ICANN approves two new domain names

[lukeeales]

Originally Posted by Yahoo

NEW YORK - The Internet's key oversight agency gave final approval Friday to two new Internet suffixes — ".jobs" for the human resources community and ".travel" for the travel industry.


It could take months, though, for the domain names to start appearing in use, as companies running those names now must set up registration and other procedures.


Approval came as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ended meetings in Argentina. ICANN staff has spent the past few months negotiating contracts with the companies following the board's preliminary approval of those names last year.


Negotiations continue on two other names already given preliminary approval: ".post" for postal services and ".mobi" targeting mobile services.


The board did not yet act on a contract to run the ".net" directories beyond June 30. An outside company had recommended that VeriSign Inc. be given a six-year extension.

Anyone gonna be getting these, or will their availability be very limited?

[Vivvy]

.travel will only be available through a stringent approval process.. as i understand it these domains won't be out in the wild...

Vivvy

[PapaStiz]

Originally Posted by Vivvy

.travel will only be available through a stringent approval process.. as i understand it these domains won't be out in the wild...

Vivvy

If that is the case then that kinda stinks. All we need is another .pro scenario. Not much fun there.

[Vivvy]

i guess it depends on which side of the industry you're on... for me .travel will bring in quite a bit of extra easy cash... 90% of my sites will easily pass the authentication process.

And it's very positive for the industry I work in...which has been overcome by posers with thousands of empty pages on websites that have absolutely nothing to do with travel. now you'll actually have to be authenticated and the .travel tld will automatically make you a part of a travel directory that won't be defeated by bad search algorithms and scammers.

I'm kinda giddy about it...
Vivvy

[TheWatcher]

Originally Posted by lukeeales

Anyone gonna be getting these, or will their availability be very limited?

Great news for domaineers.

Cheers,
Em

[FineE]

Originally Posted by PapaStiz

If that is the case then that kinda stinks. All we need is another .pro scenario. Not much fun there.

Yes but in this case the "alternate root" is a lot stronger. There a currently millions of computers that have the new.net plugin installed. Now if you enter a .travel domain in any of those computers the new.net version rather than the ICANN version of .travel will win.

Back in 2004 I tested this using the .travel in the new root and the new.net plugin

http://www.finee.com/travel_tld.htm

and placed this in my comments to ICANN

It will be real interesting to see what will happen when the ICANN .travel registrants find out that thier .travel domain resolves to another site in a significant percentage of computers. Hmmm....

Make me think of lawyers.travel, litigation.travel and lawsuits.travel in both the ICANN and new.net versions

[StockDoctor]

The two new extensions just come across as another power play for ICANN again. Amazing how ICANN has pulled off this break from the DoC control into a self appointed power that appears to answer to nobody. Certainly they have eliminated any voice that the domainers had. Wouldn't be a bad thing if they actually did anything useful, like take some action to protect the consumers (us) and come down on the registrar abuses, but they don't do that. Seems they are in place to charge fees for nothing and schedule vacations in foreign lands and that's it.

[mole]

If search engine algos start considering the new STLD extensions seriously for filtering of search quality, then I think many developers will be in interested. But it seems they don't take the previous STLDs like .museum and .coop very seriously... hmm

[FineE]

Originally Posted by mole

If search engine algos start considering the new STLD extensions seriously for filtering of search quality, then I think many developers will be in interested. But it seems they don't take the previous STLDs like .museum and .coop very seriously... hmm

The .travel directory itself will deliver search engine traffic as does the .museum directory. In the latter case a site can pick up a PR from the directory link itself.

I still think that the big problem that the ICANN .travel faces is new.net. Unlike the previous cases where ICANN effectively beat an "alternate root", namely .biz, .info .pro and .museum, ICANN has to find a way to turn off those new.net plugins in millions of computers worldwide or this will get very interesting.

[mole]

Originally Posted by FineE

The .travel directory itself will deliver search engine traffic as does the .museum directory. In the latter case a site can pick up a PR from the directory link itself.

If that is the case for SEs, you can easily imitate that logic with a domain like travel-travel-travel-world.com.

If the algos are configured specially to favor the right of the URL BECAUSE they have technically been "vetted", then that's a different story.

[FineE]

Originally Posted by mole

If that is the case for SEs, you can easily imitate that logic with a domain like travel-travel-travel-world.com.

If the algos are configured specially to favor the right of the URL BECAUSE they have technically been "vetted", then that's a different story.

It is just a link from a directory, that is relevant, not that different from a DMOZ or Yahoo directory link. The difference here is that you get the link if you qualify for, and register the .travel or .museum domain.

[clemzonguy]

Originally Posted by FineE

I still think that the big problem that the ICANN .travel faces is new.net. Unlike the previous cases where ICANN effectively beat an "alternate root", namely .biz, .info .pro and .museum, ICANN has to find a way to turn off those new.net plugins in millions of computers worldwide or this will get very interesting.

Hmmm....interesting