Background

In case you haven’t heard, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has approved a vast expansion of the top-level domains (TLD’s) on the internet. Top-level domains are the last things on the end of the URL such as .com, .net, and .org. We’ve seen some expansion before with the addition of a few other TLD’s such as .mobi and .jobs that were going to send shockwaves through the internet, but they never really did. Websites can easily tell if you’re coming from a mobile device, or iPad so it turns out there is no real need for a separate domain for mobile. Despite the new .jobs TLD nobody has been able to oust the biggest job boards on the internet such as monster.com or indeed.com.

Searching for an available domain name today is like panning for gold. It’s hard to find something available that is short, doesn’t have repeating consonants, uses the .com TLD, and is unregistered (or at least for sale). This issue has led to some crazy domain names, as most branders want their company name to be the same as their domain name. There are several techniques in place today for naming, including repeating letters (ooVoo) the dropping vowels and the whole “r” thing (Flickr).

The Details

The new TLD’s can be almost anything. Would you like to own .music, .movie, or even .facebook or .groupon? For only $185,000 you can! After a 9-20 month waiting period that is. When you finally get that top level domain, then you effectively become a registrar. The Hollywood studios will be knocking down your door to register toystory4.movie. As the owner of .restaurants people will be wanting to register every city name imaginable  so that they could own austin.restaurants or chicago.restaurants.

To Buy or Not To Buy

I think that the decision to make this investment depends upon your scale.

• Large. If you’re a big company or brand the $185,000 price tag is just the price of doing business. If nothing else, it keeps somebody else from buying it. And you can refuse registration to anybody who wants to buy a domain in your TLD (if I  understand the rules correctly).
• Small. Smaller companies just can’t afford it, so there really is no decision to be made here.
• Medium. For everyone else in the middle, this is where the tough choices are. The results are most likely binary; your investment will be either worthless or highly valuable, but probably not anywhere in between.

Since the first of these new TLD’s won’t begin appearing till 2013, we will all have plenty of time to debate the subject.

Will your company make the investment?