The Rise of New Top-Level .domains
In your browsing of the world wide web you may have seen these new types of domains emerging: .football .healthcare .guitars .yoga .financial .tech — what the heck? What ever happened to the dot com days? What’s it all about?
Let’s begin by seeing how the URL <http://google.com> breaks into 3 parts:
- `http://` — Indicates the “protocol” being used to send and receive data. In this case it’s Hypertext Transfer Protocol. Protocols are standard formats for digital communication, just like how postal addresses are formatted on envelopes. Other protocols include FTP (files) and SSH (server commands).
- `google` — Specifies the server or “second level domain” to be communicated with. Each web server has an IP address associated with it. In this case Google’s is 74.125.192.138. You could type in http://74.125.192.138 and still reach Google! It’s like a phone number for a website.
- `.com` — The “top level domain” or “root zone,” acts as a phone book for all of the .com servers in a process known as Domain Name System (DNS). Believe it or not there is actually a table out there that matches hostnames (google) to IP addresses (74.125.192.138)! It’s really that simple!
So who issues the top-level domains?
The internet is actually run by a few councils of benevolent wizards. For example, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) meets in circles regularly to discuss Request for Comments (RFC) about how the internet should work!
In the case of top-level domains, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) and Verisign work in tandem to provide infrastructure for root servers.
Why are new domains issued?
According to the wizards at ICANN, new top-level domains are issued to “foster competition, consumer choice, and innovation in the domain name industry.”
How have domains been historically used?
Initially, distinctions between domains were used to categorize organizations (.com .gov .edu .biz .net) and countries (.uk .us .ca).
However, many people purchased domain names in hopes that corporations would want to buy the rights to them. It’s like squatting for websites. Check out BrandBucket. This happens a lot. It’s actually really hard to find a good domain name these days.
As such, startups began using domains typically reserved for countries due to their semantics. For instance, .io stands for Indian Ocean, but was taken on by innovators like Pivotal Labs, pivotal.io, because of the computing metric Input-Output. The use of .io really exploded after Google started their I/O Conferences. Similarly, .ai stands for Anguilla Island, but has been adopted for it’s semblance to Artificial Intelligence.
Also of note, bit.ly and goo.gl used top level domains for their link shortening services.
How are the new domains being used?
According to the TechCrunch article How New Domains are Building Better Brands, “Collective registrations for the new GTLDs (generic top-level domains) have now surpassed 13 million, according to NTLD stats. This number is not small by any means. Comparably speaking, this represents just over 10 percent of total .com registrations… From Lady Gaga’s bornthisway.foundation, to Oprah’s wherearetheynow.buzz, to Slack’s slack.help — thousands of companies have adopted the new domains.”
The benefit that I see is the immediate consumer recognition of what your brand is all about. Imagine a specialty bike shop named “Sargosa.” If you saw <Sargosa.com> you would have no clue what they do! But if you saw <Sargosa.bike> you immediately know that somehow, someway, bikes are going to be involved.
In the image I mocked up above you immediately know what the Sargosa brand is about. I didn’t have to waste words to spell out <Sargosa.com>“specialty bikes.” It’s instant recognition.
Our Plug:
At Million.ai, we see an insane opportunity to use new top-level domains for personal and professional branding. We create beautiful, personal websites in seconds using the power of artificial intelligence. Our members include: developers (.codes), creatives (.photography), musicians (.guitars), gamers (.watch), business professionals (.finance), and more.
