Internet body ICANN meeting in Singapore this week is presiding over the most significant opening up of the domain name system (DNS) for many years. ICANN has agreed in principle to allow new top-level domain extensions known as generic top level domains (gTLDs).
Approval for new gTLDs has been long awaited by entrepreneurs and digital branding pundits who plan to create domains for cities, global corporations and popular commercial products such as food (.food, .restaurant), sports (.basketball, .ski), banks (.bank, .secure) or airlines (.united, .lufthansa). But the new TLDs also have their critics who claim the initiative is simply a money grabbing exercise and that the emphasis should be towards addressing better security and making the Internet more inclusive.
However ICANN has responded by ensuring that the cost and regulatory barriers to forming a new domain suffix are substantial. In reality there is unlikely to be an avalanche of new gTLDs and in the meantime there has also been progress on DNS security and the provision of internationalized character sets.
Whatever your views on ICANN and its elephantine bureaucracy, we are sure to see some changes in the domain landscape over the next few years. Major corporates such as IBM, Canon, Apple and BMW are looking at securing their own TLD whilst forward thinking cities like Berlin (.berlin) or New York (.nyc) may soon have a custom domain extension. In many cases gTLD owners will acquire domains strictly for their own internal use. But brand managers around the world will need to keep a close eye on other suffixes that emerge in public. Individual users should also think about how they can leverage the new domain endings to build a personal brand presence online.
