City sets its sites on '.nyc' Web domain

[dailypress]

It's the 21st-century equivalent of the 212 area code.

New York City is on the verge of getting its very own Internet domain that will give area Web sites the option of putting an ".nyc" rather than a ".com" at the end of their addresses.

City officials yesterday announced they were looking for private firms to help them apply to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numerals -- the world body that coordinates Web naming -- and to operate the .nyc domain.

The ICANN recently changed its rules so that anyone could apply to buy a top-level domain, or Web address suffix.

[nypost.com...]

I wonder how much names like Pizza.nyc, Taxi.nyc, Realtors.nyc, Entertainment.nyc, Shows.nyc, Restaurants.nyc and ... are gonna go for!

[sonjay]

On the one hand, it seems kind of stupid for a city to have its own TLD.

On the other hand, NYC has the potential for a lot more domains on that TLD than a lot of countries have on their TLDs.

[robho]

The use of .la for Los Angeles businesses was being promoted a few years back. Like .md for medical etc it's never really taken off. I can't see .nyc being any different. Novelty value only.

The ICANN recently changed its rules so that anyone could apply to buy a top-level domain, or Web address suffix.

I thought that was still under discussion, and not a foregone conclusion yet. The whole concept is dumb, especially as so many .com's are now being deleted and becoming available again.

[bill]

But .la is for Laos and .md is for Moldova. Those are assigned ccTLDs that are being misused. This .nyc TLD is something else altogether. I agree that it'll probably just be a novelty.

[LifeinAsia]

I can see it being of more value for local search. I would image that most of the thebestKEYWORDin.nyc domains will get scooped up by domainers pretty quickly.

What are the rules (are there any?) for an organization to buy a specialty TLD, register the best ones for themselves (to sell later), then open registration to all?