How Many NNNNN.com Are Left?

I finally went and did a bulk check of all 100,000 NNNNN.com domains to see which were available.

While the random sampling I did a week ago had suggested that there were around 1,200 available, the bulk check only showed 776 available.  Maybe the random sampling was way off, or maybe a lot were registered in the last week.

Either way, the new number shows that 99.2% of the NNNNN.com's are registered.  That's pretty close to being all bought out.

It will be interesting to see whether the registration rate average of 13/day continues at this point.  I could easily see the rate of registration increase as more buyers/drop-catchers compete for fewer and fewer domains.  I can also easily see the rate of registration slowing or falling since the remaining domains are the least attractive ones.

Here is the distribution of remaining NNNNN.com's:

65 domains that start with a "0"
3 domains that start with a "1"
66 domains that start with a "2"
49 domains that start with a "3"
311 domains that start with a "4"
9 domains that start with a "5"
63 domains that start with a "6"
136 domains that start with a "7"
27 domains that start with an "8"
47 domains that start with a "9"


This list shows a number of interesting phenomenon, one which startled me in particular was the popularity of domains that start with a "0".  I had thought that for sure these would be the least popular.  But apparently not.  Not surprising is the unpopularity of the domains that start with a "4", which I think means "death" in Chinese.  But who knows, maybe China will develop a goth culture and these domains will become very popular? Could happen...  The final surprising thing to note was that domains that start with a "5" are even more popular than domains that start with an "8", which is apparently the luckiest number in China.