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The Problem with Vanity TLDs (2011)

templetons.com

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Re: The Problem with Vanity TLDs (2011)

#51
post #46
post #23

Sorry, but *looks at my nails* .com is a boomer TLD, it's passé. Do you really want a domain from last century? Or do you want an exotic .asia? A cool .club? A forward looking .future? Or even joining the ranks of the celebrity media with a stylish... .xn--45q11c? The answer is clear, if you want to stay in the past, then go with .com, but the .future is in vanity TLDs. For more information, check out my website http…

.xn--45q11c is actually .八卦 (According to Google translate, it means Gossip)

Yes, a perfect TLD for the new Perez Hilton ;)

Re: The Problem with Vanity TLDs (2011)

#52
I don't understand why people are interested in keeping the implementation details of the internet exposed. There was a reason we came up with TLDs and such, and you had to type in http vs ftp vs https etc. But there's no reason to be constrained by these detalis. If the computer can figure it out? good.

Re: The Problem with Vanity TLDs (2011)

#53

The real issue with the vanity TLDs, and many of the newer ones in general, is that they have zero recognition. They are most worthless. You can slap a joehardware.com on the back of your van, or a local TLD, and people will know that it's the address of your website. Now do the same with joehardware.builders, people have no glue as to what that might be. It doesn't even help to write www.joehardware.builders, that s…

A remembering problem exists with the main TLDs though. Alice's Home Cleaning Service needs a website, but the one she wants is taken, so she starts doing weird things with the domain: alicehomecleaning.com alice-homecleaning.com alice-home-cleaning.com alicehc.com

These domains are also worthless. I can say I would find something like alicehome.services a lot more memorable.

And with advertising, it's more about continuous exposure. So I see the alicehome.services car around town for the third time and say, "oh there's that weird domain again".

Re: The Problem with Vanity TLDs (2011)

#55

I would tolerate the ICANN TLD money-grabbing scheme, but the "new" TLDs are a little more than an indication of bad taste. I can't be the only one to dislike anything more than 3 characters in a TLD, like .cloud or .engineering.

I think that as more and more companies and individuals get online there's absolutely a use for more TLDs, and having more descriptive ones doesn't hurt anyone. I do think TLDs like .sucks are a flagrant display of ICANN's greed and corruption.

Re: The Problem with Vanity TLDs (2011)

#56

I would tolerate the ICANN TLD money-grabbing scheme, but the "new" TLDs are a little more than an indication of bad taste. I can't be the only one to dislike anything more than 3 characters in a TLD, like .cloud or .engineering.

No there just shouldn't be a thing as a "TLD". I should be able to register abc.ou8hurbaskjdbflubsaduf if I want to. Or just 8huasidvbsd with no domain. Only way to fight domain squatting and the stupidly overpriced domain hacks.

Re: The Problem with Vanity TLDs (2011)

#57
post #34

There's a legitimate engineering issue here too that bears mentioning. Your marketing team will charge ahead with migrating all your product.business.com sites to just product.business You'll get half a year into that migration before someone asks about shared domain cookies. Oh, login.business.com dropped an SSO cookie on business.com? After that you'll get the lovely request - you work with the browser people, can'…

Discussion on stack overflow... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3342140/cross-domain-coo...

I would really like a better solution; but that appears to live solidly within a successor to current HTML pages, something designed from inception with security contexts in mind. Maybe they can fix login / logout / credential management too; I really hope they just use kerberos.

Re: The Problem with Vanity TLDs (2011)

#58

I would tolerate the ICANN TLD money-grabbing scheme, but the "new" TLDs are a little more than an indication of bad taste. I can't be the only one to dislike anything more than 3 characters in a TLD, like .cloud or .engineering.

ICANN has clearly strayed from its charter of nonprofit root trustee, and is acting like any other for profit entity and arbitraging away their assets. I'd love to see a root-restandardization effort that aims to take anything that isn't (com/net/org, the country code tlds, and whatever other traditional ones I'm forgetting) and sticks it under a new .icann or whatever. So ICANN can "sell .google", but most everyone…

And invalidate every URL and hostname in existence? That's an absolute nonstarter of an idea.

Re: The Problem with Vanity TLDs (2011)

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paint a QR code on the side of the van instead, I bet it would get more engagement even with a .com address.

Sadly I have no way of tracking that, because I would make the opposite bet. My guess is that 90+% of QR codes, that people aren't forced to scan somehow, are never used.

Lots of restaurants are forcing this. I stop going to them. I don't go to a coffee shop to spend 3-10 minutes futzing with phones instead of talking to the person I'm meeting.

Re: The Problem with Vanity TLDs (2011)

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ICANN has clearly strayed from its charter of nonprofit root trustee, and is acting like any other for profit entity and arbitraging away their assets. I'd love to see a root-restandardization effort that aims to take anything that isn't (com/net/org, the country code tlds, and whatever other traditional ones I'm forgetting) and sticks it under a new .icann or whatever. So ICANN can "sell .google", but most everyone…

And invalidate every URL and hostname in existence? That's an absolute nonstarter of an idea.

If you think through the implications of my proposal you'll see that it is only invalidating hostnames in these ICANN-giveaway new "TLDs". Traditional domains would remain unchanged. Trustees of traditional TLDs would still continue their corruption (as was narrowly avoided for .org a few months ago), but that's probably inevitable. Meanwhile we'd preserve the root namespace for the adoption of better technologies (eg .onion).

And honestly we need better mechanics for machine-intended references regardless. It's ridiculous that you resolve and load a webpage, only for that webpage to require you to resolve a bunch more human readable (ie non-decentralized) names for loading subresources. For example, going to a bookmarked page shouldn't result in any DNS queries for human readable names.

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