What’s to the Right of Your Dot? Huge Domain Expansion Coming in 2014

There is a major expansion of top level domains or “TLDs” coming in 2014 and business centers may be able to benefit.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers “ICANN” has been involved in an effort to identify hundreds of new domains. Some are brand associated, such as .Google, some are location sensitive, such as .nyc and .london, and some are even vertical industry-driven, such as .sports.

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This could be welcome news for business centers and coworking spaces, especially if you’ve had to go to a lot of trouble to arrive at a name that hasn’t already been used.

But some caution is advised, especially if there is not an extension that neatly defines your business area. Jeremiah Johnston of SEDO.com, a domain name warehouse, warns, “There are going to be hundreds of new extensions. Some will be clearly relevant and others won’t. For instance, with something like .sports, if that’s your business vertical, you should jump on it.

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“Other more general extensions like .web or .shopping are so broad that whether or not they are successful is going to depend on the registries that are launching them and how much they invest in marketing them.”

So does that mean you can apply for an extension such as .space, .center, or .office? Or how about .touchdown, or .dropin?

As an example, commercial builder, George Minardos, has applied for a .build extension to his company. He, like many entrepreneurs, feels that the TLD boom will help companies re-define themselves in new ways. “This should be looked at as an updated branding opportunity,” Minardos told Bloomberg Business News in a recent article on the subject.

Research, however, indicates that .com still accounts for the lion’s share of traffic. The .net extensions only account for 5% and other popular extensions such as .info accounts for 1.5% of total internet traffic, according to research conducted by Silicon Valley-based Horizon Communications.

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That doesn’t mean not to do it. If you are interested in looking into obtaining a new TLD for your center or coworking space, go to ICANN for details on submitting your application.

You may want to jump on this before someone else does. As George Minardos claims, “Very soon, the name to the right of the dot is going to be as significant as the name to the left of the dot.”

Time will tell if he’s right.

Image source: Stuart Miles, freedigitalphotos.net