Strategy Gold Mine In New Generic Top Level Domain Applications

Today’s the “big reveal” as it relates to gTLDs – generic Top Level Domains. You know, “websitename.BIGDATA” or “websitename.DSP” or as ICANN explains, “It is an Internet domain name extension such as the familiar .com, .net, or .org. There are 280 ccTLDs but only 22 ‘generics’ in the domain name system right now, but that is all about to change.”

This feels like it could be a gold mine about companies’ future strategies. You can judge for yourself here.

Where to begin with strategy… how about this? The venture capital world has fueled Donuts.co, led by former Demand Media Chief Strategy Officer Paul Strahura, which has 307 applications on the gTLD list of 1,929. Download it (CSV or PDF.) Donuts.co has applied for “.MUSIC”, “.POKER” and “.RADIO” to name a few.

The most competitive of all the gTLDs is “.APP” with 13 applications followed by:

.HOME 11 applications
.INC – 11 applications
.ART – 10 applications
.BLOG – 9 applications
.BOOK – 9 applications
.SHOP – 9 applications
.DESIGN – 8 applications
.MOVIE – 8 applications

It’s not easy to tell who exactly is bidding as there appear to be gTLD holding companies of sorts doing the heavy lifting. But, Google at 101 applications and Amazon at 76 applications appear to be going for the gTLD “gold” as they have the most applications by company. Google wants “.NEXUS”, “.PHD”, “.MBA” and others. Google may be making a big push into education. Amazon is thinking “.SONG”, “.SMILE”, “.ZERO” among its filings.

Top Level Domain Holdings comes in third at 70 applications – they’re publicly-traded according to their website. The company is led by Peter Dengate Thrush who was Chairman of the Board of Directors of ICANN and “led the process that resulted in the historic decision to launch the new gTLD program in June 2011,” says their website’s management page. Top Level is applying for “.LATINO”, “.LAWYER”, “.SURF”, “.DDS” and “.SPA”.. ahhhhh.

Brands are in here, too, as Wal-Mart has applied for 5 gTLD’s including “.WALMART” and “.GROCERY”. JP Morgan wants “.JPMORGAN” and BestBuy wants “.BESTBUY” as you might expect.

And then there’s this – Amazon is the only one filing for “.LIKE”. Does Facebook know this? They do now.

By John Ebbert

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