ICANN is pleased to announce the designation of two new sponsored Top-Level Domains (sTLDs), .JOBS and .TRAVEL. The ICANN Board approved the designation at the 22nd ICANN International conference in Mar del Plata, Argentina.
"Expected to launch in late 2005, the full introduction of .travel will be preceded by a start up period for limited registration of pre-authenticated .travel registrants."
Interestingly it said that one had to own the .com or such domain to buy the same name in .travel
Of course if you already own widgettravel.com then surely you would want to buy widget.travel rather than widgettravel.travel
That alone could cause some problems as I alone know of at least one well known domain that has different owners on the .net and .com
In the "jobs" TLD, I imagine there will be some interest from the adult industry.
[edited by: engine at 4:12 pm (utc) on April 11, 2005]
[edit reason] specifics [/edit]
They were bought a couple of months ago from new dot net. There are tons of others such as .shop .kids .family. .auction
I think you can apply for TLD status when you have sold over 10000.
These odd extensions apparently work for specially enabled browsers, apparently 174 million internet users have access already.
Anyone else heard of this?
NOPE. Only ICANN can designate the .tld. It's like buying land with no title or building without a permit...
How many people are going to remember that given the total failure of .info, .name and .biz etc. to penetrate the consciousness of the web-using public?
This is, of course, conjecture but I wouldn't be surprised that if you told 100 people that the domain of a website was widget.travel, 97 of them would type widgettravel.com into the address bar.
Well, no, because 20 of them would type it into the searchbox instead of the address bar, but you catch my drift...
If you own widgettravel.com, why would you even want to register widget.travel?
You have to look ahead of the present time. They might type widgettravel.com now, because .com has been online for over 20 years and has had much advertisement in that time. Remember that there's a learning curve of about 10 years with the average person.
Don't think of now, but think of the adoption of these extensions in 5, 10, 15 more years. Las Vegas was a desert just a few decades ago. Things change, they just take time.
If you own widgettravel.com, why would you even want to register widget.travel?
So no one else could have it?
And let's say you have europetravel.com, who knows if country.travel domains will become a standard? You'd definitely want to have europe.travel in that case.
"steve.jobs"
"odd.jobs"
"#*&$.jobs"
Oops!
If you own widgettravel.com, why would you even want to register widget.travel?
It's shorter to type. That can't be true of an awful lot of names though, even for most travel and jobs sites this new extension could be pretty pointless.
My own take on the proliferation of new domain extensions is that it's a license for registrars to print money, more than a reaction to actual demand. Adding new ones doesn't so much open up the opportunity for other people to use already-registered domains, because of all the branding and trademark issues. It just compels certain sites to register more variations in order to protect themselves.
it's a license for registrars to print money
That's my take exactly - I agree with you 100%.
Given how unintuitive it is for any web user to type in .travel, the only good reason to buy widget.travel when you already have widgettravel.com is:
so no-one else could have it
Which - er - wasn't an issue, before, was it?
It's not as silly as .biz, though. That was really stupid.
Who grants ICANN the authority to make these designations? Who chooses who gets to be a part of ICANN? I'm not complaining, just curious. It seems odd that there is a "governing body" of the internet. What compels ISP's to listen to ICANN and recognize their decisions?
there is nothing forcing them to do so, except for the fact that they can either follow ICANN or be the only ISP from which nobody can access "www.google.com" because they dont recognise ICANN TLD's
Some ISP's have decided to take up support of New.Net and several other alternate roots, but they do so only because those roots are fully compliant with ICANN, if they weren't then they would chose ICANN over the alternatives every time
[icann.org...]
Basically, it's an NGO that controls the DNS propagation of the 'net. It was the first to be setup, so they decide.
to get a travel domain you have to belong to an accreditted travel association. otherwise you can not.
Mjomike
to get a travel domain you have to belong to an accreditted travel association. otherwise you can not.
I heard this mentioned on a TV travel show. But who decides which travel associations are acceptable enough? And I can't help wondering how well this rule will be enforced.
MojoMike
