ICANN voted today to allow the expansion of Vanity TLDs (vTLD’s coined by David Castello) offered.  Its guestimated that the registration for someone to get rights to .whateveryouwant will be in the 100k range and those who are interested will have to go through an application process.  From what I have read, it seems like local Cities will be the biggest spenders (.losangeles).

What this means to Domainers

There is going to be a serious gold rush and some are quoting that this will be the most dramatic expansion of virtual real estate in 40 years - which I agree.

What this means to Business Owners

Finding a good domain name is hard to come across these days.  Early pioneers were early to catch on (about the time I was getting sick of seeing www . com in movie theaters) by grabbing up nice domains and big companies with big pockets swooped up the rest.

This will be a giant opportunity to brand your company.

What this doesn’t mean

.com’s will fall as a preferred choice for companies/internet users.  We all know that .travel didn’t work out too well and .mobi is in the same boat.  .com’s will be, and will always be, the preferred TLD.  There is no comparison between www.losangeles.com and whatever.losangeles and there never will be.

What you should know

Trademarks will not be automatically reserved. But there will be an objection-based mechanism for trademark owners where their arguments for protection will be considered.

In short, make sure you have your ducks in a row.

There will be a limited application period where any established entity from anywhere in the world can submit an application that will go through an evaluation process.

In short, if you have the money, you can do great things.

When is this going to happen

ICANN is working towards accepting the first applications in the second quarter of 2009.

Summary

It’s going to flood the Search Engines with a bunch of crap. I don’t think the availability of the current 21 TLD’s limits the number of people on the web with a website.  This means savvy business owners will rush to get these vTLD’s and either drop their current site or create new sites with duplicate content.

On the other hand, I think there will be some mid-size companies that will get inspired to grow or seek investment due to the branding capabilities of these vTLD’s.

More Reading

Vanity TLDs (vTLD) Approved

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