
Upload your image in a postcard-size format. Minimum size: 6 in x 4.25 in at 300dpi (1875 x 1275 pixels)
Add your photo to the Flickr group OpenSRS Service Guy Fan Club
Let us know by tweeting "Here’s my entry for the @OpenSRS postcard photo contest: [link to photo]"
Alternatively, if you don’t have a Twitter account, you can leave a comment below too.

The contest will be open until September 30. At the end, we’ll take the top 5 photos and turn them into OpenSRS postcards. We’ll give you the credit, of course. In addition, the best designer will receive a nifty OpenSRS Crumpler laptop bag, valued at $120!

Winners will be notified by email or Twitter, and will be announced on the blog.

We’re looking forward to seeing your entries!

I need some inspiration!

Here are two photos we liked; there are lots more in the Service Guy Fan Club on Flickr.

miércoles, 25 de agosto de 2010

GeoTrust is the SSL Brand of Choice for the Top Million Sites Online

Posted: 24 Aug 2010 06:28 AM PDT

A recent survey of SSL certificate use by Netcraft, referenced against the top million sites online (as tallied by Alexa), revealed that GeoTrust SSL certificates continue to be the most widely used choice of the one million top websites on the Internet.

The comparison looked at the Alexa 1 Million and counted publically facing SSL certificates. They found over 35,000 GeoTrust SSL certificates amongst the 165,000 total certificates found. GeoTrust led all certificate authorities, with the nearest competitor alomost 10,000 certificates behind.

GeoTrust points to the data as proof that more users look to GeoTrust as the low-cost SSL certificate provider of choice to secure and encrypt data transmitted over the Internet.

With increasing competition in the low-end of the SSL market, GeoTrust continues to provide cost-effective solutions for a variety of different requirements. From QuickSSL, through True BusinessID with or without Extended Validation, there is a GeoTrust-branded certificate to satisfy any buyer.

If you have an OpenSRS Reseller account, then you are also automatically able to sell SSL certificates from GeoTrust (and also thawte and VeriSign). For more information visit our GeoTrust SSL information page.

martes, 24 de agosto de 2010

“No Hassle Renewals” at Hover plus 2 more

“No Hassle Renewals” at Hover
The OpenSRS Quarterly for 2010-Q2 is Now Available
.ORG Surpasses 8.5 Million Domains

“No Hassle Renewals” at Hover

Posted: 24 Aug 2010 07:52 AM PDT

Here’s another discovery we made at Hover that you can consider implementing.

Renewals were our number one support issue, accounting for 36% of support tickets opened. A lot of those calls and emails came from customers (or friends, relatives, colleagues and assistants of customers) that could not sign in to their account. So, we developed a renewal process that no longer required folks to sign in. Now we are getting fewer support calls and we are solving renewal-related problems much more quickly.

You can read the more complete story here.

If you have any questions about how we did this or need any help with implementation, please feel free to email me directly at mgoldstein@tucows.com.

The OpenSRS Quarterly for 2010-Q2 is Now Available

Posted: 23 Aug 2010 01:52 PM PDT

After the positive feedback we received from our first quarter report, we're excited to announce that our OpenSRS Quarterly for 2010-Q2 is now available for download.

Have you found yourself wondering how your own own performance indicators measure up against other OpenSRS resellers? Key performance metrics like renewal rates by quarter, new registrations and transfers in and out have long been providing valuable insight to service providers like yours.

With over 10,000 domain name, email and SSL resellers in over 100 countries, from small Web designers to giant Web hosts and Internet Service Providers, OpenSRS has a unique perspective into industry data and trends.

The OpenSRS Quarterly report is meant to provide you, our reseller, with data you can use to benchmark your own performance and make informed decisions. We've analyzed the data across our entire base to provide you with valuable insight. You'll even find fun facts like the ratio of domains that contain the word 'rules' versus 'sucks' and the conclusion to the age old battle of cats versus dogs.

We expect this report to be just the beginning of a conversation within your organization, with your team and maybe even with other OpenSRS resellers about best practices and how we can work together to help you succeed.

If you're an OpenSRS reseller, click here to request this report electronically.

Happy Selling!

.ORG Surpasses 8.5 Million Domains

Posted: 23 Aug 2010 11:17 AM PDT

The latest edition of the bi-annual .org domain name report, "The Dashboard," is now available.

Public Internet Registry (PIR), the operator of the .org domain extension released the report, which showed 7.6% growth in the .org domain in the first half of 2010. That's twice the growth compared to 2009 and signals continued strength in the .org extension.

