If you are living in London and you want to get a pizza from Pizza Hut do you really care about the opening hours of Pizza Hut in Denver?
Imagine if you could go to pizzahut.london or pizzahut.nyc? While you could go to pizzahut.co.uk, you'd still have to waste time trying to find the listings for London.
Bigger cities like London, Paris, New York, Barcelona and Rome have large populations that need services. If you could register a domain name for your business that showed exactly where it was located, wouldn't that be a boon?
There are a number of companies and organisations who would like to launch domain extensions (TLDs) to service that very need.
Have a look at this video from the former mayor of New York Ed Koch:
Sounds pretty cool, doesn't it?
Imagine if you could go to pizzahut.london or pizzahut.nyc? While you could go to pizzahut.co.uk, you'd still have to waste time trying to find the listings for London.
Bigger cities like London, Paris, New York, Barcelona and Rome have large populations that need services. If you could register a domain name for your business that showed exactly where it was located, wouldn't that be a boon?
There are a number of companies and organisations who would like to launch domain extensions (TLDs) to service that very need.
Have a look at this video from the former mayor of New York Ed Koch:
Sounds pretty cool, doesn't it?
; "dotcities screenshot")
What about .food or similar? then $vendor.food/location - I can't really see the justification for a tld for cities. It makes much more sense for website owners who are multi regional to simply have their cctld / location
e.g. pizzahut.co.uk/london
Paul
Look at what you just typed :)
pizzahut.nyc is easier to remember than pizzahut.us/newyork (or is it going to be /nyc or /newyorkcity or ... )
Michele
The point is that it costs $sillyamountofmoney to a) get a tld into operation and b) run it. There's no benefit on city level tlds. We already have cctlds.
You're also expecting brand holders to buy a domain for each country they operate in and now to buy a domain for each major city. Just looking after the UK alone could bankrupt a company!
The trade off is practicality vrs lazyness IMO.
Paul
Well as long as it doesn't cost oodles to register a domain, does it really matter?
If registering a *.$city domain were as easy as registering a .com for a small business owner, wouldn't they jump at the chance?
Michele
I think that a .Food or .Restaurant TLD would better represent a company like Pizza Hut. Also, I think it would be more intuitive for consumers to locate a restaurant using a community centric type TLD like .Food or .Restaurant. Especially traveling consumers. Not to say a city TLD wouldn't be a good idea for other purposes.. just not necessarily for large restaurant chains. Imagine the costs of running 10,000+ domains and additionally consider the fact that pizzahut may have 20+ locations in a given city. These are topics that we debated at Sero Registry back in 2007 when we were trying to wrap our head around what exactly a TLD is and should be. Sero Registry operates the .Artist Top Level Domain which is a community oriented TLD. We feel TLDs like .Artist that can represent large communities on the world wide web and furthermore put back into those communities are the most likely to gain entrance into the ICANN root. From a technological standpoint, I don't think that DNS, the technology that powers and otherwise enables the internet can support an infinite number of TLDs at present. That in mind, I think that we collectively as internet consumers need to decide which TLDs we need most.
The location argument is moot now that we have .tel directories with LOCation records. Location based services will use that.
@Paul "You're also expecting brand holders to buy a domain for each country they operate in and now to buy a domain for each major city. Just looking after the UK alone could bankrupt a company!"
So, to use the Pizza Hut example, you're seriously suggesting that registering a $20 domain name for each city in which they operate would bankrupt the company? Really?
I would have thought that it had the potential to save them a great deal of the money that they're now spending on SEO and paid search, actually.
Provided below are examples of churches, schools, businesses, a club, and even a university that have embraced the concept of a DOT-City TLD via the DOT-LA domain space. The DOT-LA domain space is a ccTLD that is currently being marketed under a long-term lease as a DOT-City TLD to the residents and businesses of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area.
The examples below clearly indicate a desire for DOT-City TLDs by residents and businesses in LA. Many have indicated that ICANN should not expand the number of gTLDs since this action would confuse consumers. Apparently, this opinion is not shared by the churches, schools, businesses, and other entities shown below.
Just imagine how many other churches, schools, businesses, clubs, universities, etc. would set up their own website on a DOT-City TLD if given the opportunity. Hopefully, consumers in other cities will get the opportunity to purchase a DOT-City TLD in the near term (i.e. DOT-NYC domains) so they too may have access to the same benefits that are currently being enjoyed by those shown below.
SONRISE.LA (Church)
PARADOX.LA (Church)
HYPNOTHERAPY.LA (Business)
BELVEDEREGROUP.LA (Business)
ERC.LA (Church)
WESTNET.LA (Business)
TEAMONE.LA (Business)
TRUSTLITIGATION.LA (Business)
POOLS.LA (Business)
PMM.LA (Business)
NETWORKEXPERTS.LA (Business)
THEGARDEN.LA (School)
ERHS.LA (School)
MEDIASTORM.LA (Business)
HORSEBACKRIDING.LA (Business)
CONNECTED.LA (Business)
BAMBOOHOUSE.LA (Business)
TORNADODESIGN.LA (Business)
DISTRIBUTION.LA (Business)
BLU.LA (Business)
SAHAJAYOGA.LA (Business)
POETRY.LA (Community)
EMBEDDEDIN.LA (Business)
DIGITALHEADSHOTS.LA (Business)
GOLDENGOPHER.LA (Business)
SEVENGRAND.LA (Business)
BROADWAYBAR.LA (Business)
IAU.LA (University)
DIGITALART.LA (Business)
ALLACCESS.LA (Business)
BARCELONA.LA (Business)
PLASTICSURGERY.LA (Business)
JUBILEE.LA (Business)
SEGWAY.LA (Business)
FIRSTCOMMERCEBANK.LA (Business)
SQL.LA (Professional Group)
PROPERTIES.LA (Business)
ESTATES.LA (Business)
SPAZIO.LA (Business)
MILLERTOYOTA.LA (Business)
LATC.LA (Club)
MILLERHONDA.LA (Business)
ELECTRICPICTURES.LA (Business)
ACS.LA (Business)
SUNGLASSES.LA (Business)
Raymond
Thanks for the examples - they're incredibly helpful
Michele
or you could stick with pizzahut.com/nyc
I'm as much a proponent of new TLDs as anyone but a bit confused by your example. Using the Pizza Hut scenario, wouldn't it be just as easy for Pizza Hut to use: nyc.pizzahut.com, etc.? And, to make it even more user friendly, they could wild card the 3rd level so that if I fat fingered the 3rd level, I'd still get relevant Pizza Hut info. It seems to me, that's a better experience for Pizza Hut and their consumers than having to register of bunch of pizzahut.[fill in your locale here] names.
@ARod
That depends on your perspective.
In the ccTLD world, for example, studies have shown that in the UK consumers will go to $brandname.co.uk before going to $brandname.com, as they expect to find content for the UK market. If, as in my example, there was a .nyc TLD for New York, then residents of New York would come to expect $brandname.nyc
Of course functionally nyc.$brandname.com would work, but it's not a given that the brandowner will opt for "nyc", "newyork" or "new-york".
Wildcarding combined with GeoIP lookups would only work to a point. A lot of corporate users' connections are over VPNs etc., so their actual physical location is disguised.