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New real estate comes online. Stake your claim.

Virtual real estate gets bigger and better?

As probably one of the biggest changes to come to the the Internet in a long time, ICANN, the body that that gives us .org, .edu, etc., is opening things up to a whole new range of names.

Looking toward 2009 ICANN plans to make it possible for the characters after the "." like the com in ActiveRain.com to become any number of other names (.caleb .rainmaker etc.).

"Presently, users have a limited range of 21 top level domains to choose from — names that we are all familiar with like .com, .org, .info." ICANN Chariman, Peter Dengate Thrush

It's a big change from 21 to ???, that's a lot of real estate opening up folks, I'm not sure if it's better, but it'll be interesting.

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Posted by Caleb Mardini on 06/27/2008 04:33 PM

Comments (7)

internet, icann

Post is included in group: Blogging & SEO

7 Comments on New real estate comes online. Stake your claim.

JUN

2008

I still prefer .com. People have trouble remembering the other ones. Veronica

Caleb- I bought several .eu names and they were more expensive, wonder what these will cost. It'll be interesting for sure, thanks for the heads up.

Caleb, I guess one thing we can always expect in life is "change". It will be interesting to see where it goes.

Veronica you've got a point, .com is likely to remain the more lucrative real estate.

Kathy I do wonder what it will cost, with the greater availability of names however it'll probably be cheaper than having to buy the one you want that someone else already has.

Marchel I hadn't thought of it that way. I wonder what this does for all of those "squatters." Perhaps we should watch the domain names we want to see if they come down at all.

What's going to be most interesting to me is what will happen to names like Google, Yahoo, Kanoodle, Trulia, Zillow, etc. With a jump from 21 to virtually unlimited domain name choices we'll likely see a completely new approach to names. Furthermore the idea of ".com" itself could change. Right now as Veronica mentions we default to .com, but with a vast sea of naming styles it's possible we'll find a new way of thinking about top level domain names. Being as tech interested as we are we're likely to shape that new nomenclature.

Caleb it doesn't surprise me that something i had never thought of will become the next wave...but you bring up the point I was thinking of when I read your post and that is, how will the spiders find everyone?

Love that college word nomenclature. I miss you! lol

JUN

2008

Hey Caleb,

Thanks for calling me when you were in FL....:))) Serious note...I'm not sure whether this will be of any benefit for me or not but I guess they will run out of domains to use eventually. Just like phone are codes...now you see so many more.

Carole Ha! "college word" am I too stuffy? :) I'm wondering how it will affect machines and bots as well.. they'll be adapted, but will it be a lot more work? Hmmm....

Neal, Man, you know I'll never make that mistake again ;). I'm not sure if this will be a benefit either. There will be a lot more cyber squatting opportunities. But I think it's helpful to consider what this might mean. It might mean .com looses it's position as the "default" one thinks about. On the other hand maybe .com gets more valuable?

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