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As we promised in our November event recap last year, we had no plans of slowing down in 2017. In fact, we have so many events in our calendar that we’ve launched a new monthly blog series to highlight our favorite moments from our journeys. We started the year off strong by attending five events in eight different cities to spread the word about .xyz, .Cars, and our other domain extensions.

Silicon Valley Auto Show 2017

Our first event of the year was the Silicon Valley Auto Show in San Jose, California. The .Cars team brought their one-of-a-kind Lucra LC470FS with them to the event, which quickly became the talk of the show. The team spoke with thousands of attendees over the course of the four day event, sharing innovative use cases like MeetOlli.Auto, FMC.Auto, Charge.Auto. Soon, word caught on, which led to our Creative Manager, Holden Andrews, getting interviewed by Chuy Gomez of Hot 105.7FM, as well as KRTY 95.3 FM. Check out more photos from the event on the .Cars Twitter and Facebook pages.

NamesCon 2017

Up next was the annual NamesCon conference in Las Vegas – one of our favorite industry events of the year. Just minutes away from our Vegas office, Team XYZ was out in full force. We had some great conversations with our registrar partners, industry insiders, and bloggers about the success we had in 2016 and what we have in store this year. As one of the conference sponsors, each attendee also got a free XYZ/GoDaddy t-shirt, XYZ 3D glasses, and a .Cars pint glass. By the end of the show, we were seeing XYZ everywhere!

NADA

Before the dust had even settled at NamesCon, members of the team were already off to New Orleans to attend the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) Convention – the largest convention for franchise dealers in the country.

With thousands of automotive businesses and dealer representatives in attendance, the .Cars team got the chance to demonstrate the SEO benefits of .Cars, .Car, and .Auto domains, and how migrating could help them be found more easily online (try searching for ‘Arizona cars’ or ‘Arizona used cars’ in Google to see what we mean). Several businesses registered with a GoDaddy manager onsite, including Pensacola.Cars, Spin.Car, and Costco.Auto. Be sure to follow the .Cars blog to learn when these businesses migrate their websites to their new automotive domains.

GoDaddy.xyz Road Show 2017

Less than 24 hours after the NADA convention wrapped up, it was off to Arizona to train thousands of GoDaddy sales agents and customer care specialists before the Super Bowl. Over four days and four nights, the XYZ team RV’d to Scottsdale, Tempe, and Gilbert, followed by a flight to Hiawatha, Iowa. In the week to follow, these agents accounted for nearly 3,000 .xyz registrations themselves – including one agent who sold over 400!

Be sure to read our full GoDaddy Road Show recap and check out the video below.

Queen’s Startup Summit

We ended the month by sponsoring the Queen’s Startup Summit (QSS) hackathon in Ontario, Canada. QSS brings together 90 carefully selected delegates from 9 universities across Canada and places them on teams to develop forward thinking ideas in several different industries, such as green technology, food ordering, and even real estate. After 54 hours, the results are judged by leading VCs in the country.

To kick off the hackathon, each attendee grabbed an XYZ t-shirt (or 30). And by day 2, everyone had switched out of their formal gear and into their comfortable (and stylish) XYZ threads. They also got free .xyz domains to build out sites for their projects. Several participants even registered their FirstNameLastName.xyz on the spot! Congratulations to Sprout, who took home the $5,000 in prize money for their indoor vertical farming solution. Sprout is currently in the process of building out their website on SproutIndoor.xyz, so stay tuned for an announcement when the site is officially launched!

@xyz teams here at #qss2017 still going strong!! WE LOVE YOU ❤️?? pic.twitter.com/OLqpI5aLXp

— Queen’s Startup (@Startup_Queens) January 29, 2017

Now that the whole team is back home, we are planning out which events to go to next. Got any ideas? Let us know through a tweet or Facebook message!

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Elsewhere.xyz – Uniregistry customer (United States)

VR and AR applications are among the hot topics in the tech world. Though amazing, most products and applications in this new industry are quite pricey. This week’s #WebsiteWednesday therefore brings you an affordable alternative that works directly with your iPhone – Elsewhere.xyz.

