Sunday, April 29, 2012

Which homepage for .BRANDS ?

Cast your vote on LinkedIn:

  • www.brand
  • www.brand.brand
  • www.corporate.brand
  • industry.brand
  • home.brand
  • other
Vote here.

TLD Application System (TAS)

TAS is the Top-Level domain Application System in which applicants submit their TLD application(s). The system is still temporarily offline and it is unknown when it will work again.


ICANN set up FAQs to explain the reason of this and you will also find applicants comments about this situation.

To know when the system will work again, you can subscribe to the TAS Interruption update Page.

Friday, April 27, 2012

.BASKETBALL Top-Level Domain

The FIBA is the world governing body for basketball, an independent association formed by 213 National Basketball Federations throughout the world. It is recognised as the sole competent authority in basketball by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Read the press release here.

.ART Top-Level Domain

Aremi Group S.A. appmies for the .ART Top-Level Domain.

Web site says: ".art is for all who connect or identify with the arts".

Thursday, April 26, 2012

700 members joined the new gTLD group on Linkedin

Here is a comment I recently received related to the " New generic Top-Level Domains" group on LinkedIn:

"First of all, congratulations for your great work regarding the new TLD process. It was and it is one of the reliable sources of information for Asociación puntoGAL, that promotes the .gal domain for Galician language and culture."

I apreciate these comments because I also learnt a lot in this group, shared with many interesting people involved in new gTLD projects and met some of them.

Today, I am happy to welcome member n° 700, Mr Staffan Jonson, Senior Policy Adviser at .SE - The Internet Infrastructure Foundation.


Tuesday, April 24, 2012

.ARCHI Top-Level Domain

.ARCHI is a Top-Level Domain for which a French company named StartingDot is applying for and which just raised 1,5 million Euros.

"archi" stands for "architecture" and according to this article, it will be a Community TLD.

.RUGBY Top-Level Domain

The International Rugby Board to apply for the .RUGBY Top-Level Domain :
  • Application centred on keeping domain within Rugby ;
  • Strategy based on benefitting Rugby ;
  • ICANN to assess submissions.
More information on the IRB web site.

Saturday, April 21, 2012

.PARS Top-Level Domain

The application is submitted by Asia Green IT System Bilgisayar San. Ve Tic. Ltd. Sti for two geographical applications:
  1. .PARS
  2. .PERSIANGULF
Sign the petition here.

The web site is now online: www.dotpars.org

Friday, April 20, 2012

How to prepare for the launching of a .BRAND Top-Level Domain?

Soon, brands applying for their Top-Level Domain will enter into the ICANN validation process. This will take eight months at least. This time should be used to get prepared for D-Day.

Many questions will be raised then.

Read the article in French here.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

.DELOITTE Top-Level Domain (brand)

Announced years ago, here is the first official press release to announce the .DELOITTE new generic Top-Level Domain.

Press release can be found here.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Communication in new gTLDs remains to be invented

The past has shown that a communication budget does not "do it all" to launch a new domain name extension, unless you want to pay for a massive banner hanging on the wall of the European Commission in Brussels. This is what we did for .EU domain names at Eurid but it was one well funded registry that had to be launched, not hundreds with limited budgets.

To generate interest for the launching of niche registries, I strongly believe applicants will have to be inventive and rely on their community, group or industry to promote their domain name extension, not Registrars, and no matter whether these are Community or Standard applications. I also think deep and strong connections will have to be developed and maintained in each industry.

Are .jobs .travel and .museum domain names a good example of what is in front of us: have these industries/groups ever paid any interest in a domain name which officially qualifies them?
I would answer no: Boeing and Airbus still use their .COM, MOMA uses a .ORG as well as the American Museum of Natural History, etc...
Added to this, most retail Registrars won't have enough funds to accredit themselves to all new domain names, they will have to make choices. For sure, existing Registrars won't be able to offer all new domain names to their clients.

Basically, if I think there will be much more buzz about new generic Top-Level Domains, it won't be easier to sell domain names.

So, if these industries have not really paid interest in their domain names, why would they today?

THERE IS WORK IN FRONT OF US !

It was the role of Registrars to offer domains to their clients. I think it will also become the role of the Registries to promote their domain names with new methods. New jobs will have to be invented and entrepreneurs will have to be convinced to launch new niche Registrars. The communication model to develop these new domain names remains to be invented. Is launching a new registry going to be affordable with a limited communication budget? I hope so even if I don't think so. If the "how" remains to be invented, If I am sure the "when" started a long ago.

I think my method for .WINE is good by the way. Time will tell :-)

.CLASS Trademarks

Two live Trademarks found in TESS:

  1. .CLASS
  2. DOTCLASS
Links can be found here and here.

Friday, April 13, 2012

.IMMO Top-Level Domain

According to this press release, there is an applicant for .IMMO domain names. Back-end registry provider is the Austrian Registry for .AT country code Top-Level Domain.

.VOTING Top-Level Domain

According to this press release, there is an applicant for .VOTING domain names. Back-end registry provider is the Austrian Registry for .AT country code Top-Level Domain.

.TIROL Top-Level Domain

According to this press release, there is an applicant for .TIROL domain names. Back-end registry provider is the Austrian Registry for .AT country code Top-Level Domain.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

.STOCKHOLM Top-Level Domain

According to this article after, the city of Stockholm is applying for its domain name extension.

Read the article here (in Swedish).

Sunday, April 8, 2012

.YELLOW Top-Level Domain

DotYellow PTY LTD Australia plans to apply for the .YELLOW Top-Level Domain.

"The concept of a yellow listings book is commonly associated in both English-speaking and non-English speaking countries to indicate a Business Directory."

More here.

.INC .CORP and .LLC Top-Level Domains coming

According to a post from DomainIncite, a company named Dot Registry LLC would apply for 3 trings:

  1. .INC
  2. .CORP
  3. .LLC
Read post here.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

.ONLINE new gTLD project(s)

A ".online REGISTRY" Community Trademark, a web site promoting .online domain names. These are signs there may be more than one potential applicant.


Also: http://www.dot-online.info/

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

.DIFFICULT new gTLD (IDN)

Yes...according to this web site, there seem to be an applicant a project for an IDN for a .DIFFICULT generic Top-Level Domain as an IDN.

Can we expect a www.icann.困难 coming ?

Source: http://internetregistry.info

Nb: I am not quite sure about what the other IDN mean, it could be "hello" or "help". Maybe this is another Easter egg.

First batch for applications in competition

ICANN is pretty clear regarding string contention: " In the event that more than one organization applies for the same or similar top-level domain, all applications for those contending strings will be placed into the earliest batch designated".

Many strings listed on the famous and up-to-date Registries.tel new gTLD alphabetical directory (:-) can now be sure they will be selected in the first batch. Some more have been added below in the list according to rumors. These applications may take up to 20 months to be validated by ICANN. Some of these strings could be:
  • .AFRICA;
  • .BAYERN;
  • .BERLIN;
  • .FILM;
  • .FREE;
  • .GAME;
  • .HEALTH;
  • .HOTEL;
  • .MED;
  • .MUSIC;
  • .NYC;
  • .PARIS;
  • .RADIO;
  • .RESTAURANT;
  • .SCOT;
  • .SHOP,
  • .SKI;
  • .SPORT;
  • .SURF;
  • .TOKYO;
  • .VEGAS;
  • .WEB;
  • .WINE.
Source: ICANN (read down the page).

New gTLDs reveal day set to April 30th

List of official new gTLD projects will be announced on April the 30 according to recent ICANN announcement.

Read the announcement here.


.BRAND new gTLD Reports are updated once a month: CLICK HERE !