Some other figures of interest:

The growth of .org in the first half of 2010 outpaced both .com and .net over the same period.
New creates for .org showed 16.5% growth, on par with both .com and .net.
77.1% of organizations renewed their .org domains for one to three years, an increase of 4% over 2009.
North America and the European Union continued to represent the regions with the most .org registrations. China showed growth of 4% in the first half of 2010.

With over 8.5 million .org domains registered, .org is the third largest generic top-level domain (gTLD), behind .com and .net.

You can always download the latest version of the "The Dashboard" from PIR's website at http://pir.org/news/dashboard

sábado, 21 de agosto de 2010

Tucows or Not Tucows

Posted: 20 Aug 2010 10:36 AM PDT

Our new Tucows badge program has inspired some great discussions and debates (both internally and with our resellers!). I want to quickly contribute some more thoughts on evaluating whether this program makes sense for you.

The big idea here is to let your customers and prospects know that a domain name registered with you is better than a domain name registered elsewhere, that it comes with more honest, generous policies.

You do have two perfectly good ways to do this.

You can use our name and our promise. You benefit from some Tucows brand recognition and favorability. You potentially (depending on how big you are) align yourself with a larger entity, which brings some reassurances of stability and security. You leave it up to us to develop and maintain content about the differences in domain name management and to fight some battles with registrar competitors for you. You might even be able to blame a few customer issues on us if they come up.

The risk here is that your customers say, “Wait, you’re not managing our domain name? There are multiple parties involved? I’m not sure that’s so comforting to me.”

The second approach is you can imitate what we’ve done in the Tucows Promise but keep the focus on yourself. In fact, you can probably offer a longer list of benefits than we did since we were limited to policies that would be universal to all our resellers. You keep things simple and highlight a more intimate relationship, the one you have with your customers.

There are a couple of risks here too. Your customers could say, “I know a little something about domain names and the key players in the domain name world and you’re not one of them.” Or they could say, “Hey, I see that Tucows is listed as my registrar. Why are you trying to pretend you’re managing this domain name yourself?”

In the end, the benefits of differentiating your domain name offering are great and the risks with either approach are pretty minimal. Above all, we encourage you to attack the notion that it does not matter who manages your domain name. If our program is useful to you, great. If it helps you simply craft your own messaging, that’s great too.

Please keep the feedback coming.

viernes, 20 de agosto de 2010

Four Million .nl Domains

Posted: 20 Aug 2010 06:45 AM PDT

This week the total number of .nl domain names in existence hit the four million mark for the first time, according to SIDN, the .nl Registry.

That puts .nl in fourth place in terms of ccTLDs for total registrations behind .de, .uk and .cn. Curiously, .nl actually leads all ccTLDs when you look at total registrations compared to the population of the country. In the case of .nl, there is one .nl domain for every four people in the Netherlands.

If you aren’t selling .nl domains, perhaps some of the stats around .nl domains will get you thinking about it:

Since the .nl domain was created, a total of about 5.1 million unique domain names have been registered. Of these, roughly 1.1 million are no longer registered leaving just over 4 million .nl domains.
Within the Netherlands, .nl has a 72% share of the domain name market. Next comes .com with 14%, then .eu with 8%.
Over the last twelve months, the .nl domain has grown by almost 13%.
The use of domain names to create personalized e-mail addresses increased by 25%.
In the Netherlands, 38 people in every 100 have broadband internet access – more than anywhere else in the world.
The average .nl domain name is 13 characters long, but the most common length is 11 characters.

OpenSRS is .nl accredited and we recently rewrote our connection to the .nl registry to take advantage of the new EPP interface.

For resellers who are .nl accredited themselves, you may not know that our OpenSRS Registrar Service platform offers a hosted solution to manage .nl domains using your existing accreditation. Of course, OpenSRS Domain Service offers an easy way to manage .nl domains for those who aren’t accredited.

.nl domains are priced at $8USD/domain year and anyone can register a .nl domain, regardless of where they live.

jueves, 19 de agosto de 2010

Tucows Domains Badges and the Tucows Domain Promise

Posted: 19 Aug 2010 05:37 AM PDT

It’s no secret that there is a perception amongst the domain name buying public that all domain names are the same, that they all come with the same basic policies and conditions and that the only way to differentiate between them is price.

