.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

Advertising!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dang, I've never even *heard* of .NAME before. Just asked 2 coworkers, they haven't either.

Well shucks, I just can't figure out what the problem is...

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?

I want this URL

[addaboy]

http://whats.my.name/bitch or http://say.my.name/bitch

I'm too late

[johnburton]

My name has already gone so I couldn't have it even if I wanted it. There is no point having a variation of it either. I can't imagine how they expect this to succeed. There are far too many people with the same names, You need a proper hierarchy for this kind of thing.

Re:I'm too late

[FearUncertaintyDoubt]

My name has already gone so I couldn't have it even if I wanted it.

I know how you feel. I got muscled out by that guy John Jacob Jingle Heimer Schmidt. His .name is my .name too.

We then need a new gTLD

[spacefight]

.bankrupt

nuff said

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..

Free the namespace!

[Ashurbanipal]

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.

Hopefully it will only put a damper on plans to introduce stupid TLDs that perpetuate the expensive stranglehold on naming that ICANN enjoys.

TLDs should be available to anyone who can run a secure, reliable root - this connects profit to performance, so we don't have to rely on the innate goodness of the root nameserver operators. The first thing that'd happen would be that pepsi.com, pepsi.net, and pepsi.org would be obsolete since .pepsi would be run by PepsiCo.

With the widespread popularity of search engines, nobody would have any trouble finding anything even if some temporary chaos were engendered.

Spare me the FUD about nameservices not scaling for this; I believe DNS and BIND are quite capable of it.

Anonymous.Coward.name

[Fulkkari]

No one seem to have registered Anonymous Coward, even though Slashdots seems to be full of people with this name. How is this possible? You would think that at least one of these several hundred Cowards would register with their name. Things must be going really bad for .name...

Re:Anonymous.Coward.name

[random_rabbit]

That reminds me. Last night my girlfriend said "I think that this Anonymous Coward guy spends far too much time on this site. He's all over it".

I wanted to agree, but I was too busy getting beaten for laughing at her.

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.

Advertising? Technical issues?

[Tokerat]

Until this article I had never even heard of a .name TLD. Perhaps if more people knew it existed? Most average people are still stuck on .com anyways. I tell them my website's address, 4am.kicks-ass.net (yay DynDNS), which ends in .net, and they call me up complaining it doesnt' work. Some of them put .com, some of them actually put .net.com, and still others put www.4am.kicks-ass.com. Point being, how many people are going to get bounced e-mails from frank@rizzo.com or frank@rizzo.name.com?

Also, once I get this TLD I need to do something with it. After I pay for hosting or a mail server setup (which is what most people woudl probably want a .name for), this becomes a little more expensive than simply being "gt3trkj3p6@verizon.net"...

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.

Re:Who wants anything but .com?

[LordWoody]

Me. Some of us still follow the distinction that the original tlds had (.edu for schools, .com for commercial, .net for networks, ISPs, etc..., .org for organizations such as community orgs, non-profits, etc..., and so forth).

While I think the whole tld was a terrible idea applied in an even worse fashion, I still register my domains based on what general tld they best fit. I have no interest in leading people to believe that our LUG is a commercial interest or that my business is some community group or non-profit. Although I am not above availing myself of the .us tld if that is the only non-misleading tld left for a given name.

With the advent of search engines like Google, the whole "what cool FQDN is your site?" is becoming irrelevant anyway.

the.site.with.no.name

[wowbagger]

the.site.with.no.name - be a good Spagetti Western homage site.

theyve.given.me.a.number.and.taken.away.my.name - The Prisoner and Secret Agent Man homage site.

went.through.the.desert.on.a.horse.with.no.name - fan site for the band America.

a.policeman.knew.my.name - Site for The Who.

A BIG warning

[Gudlyf]

I signed up for a .NAME domain, stupidly through Network Solutions, for a fairly high price. This was because other registries such as Go Daddy weren't registering domains under .NAME at the time (I hear they do now). I was being all hasty about things, and decided to nab my .NAME ASAP with NetSol.

The price NetSol charges, like with anything else, is outrageous, but that's not the worst of it. When I tried to have the domain transferred to Go Daddy (much, much cheaper), I found that I can't! In fact, what I believe happens is that once you apply for your .NAME domain (i.e., john.smith.name), NetSol takes ownership of "smith.name", and you're given the right to use the "john" subdomain -- it can't be transferred! (or, at least, they're not allowing it)

NetSol also makes you purchase email hosting with the domain, and tries to tack on some web hosting. Simply put, DO NOT go through NetSol for this service. (I can hear the collective, "Well DUH!" now)

This is why I'm letting my .NAME domain dry up and die, and will continue to handle my email the way I always have. There's no way in hell I'm paying NetSol's outrageous prices until I'm able to transfer to some other registry.

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.

Re:Die .name, die!

[Zeinfeld]

You mean I won't get any more .name spam??? Good, let it die! .name was a lame idea anyway.

The problem is the spam. Very few people want to have their cyber identity tied to their email address in such a direct fashion.

The .name zone has about 10,000 Web pages in it. So you can work out the number of domains they have probably sold.

The big problem that the new registries face is that they thought that starting a new domain was a license to print money for doing nothing. They simply did not expect that there might be some actual work involved.

$35 sounds a lot by geek consumer standards, but you need a minimum of 2,000 names to cover the cost of hiring one person at that price - including salary, overhead, benefits etc. You need a minimum of 5 people to provide round the clock support.

The business models of the new domains expected people to buy millions of them in the first year. They did not understand that maybe it might take five years to build a critical mass.

It is always easier to look at someone elses business, particularly a successful one and decide that it is essentialy easy to run and cost free than to have your own idea. Look at all the folk who blundered into etail thinking that the economics of that space would somehow be different to the economics of mail order, a business notorious for its low margins and high infrastructure costs. Or look at the folk who blundered into home delivery of groceries, an even lower margin business, building $30 million distribution centers to serve markets that could not possibly support the interest payments, let alone register a profit.

Folk who have .name domains should not be too worried however. The same thing happened to .tv which spent through its initial VC funding at record pace and was bought out for about a tenth of the amount spent on building the brand. Someone will buy .name, although bidding is not likely to be brisk.