Elsewhere.xyz, created by former Mozilla exec Aza Raskin, are 3D glasses which can be used in conjunction with an iPhone to generate 3D video. By using Elsewhere’s patented algorithm, the app that is included with every purchase can extrapolate depth data from traditional media on the fly. The end result is a stunning 3D image, which makes details of your photo collections pop out in crystal clarity and shows an added dimension to your favorite videos.

The best part is that Elsewhere can be used on virtually any content. Streaming sites, video previously recorded on your phone, and even live-video being shot through your iPhone’s camera are all able to be viewed in real time through the Elsewhere app, which can be downloaded on Elsewhere.xyz’s website or in the App Store.

Even though Elsewhere only recently launched, they already received significant media attention and were covered in publications like Wired and FastCompany. We wanted to try out Elsewhere first hand, so we decided to order one through their site. Check out our unboxing video below:

To launch their new product, Elsewhere was able to secure an excellent one word URL with Elsewhere.xyz. The clever combination of the adverb ‘elsewhere’, paired with the axes of the 3 dimensions x, y, and z to the right of the dot, is another brilliant brand built on an .xyz domain. With a memorable domain name and their affordable price-point built on robust technology, Elsewhere.xyz is sure to keep turning heads.

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Welcome to XYZ’s China Blog Series, dedicated to our loyal supporters in China. Read this post in Chinese on our new Chinese Blog.

Happy Year of the Rooster! We hope that everyone had an amazing new year and enjoyed their time with family and friends. We had a great start to our year with another exclusive auction with Chengdu West.

In total, over 300 domains were auctioned off at no reserve, bringing in over 750,000 RMB ($100,000+ USD) in total sales. Some of the domains sold include 96.xyz, 55.xyz, and FY.xyz, which sold for 67,000 RMB (~$9,661 USD), 61,000 RMB (~$8,796 USD), and 39,000 RMB (~$5,624 USD), respectively.

The best deal of the auction was for 2.xyz, which sold for 202,000 RMB (~$29,128 USD). The winning bidder, Bill Karamouzis, is now the proud owner of one of only five single-number .xyz domains registered (1.xyz, 6.xyz, 8.xyz, and 9.xyz were previously sold in auctions). We even had the pleasure of meeting Bill at NamesCon in Las Vegas after the auction. Congratulations on your newest acquisition!

Scroll down to view a list of auction results.

We want to congratulate all of the winners who acquired .xyz domains in last month’s auction for unbeatable prices. We’d also like to thank everyone who participated. Even if you didn’t win the domain you wanted, there are still millions of short, memorable .xyz domains available to hand register. Search for 4-letter domains, Mandarin words and phrases, and even dropping names at www.gen.xyz/premiums or try out our CNOX tool: www.gen.xyz/cnox.

This won’t be our last auction, so be sure to subscribe to our newsletter to get notified about our next event.

Resources for XYZ news & events in China
www.gen.xyz/china: Bookmark this page for all of our news in China
Subscribe to our newsletter to get monthly updates and learn about new sales
www.weibo.com/genxyz: Follow our verified Weibo account
Follow us on WeChat: wwwgenxyz
Join our QQ group: 295605448

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• China Blog Series

Team XYZ is back home after very successful trips to Arizona and Iowa for the 2017 GoDaddy Road Show! Our first RV adventure out to GoDaddy’s offices was back in 2014, just one week after .xyz entered general availability. Last week, we rode again into the desert, but this time with a bigger RV (coined the XYZmobile) packed with over 5,000 GoDaddy.xyz tshirts and millions of .xyz use cases to share.

After the 10 hour drive in heavy LA traffic, our first stop was Scottsdale, Arizona. We got right to work unpacking shirts for every GoDaddy employee in the building. We had the pleasure of sharing the stories of notable GoDaddy customers like MIT’s startup accelerator, Engine.xyz, Deloitte’s leadership communities, like GoInnovate.xyz and Exponentials.xyz, and the cofounders of Skype’s new venture, Starship.xyz, among many others (fun fact: they’re all GoDaddy customers too!).

