Tech wrap: Era of .yournamehere domains arrives
ICANN, the body that oversees the Internet’s naming system, gave the green light for organizations to begin applying to name and run their own domains instead of entrusting them to the operators of .com, .org, .gov and others. Up to 2,000 applications were expected for the so-called “top-level” international domains. At $185,000 per application, estimated start-up costs of $500,000 and annual running costs of about $100,000, a .yournamehere domain will be out of reach of the smallest companies and organizations. But applications were expected from cities or regions with strong identities, such as .london and .mumbai, from companies aiming to build a business based on new domains, and from community identifiers like .eco or .gay.
Samsung is open to forging an alliance with troubled Olympus, potentially joining other electronics firms in circling one of the world’s biggest names in medical equipment, sources said. Samsung has ruled out any interest in Olympus’s loss-making camera business, but a company source said that it might consider an alliance with Olympus in other areas. Earlier, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported that Olympus was scouting for a friendly investor to take a minority stake in the company, and that Olympus had drawn up a short-list of five potential partners, including Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, Japanese medical-equipment firm Terumo, and Fujifilm Holdings.
LG is in talks with various parties on possible partnerships, the head of LG’s mobile business said, as the world’s No.3 handset maker seeks to turn around its struggling handset operation. The firm, however, remains committed to its mobile business and does not have any plan to ditch the loss-making operation, Park Jong-seok, chief executive of LG’s mobile communications business, told Reuters.
FCC chairman Julius Genachowski said that he had received bi-partisan support from a group of U.S. senators for so-called “incentive” auctions of wireless spectrum without legislative restrictions. Genachowski is looking for approval to give broadcasters a financial incentive to return unused spectrum licenses to the FCC so it can then auction off the spectrum to companies offering mobile data services.
TomTom said an official probe had cleared it of accusations that it violated Dutch data protection laws by sharing its customers’ individual location and traffic information with third parties, including Dutch police. The navigation equipment and map maker came under scrutiny in April after reportedly selling information gathered through its customers’ personal navigation devices in their cars, to third parties, without their consent.
from The Great Debate UK:
The end of .com, the beginning of .yourbrand
-Joe White is chief operating officer at Gandi, an Internet domain name registration firm. The opinions expressed are his own.-
Despite the importance of domain names for companies and the extraordinary amount of money many have paid for them, the vast majority of businesses are unprepared for imminent changes to the Internet.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the international body that oversees the structure of the internet, is liberalising the market for domain name extensions – the .com or .net part of a web address – from the beginning of 2010. This means that anyone, in theory, can apply to operate an extension. So alongside .com, .net, and .org, we will see .whateveryoulike.
Historically, companies have considered their domain to be a critical part of their brand identity. Some domains have been sold for millions of dollars – sex.com was reportedly sold for $14 million – and multinational companies often register up to 20,000 different variations of their brand to try and stop opportunists exploiting it. However, despite this historic investment and interest, the vast majority (two thirds) of businesses are unprepared for imminent changes, according to some research we did a little while ago in conjunction with the Future Laboratory.
This is interesting given that there are real opportunities for companies. It will mean companies can readdress the way they communicate with customers, partners, or investors. We’ve already seen a shift in consumer behaviour where the high-street and virtual world have blended. The growth in blogging and social networking means people have also shifted their identity online. The liberalisation of top level domain names will help to blend the activities of both businesses and consumers with the potential to create a personalised brand experience.
Toyota, for example, could create the .toyota domain and register europe.toyota and usa.toyota, and set up sites for individual brands (highlander.toyota) and use targeted domains for different markets such as customers and suppliers (suppliers.toyota, dealers.toyota, buying.toyota). Or, Nike could create a personalised brand experience using yourname.nike, with training programmes, suggested products, networking pages which could link with sponsored athletes and so on. In addition, some companies could do one-off marketing campaigns or initiatives to support individual product launches. For example, Tastyhamburgersandhealthysalads.mcdonalds or Doveforrealwomen.unilever.
Indicators suggest that consumers will embrace this change. As part of the same research, we interviewed 1,000 consumers and one in five (19 per cent) said an extension such as .nike or .microsoft would be memorable. Considering only 24 per cent think .com is memorable, this shows the future potential for branded top-level domains.
Well I think it would go a long way to resolving the issues of us running out of domain names anytime soon as well as protecting users from phishing websites. One thing that will need to be done is to price these new domain extensions so that people can register these instead of just large corporations.
76% of people can’t remember .com? That’s sad.
I expect dot brand to be a game changer in Search potentially taking away traffic from Google. Here’s an example.
2015, I see an ad for Nike’s new T100 and want to know more. What are my options?
1. Google search for “T100 Nike”. Nike’s site will appear together with a lot of other sites. I click on the Nike site, but it’s not guaranteed I will end up on the T100 info page.
2. I type in nike.com in the browser and use Nike’s internal search tool to find T100.
3. I type t100.nike in the browser and go directly to the info page at Nike’s website.
If you are a native internet users you will quickly adapt to search like this, and which option do you think that Nike prefers?