We know that simply is not true. Issues like privacy, ownership disputes, and censorship are all important considerations for domain registrants, and we want to make sure the domain buying public understands what their chosen domain provider stands for.

As a company, Tucows has a number of values we strive to maintain. We also recognize that you, our Resellers, share many of these same values and that many of you chose to partner with Tucows not merely because of the platform, or the services we offer, but also because you wanted to work with a company that shared your beliefs and values.

The simple fact that you sell domains managed by Tucows affords your customers a number of benefits and protections. It speaks to your commitment to customer service, and to making sure that your customers have the best domain ownership experience possible.

That raises an important question: Do your customers and prospects know and understand the advantages available to them as a result of your decision to offer domains managed by Tucows?

Tucows Domains Badges

To that end, we have put together a new badge program that you can use to tell your site visitors that you sell domain names managed by Tucows. Of course, this is an optional program. Like everything we do, it’s reseller friendly. If you don’t want to expose our involvement, that’s up to you and it’s absolutely fine with us.

The badges link to our Tucows Promise, which highlights for Registrants some of the key benefits of having domain names managed by Tucows, and by extension, of working with companies like yours that sell Tucows domains. The Tucows Promise lives within our shiny new Tucows Domains Help Site, which offers answers to common Registrant questions (and mostly refers them back to their provider).

You can visit the badge program page to get started. It’s a simple process – grab the badge size and language you wish to use, agree to the terms and conditions, and then install the badge on your website. We have developed badges in English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese and translated the Domain Promise into each of these languages.

For those using the older “Tucows Authorized Reseller” badges, please make the switch over to these new badges.

Why Tucows, not OpenSRS?

We get a lot of understandable questions about our use of the OpenSRS and Tucows brands. OpenSRS is our reseller services group. Yet we are offering resellers icons that announce “Domains managed by Tucows” and drive end users to a Tucows-branded site. What’s up with that?

It is actually another attempt at reseller friendliness. The idea is to create a clean distinction between messages to end users and messages to resellers. Tucows is the registrar. (It is the name of our company.) It is the brand that end users inevitably discover when they look at their Whois record. It is also a brand that many end users know and love from our software libraries. By avoiding any mention of OpenSRS in end user-facing messages, we avoid end users wandering into places (like the OpenSRS site) where we talk about control panels, TLD releases, wholesale prices and other stuff that will confuse them. We also reduce the chance that your users will try to buy anything from us directly.

The Tucows Domain Promise is a rare conversion of the two brands. But it’s still clean. OpenSRS resellers can boast to end users that you offer domains managed by Tucows. It’s no different than using OpenSRS as your platform and boasting VeriSign SSL products to your end users. Tucows Domain becomes a product that embodies integrity and honesty, thus differentiating the domain name product you offer from those offered by less principled providers.

We’d love to hear your feedback about the program. Drop us a line in the comments here or in the OpenSRS Forums.

martes, 17 de agosto de 2010

Meet the Resellers: Xpress Hosting

Posted: 16 Aug 2010 08:47 AM PDT

Este artículo está disponible en español a continuación.

Mexico-based webhost Xpress Hosting has used a customer-centric approach to doing business to become the leading webhost in the region. It was only natural then, for Xpress Hosting to seek out a wholesale Registrar with the same focus on the customer.

Xpress Hosting began working with OpenSRS in 2009. Julian Flores, CEO of Xpress Hosting, says that the company went looking for a vendor that "went beyond, 'okay this is the API, this is how you integrate it…there, you’re good to go. And that's it.'"

He says they found just that in OpenSRS.

Challenges and Opportunities

The company started out as a specialized application host in 2001, but when customer demand for shared hosting swelled, they listened. That was a move that paid off in spades. The company now provides hosting services primarily to small- and mid-sized businesses throughout Mexico and the surrounding region.

Xpress Hosting sees huge opportunity in a country that is rapidly emerging as a technological nation. But Flores says being in Mexico means the company faces some unique challenges.

express hosting homepage "There is a very interesting contrast in Mexico regarding technology," Flores explains. "We have three major metropolitan areas – Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey – and more than 60% of our customers come from those cities."

"The urban customers are informed and educated," Flores says. "They know what they want and they knock on our doors asking for it."

But those in the rest of the country often need more help from a customer support and education perspective, something that Xpress Hosting is glad to provide. They've built their business on providing that kind of one-on-one customer service.

Customer Service Focused

Flores explains that in Mexico, there is a cultural requirement for a personal relationship in business. "It’s not like in the United States where you can do business with someone over the phone, or email. It doesn’t work like that in Mexico."

