Three New TLDs: .bar | .rest | .cafe

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Joe Alagna

Mexico Joins the Race for New Domain Extensions with Punto 2012’s Application for Three Essential gTLDs, .rest .bar and .cafe

.bar - .rest - .cafe | New gTLDsPunto 2012, a Mexican based company has chosen to participate in ICANN’s new gTLD program and create the first niche portfolio of domains that will serve the restaurant, bar and cafe industry and its consumers worldwide. “Restaurants, bars and cafes serve as places where people gather around the world to celebrate, to share, to make business and to discover new flavors and experiences. Their information should be easier to reach through the Internet”, says Aaron Grego, President of Punto 2012 and founder of QueremosComer.com, Mexico City´s most reliable and visited restaurant guide. “We are privileged and overwhelmed with excitement to be able to participate in this revolutionary moment. We hope that our gTLDs become the new way restaurants, bars and cafes identify themselves on the Internet”…

Read the story… | Source: PRWeb | Date posted: 6/19/2012

Visit their site… | Source: Punto2012.mx | Date posted: 6/19/2012

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting the people from Punto 2012. Earlier this year, me and our CEO, Ben Crawford, visited their offices in Mexico City. They are a great group of people who are dedicated to the food / hospitality business. They’ve built restaurant directories and web sites for years and will make these some very successful new gTLDs. I wish them the best.

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This Guy Has to be a Cousin

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Joe Alagna

I know this guy has to be related to us (the Alagna family); but I don’t know how. He is Sicilian (but grew up in France). This has nothing to do with domain names which is my usual fare here. This song however, is so me:

Here’s another picture of him when he was in his 20s. Doesn’t it look familiar? He has to be related:

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ICANN’s New gTLD Domain Name List Released

Posted on June 13, 2012 by Joe Alagna

ICANN has revealed the entire list of new gTLDs today. You can download a spreadsheet here (right click and ‘save as’ since this is an Excel spreadsheet).

It’s good to see so many brands. Interesting that the first press question was about .sucks. We have an applicant for that and although it may seem offensive to some, it is a term popularly used in domain names to criticize companies, governments, and individuals.

Some Brands That Have Applied

Some of the brands that have applied include:

.aaa from the American Automobile Association
.aarp from the American Association of Retired Persons
.amazon from Amazon
.amex from American Express
.apple from Apple Inc.
.asda from Wal-Mart Stores; not sure what they have in mind for this.
GM has applied for many of their brands such as .buick and .cadillac.
.google from guess who? Using the Charleston Road Registry.
.mcdonalds from McDonalds
.xbox from Microsoft (Should be big for them).

I think that advertising dollars will begin to flow to these new names rather than the .com versions of the same. The result will be a bit less equity in the .com brand. However, .com will remain the dominant TLD because smaller businesses that still advertise will continue advertising them in local markets.

Smart Choices (IMHO)

.autoinsurance from Allstate
.author from Amazon
.baby from Johnson and Johnson
.bible from the American Bible Association
.book from Amazon (and many others)
.deal from Amazon (and one other)
.expert – I think this was an interesting one.
.gop – From TLDH. It looks like they are assisting the California GOP
.how from Google
.makeup from Loreal
.tunes from Amazon
.yellowpages from Telstra in Australia – I think this one has potential

Of Note

My personal favorite new TLD is .spot which was applied for by Amazon, Google, and DotSpot, LLC (Great minds think alike :-)).

.dot – That seems confusing to me.

Several very smart retailers have applied for IDNs. Walmart and Amazon have applied for a few.

The Vatican applied for .catholic – I think that is pretty cool and will become popular over time.

Likely to End Up Costing the Most in Auction:

.web – Applied for by Afilias Domains No. 3 Limited, Charleston Road Registry Inc., DotWeb Inc. NU DOT CO LLC, Ruby Glen, LLC, Schlund Technologies GmbH, & Web.com Group, Inc. These are all well-funded players who want that domain badly.

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1930 New TLD Applications Will Be Announced

Posted on June 13, 2012 by Joe Alagna

New gTLD SummaryThe Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) received a total of 1930 applications, after refunds, for new generic top-level domains.

– 1846 of those are “standard” applications.
– 84 are designated as “community-based”.

Of the 1930, 66 have designated themselves as geographic name applications.

116 applications are Internationalized Domain Names, or IDNs, using non-Latin scripts.

Three applicants seek support through ICANN’s Applicant Support Program.

Applications were received from 60 countries. Using ICANN’s definitions of the world’s regions, which can be viewed on our website:

– 911 applications came from North America.
– 675 from Europe.
– 303 applications are from the Asia-Pacific region.
– 24 are from Latin America and the Caribbean.
– 17 from Africa.

Some domain names have been applied for by more than one applicant. There are 230 domain names for which at least two applications were submitted, involving a total of 751 applications.

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