On June 26, 2008, Dr Paul Twomey President and CEO of ICANN, announced that ICANN had approved the expansion of new gTLDs to be offered after a final implementation plan is completed in early 2009. “The potential here is huge. It represents a whole new way for people to express themselves on the Net,” said Dr Twomey. “It’s a massive increase in the ‘real estate’ of the Internet.”

This was big news in the domain industry and for CADNA as well. Many blogs started publishing articles how this would effect the industry and the internet. The common theme amongst many of these industry blogs was that these new gTLDs would create mass confusion for consumers surfing the internet and devalue the current system that has been operating for years.

Additionally, CADNA went on the defense saying that this would be a nightmare for brand and trademark holders. CADNA has continued to lobby against these new gTLDs, and doing everything in their power to prevent this move from ICANN taking effect. CADNA’s major concern is companies profiting from generic domain extensions that describe their products and take advantage(Abuse) of their online brands and approved trademark registrations.

However, CADNA has no legal grounds for slowing down DotCity and GeoTLD extensions. Already, ICANN has received a variety of interest and applications from government agencies and private investors from across the globe for these type of extensions. Many believe the demand will be strong for targeted dotcity and geotlds. Afterall, the internet has been transforming into targeted communities and networks the past 5 years or so, and recently gone from a global concept to a Local one.

The land rush for these dotcity and GeoTLDs will occur in 2009 if (.nyc) and others launch successfully with high demand from consumers and businesses IMO. Branding power, networks, and advertising revenue are going to play huge factors in the success of these extensions when they are launched. One thing is certain, government agencies have an unlimited source of all of the above. I will talk more on the rise of DotCity and GeoTLDs in Part 2. In the meantime, I have listed some information for you to digest. Interesting times ahead.

Approved GeoTLDs
.CAT – The Catalan cultural and language community (2005)
.ASIA – The Asian community (2006)
.EU – The European community (2005)

City Prospects
.NYC – New York City community
.BERLIN – Berlin community
Other cities in which communities already think of establishing their own TLD are London, Hamburg and Lima

Country, Language, and Cultural Prospects
.SCO – The Scots culture and language community
.CYM – The Welsh culture and language community
.BZH – The Brittany culture and language community
.GAL – The Galician Community
.LAC – The Latin American Community
.AFRICA – The Arican Community

(Sources) CityTLD, DotCity, GeoTLD

What do you think are key fundamentals for a new DotCity or GeoTLD to launch successfully and be accepted by consumers?