The new TLDs are here, do you really need Yourname.BLARGH?
blog.easydns.org
blog.easydns.org
-It's the first TLD ever bought by a non-profit initiative: http://www.dothiv.org (based in Berlin, Germany)
-Their goal is to create the "red ribbon" of the digital age
-Revenues generated through the sale of these domains will be used to raise funds in support of projects that fight HIV
-Companies that buy .hiv addresses can pledge to donate a given amount of money to the initiative each time somebody visits their site, thus creating a clever system of micro-donations.
In my opinion this is an ingenious idea and one of the most creative uses of domain names I've seen so far.
Really? I can think of at least one other, .scot, and there are surely plenty more.
The thing that really strikes me every time the new TLD subject comes up, is that there's always a percentage of people who want to forbid creation of certain TLDs for unpredictable, idiosyncratic reasons.
Anybody could have any number of reasons for wanting a particular domain. Maybe someone will make the next del.icio.us? Maybe a TLD you don't like completes a word or phrase that makes a good brand, or is part of the next big viral trend that goes on to shape our culture in ways we wouldn't have anticipated.
Maybe people are just okay with being penalized by search engines because that's counterbalanced by other objectives. etc.
A more useful option IMO is to have things default to .com if someone does not enter a domain name like how you can avoid country codes or area codes when dialing long distance.
However, by adding a huge list of TLD's your removing that option. Even worse while .edu means something WTF does .cow or .zzl mean? At best there is simply going to be another .com land grab except now seeing yourbank.bank or yourbank.bnk does not mean it's actually yourbank.
So yea, I do think it's a bad idea.
They don't need a reason to be added, other than offering more choice and more possibilities. You can not like them all you want, that doesn't mean they won't have value or that people shouldn't be free to explore the possibilities as they please.
Let's hope not. I could never remember where that first dot went and usually took at least a couple of goes to find the site. Thankfully they can now be found at the less 'look how clever we've been', but infinitely easier to remember delicious.com
This feels(IMHO) like more noise coming on the line for registrar profit goodness, marginal benefit to registrants & a flood of bad choices(one-offs/deliberate mimicks/etc) for the rest of the unwary netizens.
e: Let me just take the opportunity to say the ones left are either very bizarre and hard to brand market or remember or they're being squatted.
What's up with that? Is there something I'm missing or are they just selling tonga [1] domains under the toronto label now?
[0] http://web.to/ [1] http://www.tonic.to/
AND we figured it was going to be better than something like .TORONTO (All these new TLDs have suffixes longer than the actual domain names...)
That said, I can't say I mind all of them. Scotland and Scottish culture will finally get their own domain - .scot - which will be great.
I'm determined to get great.scot myself.
Still, my personal site and email is on a fairly obscure country TLD, and I hope they will never do something like that, being a country and all. With these new TLDs for which companies paid large amounts of money, who knows what might happen?
Does anyone know if such a bait and switch has ever happened in domain-land?
The new .WED rules are crazy. Year 3 renewal is $25,000. They think the next "Brad and Janet" want to be able to use BradAndJanet.WED for their wedding.
I sincerely wish that this would happen with all domain registrations. Maybe not $250/yr, but $100/yr would be OK.
It wouldn't bother anybody that owns a few domains for business or even personal use.
It would slow down spamming techniques that rely on registering lots of different domains.
It would almost entirely halt domain squatting.
(The "I'm not advocating this" part seems to weaken this, though. )
If the problem isn't "domain name registration might be unaffordable for the impoverished"... maybe it's worth thinking about what the problem is?
Most of the world can't seriously afford $100/year for a domain registration. Get out of your bubble.
Comments like this are why this weird social closure that so many tech people delight in is so disturbing.
There's a lot I think I could say about this. I've been a pretty poor dude in the past, and not terribly wealthy now, even if it is in one of the richest countries in the world.
But I don't expect I could have a good conversation about it here.
Sorry for the FTFY, validity of your comment understated by a large magnitude.
You live in some rich-country-bubble.
I think roughly an order of magnitude increase of price is going to bother a lot of people who have domains for other than profit-earning businesses. (OTOH, people who have a profitable business model, including spammers, might well not be all that bothered. So I think you've got the impacts basically backwards.)
It really didn't stop speculation at all, in fact Robert Grant (well known domain speculator) made most of his money back in the days when domains were priced at $100.
However, I do believe that the current cheap domains have made the "register expired page-ranked domains" SEO scheme work, and it probably wouldn't be going on if it wasn't for cheap domains.
I have a couple of domain hacks that I've been interested in that I want to use for a project.
Does not work well on mobile.