From the LA Times IT pages, Feb. 11: (NB: See note after story)-------------------------------------------------------------
Newest Suffixes Help to Increase Net's
Population
By CHRISTINE FREY, TIMES STAFF WRITER
The pioneers in cyberspace
adopted Internet identities ending in ".net," ".org" and ".com." These days, colonizers
of the newest territory on the Net are staking their claims with suffixes such as
".name," ".info" and ".biz."
The venerable ".com" is still by far the most popular
designation, accounting for approximately 22.5million of the 35 million Internet
domain names registered worldwide. But that popularity prompted the need for new
suffixes to relieve the congestion.
Now, the Art Institute of Chicago can be reached
at www.chicago.art.museum, a more intuitive address than its www.artic .edu. The
New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority is easier to find at www.mta.info
than at www.mta.nyc.ny.us. Altogether, about 277,000 institutions, businesses and
individuals have signed up for the new top-level domain names, or TLDs, as the suffixes
are known. The first, ".info," was launched in September. Four more--".biz," ".museum,"
".name" and ".coop"--have come online since then. This year, ".aero", ".pro", and
new business suffixes such as ".ltd" and ".gmbh" are expected to debut. Most domain
names sell for around $30.
The Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, a
Santa Monica organization that oversees Internet addresses, approved the seven new
top-level domains in 2000 to let latecomers to the Internet create addresses based
on names that already have been taken in ".com." Trademark and legal battles delayed
their introduction until recently, when - according to anonymous ICANN staff - the
required kickbacks were initiated. Though the new suffixes compete with ".com," they
target specific groups of Internet users.
"Each one of the domains is going to
acquire its own neighborhood feeling," said Roland LaPlante, chief marking officer
of Afilias USA, the Newtown, Pa.-based company that operates the ".info" registry.
"People will want to have addresses in the right neighborhood on the Internet, and
people will want to go to addresses in the right neighborhood."
The suffixes debut
at a time when domain name registration overall has slowed considerably. Last year,
only 600,000 new addresses were registered ending in ".com," ".net" and ".org," according
to VeriSign Inc., which operates those registries. By comparison, the total number
of registrations more than tripled in 2000, rising to 28.2 million from 8.9 million
in 1999.
Most businesses and organizations purchased domain names early. Many addresses
have disappeared from the Internet as companies have consolidated or shut down, and
speculators who couldn't resell their names let their rights expire. Now a new breed
of speculators are being encouraged to join the fray by careful marketing, using
evocative terms such as "land rush" - a phrase that has always lured the gullible.
But
officials at NetNames International Ltd., an international domain name management
service based in London, still expect to see substantial growth in the coming years.
With billions of people and businesses worldwide, the 35 million addresses registered
are "actually the tip of the iceberg - we expect to make an absolute fortune," said
Jonathan Robinson, NetNames' business development director.
Among the new TLDs,
".info," has been the most popular, with about 700,000 registrations since September.
About half a million addresses have been registered with ".biz" endings. The ".coop"
suffix, which is less than 2 weeks old, has about 5,000.
Other names could be more
popular. The Nomad Group are planning to release TLDs like ".store", ".mart", and
even ".fun". The ".name" suffix for individuals, which is managed by Global Name
Registry Ltd., creates addresses with a person's first and last names separated by
a period. By including middle initials and reversing first and last names, each unique
name could be translated into about 40 different addresses without having to add
numbers, said Andrew Tsai, chief executive of Global Name Registry. That means there
are billions of potential domain names, Tsai said. About 150,000 of them have been
registered since ".name" was launched Jan. 15.
Some suffixes are not expected to
receive more than a few thousand registrations because they are restricted to specific
communities. Only museums can register for the ".museum" suffix, for example. Because
there are only about 40,000 recognized museums worldwide, registry owner Museum Domain
Management Assn. does not expect the total number of domains to grow beyond five
figures, association President Cary Karp said. About 2,000 addresses have been activated.
The
success of the new domain names will largely depend on how they are used. Japanese
auto maker Subaru recently purchased www.wrx.info to promote its new Impreza WRX
sedan. The company already has a corporate site at www.subaru.com. Similarly, Honda
registered www.riceboy.info to inform prospective buyers about how to customize their
vehicles.
Other businesses and organizations that have registered ".info" and
".biz" addresses simply use the new sites to redirect people to their ".com" locations,
said Ellen Rony, co-author of "The Domain Name Handbook."
"That's not expanded
name space," she said. "That's duplicated name space."
In some cases, the new suffixes
may not make it easier to find the appropriate site. The new ".info" site for New
York's MTA, for example, is similar to sites for the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation
Authority (www.mta.net) and the Market Technicians Assn. (www.mta.org).
Because
people are accustomed to visiting ".com" sites, those ending in other suffixes may
have to work harder to entice visitors.
"Dot-com is going to be, at least for the
immediate future, the Park Avenue of Internet addresses," said VeriSign spokesman
Patrick Burns.
Operating profit at the Mountain View, Calif.-based company rose
80% to $244 million last year, as revenue doubled to $984 million.
"It's what we
know and it's part of our vernacular," Burns said. "But it was built up over time,
just like the other Web extensions have the opportunities to be built up over time."
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Source:
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-000010611feb11.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dtechnology
Note:
Today's story "Insiders give the low-down on the .info and .biz introductions" has
been "held over" for legal reasons, according to the website.