After Scottsdale, it was on to our next stop: Tempe. We had heard that GoDaddy’s newest office would be filled with fun activities, and we weren’t disappointed. We even got to take the slide down to lunch! But this trip wasn’t all just fun and games – we met with over 1,000 employees that day to talk about why .xyz is the new go-to domain ending and how their customers could take advantage of GoDaddy’s $0.99 .xyz sale. And as the home of Premier Services, we also had a chance to meet with the team about our trio of automotive domains, .Cars/.Car/.Auto.

Our last stop in the XYZmobile was Gilbert. By now, word had spread across Phoenix that the XYZ Team was in town. And with 2 long days of experience now under our belts, we were able to incorporate some of the success stories from the other offices into our training. We were even lucky enough to meet many of C3’s newest faces and welcomed them with their very own GoDaddy.xyz tshirts and other XYZ swag.

For some of the XYZ Team, Gilbert was a great end to our time in Arizona and a trip we won’t soon forget. But for a few others, there was still one last day at the office where it all began: Hiawatha, Iowa. This was originally the office of Parsons Technology, which was acquired by Intuit in 1994. Years later, as we were told by someone in the know, GoDaddy moved back into this office when they first began selling domain names. The rest was history.

After seeing 4 cities and speaking to thousands of GoDaddy employees about the innovators in the #GenXYZ community, we settled back into our Santa Monica home and closed out the 2017 GoDaddy Road Show. In the 2.5 years since the last Road Show, .xyz has been adopted in over 230 countries to become the most popular new domain in the world. And thanks to our valued partners like GoDaddy, XYZ has leveraged its success to welcome nine more domain extensions to the family to create innovation and choice on the internet.

View the full Road Show album!

Do you work at GoDaddy? Be sure to check out our useful tools below or contact us with your questions!
Live .xyz sites
99¢ premium .xyz domains
CNOX tool
.xyz flyer

If you haven’t yet registered your .xyz domains, head to GoDaddy.xyz or ask them about their 99¢ .xyz domain sale!

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Saodian.xyz – Alibaba customer (China)

新年快乐! Or to our non-Chinese speaking readers, Happy Chinese New Year! It’s been a huge year for members of #GenXYZ in China. We opened our China office, hired our first full-time employee, had our CEO Daniel give a keynote at World Hosting Day in Beijing and finally: .xyz became one of the first nTLDs to receive MIIT accreditation. That means, our Chinese .xyz adopters can now host their websites and see them go live and reach a global audience. This week’s #WebsiteWednesday features one of those very first active Chinese .xyz websites, Saodian.xyz.

Saodian.xyz is a QR ordering system that uses QR technology to speed up the ordering process at restaurants. Instead of waiting for your server to come over to your table and take your order, guests in participating restaurants can simply scan a QR code on the table through WeChat or Alipay. The restaurant’s menu then pops up and they can order directly with the kitchen and pay.

Businesses can use Saodian.xyz to offer discounts to customers and benefit from needing less waiting staff, while providing faster and more convenient service to their guests. The biggest benefit for guests is that they won’t need to download any additional app, but can simply use the QR code scanner within China’s most downloaded apps WeChat and Alipay to be able to read menus, order, and pay with the help of Saodian.xyz.

In the case of Saodian.xyz, the convenience of a simple idea has potentially huge reach across multiple industries. Saodian.xyz is prevalent not only in the food and beverage industry for meal ordering, but has also seen huge success as a room service ordering system in hotels and is a popular system to order snacks and drinks while users take in one of China’s most popular nightlife activies, karaoke.

Saodian.xyz has taken a simple solution to bridge a gap in the Chinese food ordering market and built it into a successful platform. They didn’t stop there, however, and grew their service into a popular offering across multiple industries, just like the .xyz domain extension. Saodian.xyz is just one of many new .xyz sites going live in China, and we can’t wait to feature more of them in the coming weeks and months.

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