"Our customers look for a personal relationship, and that’s where our niche is," he says. "For example, we provide a specialized account rep for all of our customers and the customer has their phone extension, cell phone number and email address and the rep knows the requirements and special needs of the customer."

Flores says that the relationship he has with OpenSRS enables his company to react quickly and provide the kind of service and support that his wide range of customers require.

"We have a very successful and close relationship with OpenSRS and our account manager," he says. "Honestly, it’s been the best customer experience that I’ve had with a wholesale registrar."

A Very Bright Future

Within Mexico, technology is spreading and the population, especially the youth, are embracing the Internet. Flores says the future looks exceptionally bright for the company and for the country.

"The next 10 to 15 years are going to be quite a ride for us," he says. "These young people, make no mistake, they are here to replace us and they will have a webhosting account with us. We’ll be a part of it!"

With a continued focus on meeting the needs of customers like Xpress Hosting, OpenSRS aims to be an important part of it as well.

Con sede en México, Xpress Hosting ha utilizado un enfoque centrado en el cliente para hacer negocios y convertirse en el servicio de alojamiento web líder en la región. Fue natural entonces, que Xpress Hosting buscara un Registrador de venta al mayoreo con el mismo enfoque en el cliente.

Xpress Hosting comenzó a trabajar con OpenSRS en 2009. Julián Flores, director general de Xpress Hosting, dice que la compañía fue en busca de un proveedor que “fuese más allá de, bien aquí está el API, esta es la forma de integrarlo … están listos. Y eso es todo.’”

Menciona que encontró precisamente eso en OpenSRS.

Retos y Oportunidades

La compañía comenzó como un tipo de alojamiento para aplicaciones especializadas en el 2001, pero cuando la demanda del cliente para alojamiento compartido creció, ellos escucharon. Esa fue una decisión que dio frutos con creces. Ahora la compañía ofrece servicios de alojamiento a empresas pequeñas y medianas en México y la región circundante.

Xpress Hosting ve una gran oportunidad en un país que está emergiendo rápidamente como una nación tecnológica. Sin embargo, Flores dice que estar en México significa que la compañía se enfrenta a algunos retos únicos.

express hosting homepage “Hay un contraste muy interesante en México en relación con la tecnología”, explica Flores. “Tenemos tres grandes áreas metropolitanas – Ciudad de México, Guadalajara y Monterrey – y más del 60% de nuestros clientes vienen de estas ciudades”.

“Los clientes urbanos son informados y educados”, afirma Flores. “Ellos saben lo que quieren y tocan nuestras puertas pidiéndolo.”

Mientras tanto, los clientes en el resto del país, necesitan más ayuda desde una perspectiva de soporte al cliente y educación, algo que Xpress Hosting se complace en ofrecer. Han construido su negocio con esa clase de servicio al cliente “uno-a-uno”.

Enfocados al Servicio al Cliente

Flores explica que en México existe un requisito cultural de una relación personal en los negocios. “No es como en los Estados Unidos, donde usted puede hacer negocios con alguien por teléfono, o correo electrónico. No funciona así en México”.

“Nuestros clientes buscan una relación personal, y ahí es donde está nuestro nicho”, dice. “Por ejemplo, ofrecemos un representante de cuenta especializado para todos nuestros clientes y el cliente tiene su extensión de teléfono, número de teléfono celular y la dirección de correo electrónico y el representante conoce los requisitos y necesidades especiales de sus clientes”.

Flores dice que la relación que tiene con OpenSRS permite que su compañía reaccione con rapidez y proporcione el tipo de servicio y soporte que su amplia gama de clientes requieren.

“Tenemos una relación muy cercana y exitosa con OpenSRS y nuestro representante de cuenta”, dice. “Sinceramente, ha sido la mejor experiencia de cliente que he tenido con un Registrador de venta al por mayor.”

Un futuro muy brillante

En México, la tecnología se está extendiendo y la población, especialmente los jóvenes, están adoptando la Internet. Flores afirma que el futuro se ve excepcionalmente brillante para la compañía y para el país.

“Los próximos 10 a 15 años van a ser un paseo muy interesante para nosotros”, dice. “No se equivoquen, estas jóvenes generaciones, están aquí para reemplazarnos y ellos tendrán una cuenta de alojamiento web con nosotros". Nosotros vamos a ser parte de este cambio! ”

Con un enfoque en la satisfacción de las necesidades de los clientes como Xpress Hosting, OpenSRS espera ser una parte importante de este cambio también.

