A .com by any other name...

2008-06-27 08:39

Alistair Fairweather

The internet got a whole lot bigger yesterday - in theory anyway. We're all used to web addresses ending in .com (like the one you're on now), or .co.za for most local sites, or more adventurous varieties like .net and .biz. Well, soon you'll be able to buy .anythingyoucanthinkof.

All those dot names are called "top level domains" (which proves you shouldn't let geeks name anything), and for years people have wanted to expand them beyond the tight restrictions. After yesterday's decision, they will get their wish. Now everything from .aaron to .zzzz is possible - and a trillion combinations between them.

Who's behind this decision? The snappily named Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (or ICANN for short) - a non-profit company that acts as the city planners of the internet. They don't build the roads so much as lay them out and number them - and with this decision they've opened up a whole Yukon of new possibilities.

There are obvious benefits to this loosening of the reins. Companies now have the whole sandpit to themselves as far as naming goes. Who needs coke.com when you can have southafrica.coke? Cities are also thrilled, with .paris, .london and .nyc already on the cards. And the porn industry is (as always) leading the charge. We should expect domains like .xxx and .sex to spring up overnight.

Gold rush

Many are already calling this a "gold rush", which is only true in the sense that 95% of participants will lose their digital shirts in the process. First of all, setting up these new domains will be extremely expensive - anything from $100 000 to $500 000 for the first few years. If that sounds extortionate, remember this is not like buying a block of an existing city (like .com) - it's like founding a whole new town out in the wilderness (.wildwest).

Secondly, unlimited possibility sounds wonderful until you're the person who needs to decide what new domains to buy for your company. So .coke is an obvious one, and so is .cokeacola - but what about .alwayscokeacola? Why not think bigger and register .softdrink or .soda? Hey, if you don't register it, someone else will. Even at $100 000, some cheeky opportunist could make a profit selling coke.softdrink to a very grumpy parent company.

And there are much sneakier ways to exploit the system. Already people make a living out of registering slightly misspelled addresses (hotmale.com is a famous example - be wary of visiting it). You may think you're looking at your bank's website - but it's always wise to double check that URL. But now checking the spelling will not be enough. You'll need to remember if you normally use fnb.bank or internet.absa or atm.nedbanksa. Is it standard.bank or .standardbank? Or both?

Let's take this website for instance. If some scammer registers .comm and .cmo then anyone who misspells news24.com (or any other .com for that matter) would end up on his nefarious site. And even if ICANN see that coming (and they have) news.24com and www.news24com are still going to be a problem.

Only just

But the geeks and overzealous porn vendors have forgotten the most important issue of all. Most people have only just learned their way around the neat grid pattern of the current naming conventions. If your website can now be named literally anything, how on earth will anyone find you?

The short answer, for 99% of sites, is search engines (the folks at Google are laughing right now, let me tell you). But here's the thing - if people find you using a search engine, does it really matter if your address ends .xxx or .cool or .iwasrippedoffbygeeks? No one wants to know the street number of a restaurant before they order their steak.

Above all we should remember - a great domain does not a business make. Just look at the tussle over the much vaunted domain sex.com. A scam artist stole the domain and squatted on it for years. It took a famously expensive lawsuit to get it back. In the meanwhile other less well-named sites happily raked in millions.

So, website owners, resist the temptation to join the rush. This undiscovered country may seem full of promise, but it's more likely to be full of expensive disappointment.

Alistair Fairweather is 24.com's Social Networking Product Manager.

Send your comments to Alistair.

Disclaimer: News24 encourages freedom of speech and the expression of diverse views. The views of columnists published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24. News24 editors reserve the right to edit or delete any and all comments received.

- News24