Speaking of Generic TLDs...

ICANN

ICANN (the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is holding its 39th conference this week in Cartagena, Colombia.  The hottest topic for the conference is ICANN opening its doors to new gTLDs (Generic Top-Level Domains) applications.  Though there are currently only 21 gTLDs, it is expected that over the next couple of years, a multitude of new gTLDs will be approved by ICANN and be made available to the public.  Some of the rumored applications include:  .nyc, . paris, .hotel, .sport., and .eco, as well as, brand based extensions lik .Canon, .IBM and .Deloitte.

Chief Strategy Officer for HEXONET, Robert Birkner, is attending the ICANN event and has been tweeting about the conference.  According to Robert, "it is going to be interesting to see how these new extensions are recieved by the general public" - see blog postings titled "Where's the Beef in new gTLDs?" for more detail on new gTLDs.

Growth of .INFO

Afilias is a global provider of Internet infrastructure and registry services for a number of top-level domains (TLDs) including .INFO, .MOBI and .ASIA.  Recently the organization released its 2010 .INFO annual report.  A hugely successful TLD, .INFO has maintained its position as one of the top TLDs on the Internet and ranks seventh overall with nearly 6.8 million registered domain names.

Key findings in the 2010 INFO annual report include:

• In 2010, .INFO saw a significant increase in domain names under management, growing nearly 30 percent from 2009 to over 6.8 million domain names registered.
• .INFO domains are now available at more than 360 registrars, representing more than 90 percent coverage of the worldwide domain marketplace.
• The top regions for registrations continue to be North America (58 percent) and Europe (27 percent), but the Asia Pacific region is also gaining share of .INFO, and is currently home to 12 percent of .INFO registrations.
• Over 70 percent of .INFO registrations resolve to active websites-- that’s nearly 5 million .INFO websites worldwide. The report also shows some of the best sites of 2010.
• Source: www.afilias.info

We encourage you to read this report in more detail as it features some excellent information on what has been the driving force for .INFO's success over the years, as well as, some real-life examples of businesses, individuals and even non-profit organizations that leverage this TLD.