Much thanks goes to OpenSRS Tech Support Analyst Carlos Barrientos for translating this post to Spanish. Muchas gracias!

martes, 10 de agosto de 2010

6 Ways for Web Hosts to Stand Out in a Saturated Market plus 1 more

6 Ways for Web Hosts to Stand Out in a Saturated Market

Posted: 09 Aug 2010 01:53 PM PDT

Look around the web hosting industry and you'll run into a lot of similar looking websites offering similar packages with similar costs. So how is a webhost supposed to stand out amongst the crowd and attract new customers?

To help out, we're presenting a webinar on August 26th, 2010. Adam Eisner, who heads up our domains business here at OpenSRS will take you through six tangible strategies that you can use to differentiate yourself in a crowded environment. He'll bring you real-world examples along with data from our Reseller base that will provide you with practical ways to fuel growth and attract new customers.

As with all of our webinars, it's free to attend and everyone is welcome. We'll hold a pair of sessions on August 26th at 9am and 2pm EDT (that’s 1300 and 1800 UTC) to accommodate attendees in different time zones. Register today so you don't forget. And, keep in mind that registering ensures that you'll automatically get an email with a link to the archive after the webinar ends, so even if you can't make it to the live event, it does make sense to click the link below and signup.

A Simple, Proven, Neatly Wrapped Promotion For You

Posted: 09 Aug 2010 12:28 PM PDT

When I came to Tucows about a year ago I promised on this blog that I would be "…experimenting with our Hover (retail) business, largely in hopes of sharing any successes." For a while, I was doing more experimenting than succeeding. (I don't have to tell you. Retail is tough.) But we have recently launched a few successful initiatives – marketing campaigns, improvements to our user experience (built on the OpenSRS API, of course) and innovations in our customers support – that can all be imitated fairly easily. We are thrilled to have you do just that. We will start putting together simple case studies to let you know what we did and how we did it so you can benefit from our experiences.

This is the first in that "series."

We recently launched a very simple domain name promotion to encourage our current customers to register their own names (firstnamelastname.com) and put them to immediate use. We suggested available TLDs, offered tips on complementary services, highlighted real examples and extended a 15% discount off our standard domain name pricing.

The results were outstanding. We sent an email that got a 33.3% open rate and an 8.9% click-through-rate among opens. 14% of those who clicked purchased. 43% of those who purchased attached an email service. These metrics all surpassed our past marketing efforts. (You might have even tighter customer relationships and enjoy better open rates, CTRs and conversions. You can therefore assume your numbers would look even better.)

The links below offer everything you should need to repeat this promotion, including a much more detailed breakdown of what we did (from database query to subject header test to coding the links in the email) and the zipped up HTML email that we sent. You can take a look at the landing page here. We have also added these materials to our new marketing resources section.

If you are an OpenSRS reseller, swipe, borrow and steal anything you want. That's the idea. (If you are not an OpenSRS reseller, don’t!) If you have any questions at all or want some help on the implementation, let us know.

Click here to download the detailed case study (.pdf)

Click here to download the HTML email (.zip)

Click here to see the landing page

miércoles, 4 de agosto de 2010

New Lower Price for .TV domains and a .TV Promo! plus 1 more

New Lower Price for .TV domains and a .TV Promo!

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 07:23 AM PDT

Good news! Starting August 4th, 2010, we’re dropping the price for new .TV domains to just $19/domain year. That new price applies to all resellers and will be in effect through May 31, 2011.

But wait! There’s more!

Better news! Not only are we lowering our wholesale price, but we’re also rolling out a .TV promo at the same time. Resellers who sign up for the .TV promotion and agree to do some marketing around .TV domains will see their cost for new .TV domain registrations drop to just $12/domain year from now until May 31, 2011. Signup here.

Like other promotions you are required to do some marketing/promotion of .TV domains on your website or through an email campaign. The discount will be paid in the form of a rebate deposited monthly.

To sum it up:

The regular price for new .TV domain registrations is now $19/domain year for all Resellers, through May 31, 2011.
We’re offering a .TV promo starting today – signup and do some marketing to get an even better price of $12/year for new .TV registrations through May 31, 2011.
The lower pricing applies to new .TV domains only, but multi-year registrations do qualify. Renewals and transfers will continue to be priced at $35/domain year.

