"I'll Take .RADIO for half a mil, Alex"

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"I'll Take .RADIO for half a mil, Alex"

Postby jon » Sat Jun 18, 2011 11:22 am

Welcome to the dot-anything age
Rick Spence, Financial Post · Jun. 13, 2011

Are you ready for the next Internet gold rush? The entry fee is higher than last time, but the rewards just might be enormous.

At a meeting next week in Singapore, ICANN (the not-for-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is expected to announce a new high-level regime for domain names. In terms of status, opportunity and bragging rights, these new domain names will rank as far above the dot-com URLs as the dot-coms are today considered above the dot-nets and dot-infos of the online 'burbs.

Up for grabs are some of the world's most valuable names and words: dot-hockey, dot-travel, dot-music, dotmontreal, dot-toronto. No suffix (i.e., dot-com, dot-ca) required. This will change the way businesses and people use the Internet; and although ICANN has been planning this change for three years, it's still mainly just the geeks who know about it.

The private or public organizations that win control of these gTLDs (generic TopLevel Domains) will become registrars of their own new networks of potentially lucrative name extensions (e.g., country.music, events.montreal, condos.vancouver). The second-level domain opportunity is absolutely huge: if you owned dot-banks, for instance, you could sell off country names (switzerland.banks, canada.banks), functions (FX.banks, merchant.banks), e-commerce opportunities (online.banks), supplier relationships (chequeprinting. banks) or job prospects (careers.banks). The sky is no longer the limit.

ICANN expects this will become the preferred way Internet users access information on specific topics or industries. Dot-com and the lesser suffixes will all still be around, but the best information sources and most powerful suppliers are expected to aggregate under these umbrella categories.

Of course, not just anyone can own dot-airlines or dot-calgary. ICANN will carefully screen applicants to keep cyber-squatters away; it won't be the Wild West free-for-all where anyone could acquire movies.info or pepsi.org (assuming they could hold on to it after the lawyers call). To discourage speculators, ICANN is planning to charge $185,000 for the privilege of applying for the new names, and its scrutineers will ensure you have a legitimate claim to the name, as well as a plan and the resources to build a network around it. If your application gets turned down, there's no refund.

The opportunity is real - but it's not for lone wolves. Ambitious agricultural suppliers could apply for dot-wheat, dot-apples, even dot-broccoli. Each of these crops represents an integrated industry, so its domain could become the first stop globally for anyone looking for suppliers, seeds, technology and equipment, or recipes. Whoever owns dot-hockey could sign up every shinny-playing nation, league, equipment supplier, coach or fantasy camp, earning a fee from each partner. "Now anyone can have their own Yellow Pages-type operation," says Naseem Javed, founder of Toronto naming consultancy ABC Namebank.

Javed has devised many corporate monikers you may know, such as Omni Television, Telus and Celestica and has been following ICANN's "dot-anything" plan for years. The new regime will favour big companies with unique brands - think dot-pepsi, dot-coke, dot-ibm. Telus, for instance, may want to snap up dot-telus, but Bell Canada may have trouble getting hold of dot-bell with so many similarly named companies out there.

Javed suggests many companies will want to rethink their name strategy and their branding in light of these opportunities. Most small to mid-sized businesses are unlikely to claim their own top-level names (with lawyers' and consultants' fees, Javed estimates many applications will end up costing $500,000, so dot-HalifaxTaxi is probably out of the question). But big, established brands will want this chance to control their names (pity those with generic names, such as Bell or United Airlines).

Still, Javed laments that Canadian businesses aren't already chasing these opportunities. He says Europeans and particularly Russians are chafing to get started, while most Canadians aren't even aware of the impending changes. He thinks entrepreneurial consortiums should already be in place to exploit Canadian destination brands (museums.edmonton, hotels.edmonton, realestate.edmonton, and so on). Although there won't be much competition for most big-city names. (Even if Canadians prove slow off the mark, Javed doubts ICAAN would award dot-toronto to Toronto, Ohio, pop. 5,676.)

The real competition will come in the generic industry and topic names, where anyone in the world can create their own organization to go after domains such as dot-dinner, dot-movie, dot-martini, or dot-sex. "Anyone could go and shake the tree," says Javed. By arming themselves with the right partners, capital and business plan, he says entrepreneurs can turn simple ideas into "overnight global-cyber-name-brands of extraordinary proportions."

If Canadians want to be top global players in natural resources, agriculture, technology, communications, professional services, donuts and coffee, or games played on ice, business leaders have to get moving now. There's gold in them there URLs.

- Rick Spence is a writer, consultant and speaker specializing in entrepreneurship. His column appears weekly in the Financial Post. He can be reached at rick@rickspence.ca.
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Re: "I'll Take .RADIO for half a mil, Alex"

Postby PMC » Sat Jun 18, 2011 2:33 pm

If you are serious in this type of investment, then take a course in domain name systems first.

Before investing in the above, try to see where communications will be in the next five to ten years, based on what has occured in the past five to ten years.
PMC
 


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