Dot Asia Domain Gets The Go Ahead

[engine]

..anyone wanting a .asia domain name will be able to express their interest on www.asiadns.com, following agreement between the EuroDNS registry and DotAsia, the sponsoring organisation behind .asia.

According to EuroDNS, "While this service cannot be a pre-registration until the actual .asia rules are finalised, it is an increased chance for any potential domain registration to be considered and will allow DotAsia and EuroDNS to get a better feel of the market."

ICANN and DotAsia signed the .asia registry agreement on 6 December 2006 at the ICANN annual meeting in Sao Paulo, Brazil following the ICANN board approving the designation of the .asia sponsored top-level domain on 18 October 2006. DotAsia is the first gTLD registry with a headquarters in the Asia-Pacific region. DotAsia Organisation (http://www.dotasia.org) is a membership-based not-for-profit corporation located in Hong Kong that was created in March of 2004 for the purpose of submitting a proposal to ICANN to operate a new TLD registry for the .asia top-level domain (TLD).

Dot Asia Domain Gets The Go Ahead [itwire.com.au]

[GrendelKhan TSU]

woot!

let the asia gold rush begin! =P
+_+

[vite_rts]

erm , there is nothing on the site about how to do it, does one have to be registered?

[bill]

It doesn't look like they have begun registration of .asia domains. If they have I can't find it either.

Normally with something like this I would think they would have a pre-announced sunrise period for trademark holders. That might be difficult as they're dealing with a lot of disparate countries.

I'm really not sure how I feel about this new domain. On one hand it's nice to have a regional domain. But on the other I'm still asking myself, "what's the point?" Although I'll probably buy a few to protect trademarks I don't think I'll be using them.

[Visit Thailand]

I'm still asking myself, "what's the point?"

My thoughts exactly. I am sure many of these domains are created just to make money. I wonder how many webmasters do buy them just to protect their main .com domain.

Soon .asia then will .japan become an alternative addition to co.jp etc.

Will .travel be diluted to include .hotels, .airlines etc

Is there any proffessional research to show what the average user recalls? Whether an ad for a domain.biz works or wether that same ad actually benefits thesamedomainnamebut.com instead?

[Olney]

I can't really understand the reason for the extension since there are already strong use of clear extensions that people in the countries understand.

co.jp for a Japanese company
.jp for anything in Japan (Most popular for new sites now)
.cn for China

I can't see who's the target.

[inbound]

It'll be .eu all over again, only this time with the added complication of a bigger language barrier.

I can immediately think of a problem for the TLD, it's in ENGLISH! Or will it be the first foreign character TLD (as in the .asia bit being encoded too), if so, what variant of asia should be used?

What a dumb idea. At least .EU is recognised by all EU citizens.

ADDED: I inadvertantly coined .EUthanasia as being a good fate for .EU to suffer, maybe this addition makes .EUthan.asia the best hope for them both

[Woz]

I must admit I am also not convinced of these regional TLDs. Are we going to end up with .oceania, .balkans, .northeramerica, .southamerica, .centralamerica, .pacific, and so on. The possibilities are endless and to me seem to currently present little value. Perhaps more effort could be spent on identifying markets that have a definite need for a TLD rather than what is perceived to be of importance.

When was the last time anyone saw a .travel in normal SERPs? Or a .coop? Or a .museum?

Lets look at real needs and some standardisation in TLDs before starting new ones willy-nilly.

</soapbox>

Onya
Woz

[fitzer]

Yet another money grab for Registrars; they are the main ones benefiting (profiting) from these ridiculous new TLDs. I say main because the domain squatters are the only other ones.

ADDED: I inadvertantly coined .EUthanasia as being a good fate for .EU to suffer, maybe this addition makes .EUthan.asia the best hope for them both

LOL! Hopefully Mickey Mouse doesn't register fant.asia before I do...

[ronin]

This is

a) A racket; and

b) Daft. Asia doesn't even exist. It's a word coined by Europeans to describe all the land that isn't Africa or Europe. What do Hokkaido and Mauritius and Iran and Mongolia and Myanmar have in common again?

[GrendelKhan TSU]

yall are such haters.

I don't look at it much further than I can probably get a few domains that people in my market can easily relate to that were otherwise unavailable as dot coms due to cybersquatters. and yes, it depends on what biz your are in.

its easier to type than "co.kr" or co.jp too. and yah, I'm IN "asia".

so its a racket....oh well. my fight against TLD tyranny will have to take a backseat and I will somehow, someday forgive myself the 15 bucks a year (or whatever) if it actually works for me and my customers.

gg.

[Leoproviding]

Hi everyone, I' ve been following the adsense topics for a while, and that is my main interest. But I also "collect" domains and I have about 50 domains worldwide. Now as I follow the .Asia discussions and also now that I have become a member, my first question would be: Is the adult industry going to be dominant in .Asia domains as it has been in almost every other top level domains or do you think that .asia will try to restrict these domains?

-John

[redstorm]

my first question would be: Is the adult industry going to be dominant in .Asia domains as it has been in almost every other top level domains or do you think that .asia will try to restrict these domains?

I don't think .asia domain will restrict adult industry websites. what's more, ICANN will create another extension: .adult specified for it one day. LOL!@

[GrendelKhan TSU]

what redstorm said. =P

[redstorm]

what redstorm said. =P

It's an unpleasant sentence. You have no obligation to follow me, but you are required to behave yourself!
If you can use your head, you will see the domain name market is subdividing itself quickly with all kinds of extension domains appeared in a few years like dot tv, dot fm, dot travel, dot eu, dot asia etc. More extensions will be created in the future, whether you can accept or not, the market is decided by the essential demand. You can't shout loudly to the market for stop!
Actually I run none adult website, so I gave the above comments as a third person. Since the adult websites have already dominated the market in many kinds of extension domains, why can't we create a dot adult extension specified for this industry? I assume it will be easier to manage these websites if we unify them in a same extension domain!

[GrendelKhan TSU]

It's an unpleasant sentence. You have no obligation to follow me, but you are required to behave yourself!
If you can use your head, you will see the domain name market is subdividing itself quickly with all kinds of extension domains appeared in a few years like dot tv, dot fm, dot travel, dot eu, dot asia etc. More extensions will be created in the future, whether you can accept or not, the market is decided by the essential demand. You can't shout loudly to the market for stop!
Actually I run none adult website, so I gave the above comments as a third person. Since the adult websites have already dominated the market in many kinds of extension domains, why can't we create a dot adult extension specified for this industry? I assume it will be easier to manage these websites if we unify them in a same extension domain!

um...
sorry if you misunderstood or I didn't communicate that more clearly... but all "what he said" means is that I agree with you (similar to just saying "ditto").

[redstorm]

sorry, mate, maybe i have misunderstood you. I will tell you the reason provided you can create another thread on internet languages/net lingua.

[codemeit]

.com is the gold.