Member-Specific Domains: Some Hot, Some Not

On Tuesday this week, ICANN (which really ought to be called ICANT) released the new .name domain. This one is aimed at individuals who can't sign up for domain names that match their real names because all the names you can think of have been taken.

(Actually, there are tons of good names left. I found one yesterday that I couldn't believe was available -- myprosperity.com -- and creative, judicious searching almost always turns up a really good domain name, properly suited for a client or a need I have. It's just not lying around on the ground like they were a few years ago.)

Other TLDs (top-level domains) besides .com and .net and, to some degree (though corrupted), .org, have not caught on very well. And with good reason. For the most part, they are silly and not particularly useful to most business buyers. There was a .tv craze a while back and the latest rage was the .biz and .info domains. I just don't see those catching on. I can't tell you how many times I tell someone about one of my domains that happens to end in .net and they type in .com, then call me wondering why the domain can't be found. Habits die hard.

All that said, however, this .name thing could become the next .com in the world of domain naming. There's something vaguely discomforting about a domain name like sollysnodgrass.com. I mean, unless Solly's a corporation or a business named Solly Snodgrass, the .com (which means, you may recall, "commercial") is just the tiniest bit out of place for me psychically. But sollysnodgrass.name, now that makes sense. I think it makes sufficiently intuitive sense that it's going to cause another big upsurge in revenues to registrars and their supporting staff.

On one level, albeit a rather broad one, this domain is a pointer to an inevitable trend toward what are referred to as "member-specific" domains. We have .edu, for example, that is reserved for educational institutions. Now, some of the top folks in the Internet domain universe are suggesting that we consider lots of new additions like .museum and .library.

I think this is a particularly silly idea. Why do I think .name is cool and these others aren't? Simple. Before you could type in the URL for a museum site, you'd have to know it's a museum. Now, in a lot of cases that's probably cool. But in many, it won't be. If this gets carried to a logical extreme, you'll have to know that the restaurant whose domain name you want to find sells Vietnamese food because it's listed under vansfinefood.vietrestaurant. It's not a great idea for us to expect our customers and users to have to know so much about us before they can even find us.

Last update: 11/13/02; 2:12:28 PM.