About .TV domains

.TV domains are made for websites with video. To help drive sales of new .TV domains, consider suggesting that new customers purchase the .TV domain to go with a .com or other domain extension to showcase videos, screencasts and other multimedia content. Many of your existing customers might also be interested in picking up the .tv version of their domain name as well.

With the increasing availability of easy to use tools for video content creation and sharing, demand for .TV domains will continue to grow. This special pricing on .TV domains makes it even easier for the average person to get their own place online to show and share video content.

Find out more about .TV domains:

The Importance of the .EU Registrar Advisory Board

Posted: 03 Aug 2010 11:51 AM PDT

At OpenSRS, .EU is an integral part of our business. Our strong presence throughout Europe means the domain extension, which is immediately recognizable across the continent, is one most of the most popular sold among our European resellers. And with the registry having now surpassed three million names under management, it is clear the extension resonates with European individuals and businesses.

EurID Given .EU's importance to us, I was very pleased to be appointed the North American representative to the registry's Registrar Advisory Board earlier this year. EURid, the .EU registry operator, convenes a meeting of the Board three times a year to gather feedback from the registrar community. Discussion topics range from key registry performance metrics to upcoming features and releases, and can also involve a great deal of back and forth between attendees about the registry's direction.

Overall, the discussions generally stay within the Board's mandated scope, which is to (and I will borrow directly from the registry here):

Advise the EURid Board on issues where the EURid Board might need to consult the registrar community;
Consider and bring to the attention of the EURid Board any policy or operational issue that might be of future importance or affect the .EU domain space;
Submit input to the long-term strategies;
Channel the feedback of the larger stakeholder community into EURid;
Help strengthen relationships with the registrar community;
Support EURid in its interactions with other stakeholders.

As a representative of a registrar with a particularly unique business model, I try to keep my eyes and ears open for issues and topics that could have a particular impact on resellers. The Board, which is comprised largely of retail-focused registrars, can sometimes get deeply involved in discussions and suggestions that don't necessarily fit well with reseller-focused business models. As such, I always try to make sure our view is heard.

To EurID's credit, they could simply ignore the Board and its input, and continue operating the registry as they see fit. However, EURid staff and management are actively involved with the Board, and are constantly soliciting feedback. This is something few of the registries that registrars work with do on a regular basis.

Although I'm only a few months into a three-year mandate, I have found the experience thus far extremely valuable and rewarding. I look forward to continuing to help shape policy for one of the world's largest ccTLDs in the future.

martes, 3 de agosto de 2010

The upside of downtime in today’s socially connected Interwebs

Posted: 02 Aug 2010 11:47 AM PDT

If you’re an OpenSRS reseller, I have no doubt that you’re concerned about availability and uptime. Downtime affects us all and it really, really sucks.

As if dealing with a service impacting incident while it’s happening isn’t difficult enough, social tools like Twitter make it impossible to squelch harmful speculation that can result from a lack of communication with customers.

The point is, if there’s bad news to communicate, it’s best that your users hear it straight from you.

Although the black cloud of downtime affects us all, you’ll see in Lenny Rachitsky’s webcast titled “The Upside of Downtime“, with proper planning it doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom. In fact, executed within the right communications framework, a service impacting incident might even be considered an opportunity to build trust with users.

Lenny heads up R&D for the Webmetrics division of Neustar. He also blogs about transparency on his blog at Transparent Uptime and can be followed on Twitter at @lennysan.

In his O’Reilly webcast, Lenny shares his framework for dealing with incidents through effective Preparation, Communication and Explanation. The webcast is just under an hour and talks about specific strategies, including how to gain buy-in from departments that might be hesitant about implementing such a framework.

If you’re responsible for uptime, or communicating uptime, I’d highly recommend you make time to hear what Lenny has to say.

At OpenSRS, we’ve long since learned the benefits of being transparent with our resellers and although we’re far from perfect, we’ve made great strides in providing comprehensive, realtime communications that adheres to much of the framework that Lenny describes.

Has your company implemented a transparent communications framework? What tools are you using? How’s it going? Any challenges and obstacles along the way?

I’d love to hear your story, because we all have downtime affecting each of us. It doesn’t matter how large we grow, how much money we spend on infrastructure or how bright our people are.

What’s your uptime story and how are you communicating it?

**Thanks to Kevin Dooley for releasing his cloud photo, “Am I an Angry Cloud, or a Happy Cloud?” under a Creative Commons license. We personally think it’s an angry cloud working towards become a happy cloud real soon!