.NAME at a Crossroads

An anonymous reader writes "It seems the .NAME registry is at a crossroads. They say that things are going far from well, and so they have started their own registrar that is going to try to market .NAME domains to individuals, unlike all other registrars. If they don't manage, this will be the first gTLD to go bankrupt. I guess that will put a damper on any plans to introduce more new TLDs."

Comments

Selling to individuals is good

[xadhoom]

I've never taken my .name domain just because they don't sell directly to individuals. But now, I have a chanche. I think that's a good idea, but the news should be promoted *alot* .

Does anyone have one?

[krony]

Seriously, does anybody here actually have a .name TLD for their website? More specifically, do you have a .name without the corresponding .net, .com, or .org?

They aren't doing it right.

[z_gringo]

Either that or I don't understand. (It works out the same for me in the end).

I went to register my .name, just for kicks, I entered Z for my First name, and Gringo for my last name, and I was provided with the very helpful message:

Your own, impressive .name addresses
z@gringo.name; and
www.z.gringo.name
may be available right now.


Which isn't really what I would want at all, IF I did want a .name. I would want zGringo.name

Their version of "whois" isn't really what I'm used to.. Maybe that's the way it's supposed to work, but then, that also probably what I'm not really interested in a .name.

And, what's up with their response: www.z.gringo.name
may be available right now?? Is it available or not? It was a yes or no question..

argh..

Is that surprising?

[t_hunger]

Well, it does not surprise me... having a own domain is cool, I know. But john.doe.name just sounds stupid. And the more common names should be taken allready anyway. How they they handle that? john.smith294.name? Definitly uncool:-(

The registrar claims it is for indivuduals to register their name. I just tried "www.john.smith.name" und ended at www.smith.com, some company website. Doesen't that spoil the purpose?

Finally the website of that registrar claims that john smith "may be available right now." It's not, or it wouldn't redirect me to that company website. Why doesen't the registrar say so? What good is that query field if it cannot even figure out names that even my DNS server knows to be taken?

Now instead of this ridiculous ".name" they should have introduced ".sex" and forced all those sex-companies into that TLD. That could have helped parents to make sure their children do not get exposed to lots of the smut on the net and I'd be happy with just blocking all mails from "*.sex" and have way less spam in my inbox. Of course that wouldn't have worked out completly -- someone is bound to try to offer adult content under other TLDs -- but I'm sure it would have helped.

Now I have to pay attention to TLDS - agggh

[jj_johny]

The fundemental problem that .NAME faces along with the rest of the internet is no garbage collection. These new TLD are pretty useless when you have to make sure that people remember the ext. When it once was default that if you worked for a company, your email was some variation of your name, the at sign and some variation of the company name and then you assumed the .com. If you worked for the gov or an organization, it was pretty clear what its end was. (At least in the US.) But now you have all these bloody domain names that everyones significant email and web address is now 4 or 5 characters longer.

Next they will try a TLD with umlauts and maybe some of the cyrilic letters.

No surprise?

[Jugalator]

I think this post summarizes the outstanding problems well.

Two points from that post:

- .NAME is a TLD targetted for individuals, but priced for organizations, even if .NAME DNS requests should be far less common than .COM lookups.

- .NAME in your e-mail let spammers easily detect individuals, merely by looking in a phone book and putting an @ between the forename and surname, and finally applying .NAME.

I use .name domain and e-mail...

[Przepla]

...and I will be very unhappy if it disappear.
First of all, I want my own domain and since I am not an ORGanization, not a COMmercial business, not a NETwork backbone .name suits me very well.

I use it since beginning and I receive very little spam (while I post to USENET without even spamblocking my e-mail).

If I would buy .com domain my personal data will be reavealed in Whois database, so I don't care if my name is put in e-mail itself or not.

And finally now I can switch from different ISP without changing subscription addresses, my Bussiness Cards, and sending e-mail to all my friends about new e-mail.

I can agree with one thing, it is not properly advertised. But did you hear about .museum, .coop or .aero domain?

Note: English is not my native language, so please disregard any spelling or grammar mistakes.