Seven new web domains to officially be released

If you have difficulty deciphering the difference between a .com and a .net, a .org and a .edu, I’m pleased to tell you that things are about to get a lot easier.

Seven new domains are set to be introduced this Wednesday. They include:

.bike
.singles
.clothing
.holdings
.plumbing
.guru
.ventures

What’s the point? It’s actually pretty straightforward: so that the users have a better understanding of what products a site sells, what content it covers. Instead of there being a site like “twowheels.com”, it’ll now be “twowheels.bike”.

These seven are the first lot of what are expected to be a few hundred more online extensions that will be made available over the next few years. And while news of this updated might seem a bit nonsensical, it’s actually being tipped as one of the biggest changes to ever hit the Internet. 

“If you think about the history of the Internet and the history of domains, this is pretty massive,” said James Cole, a spokesman for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, which reviews and approves applications for new extensions. “It could potentially affect every Internet user.”

Most of these new web addresses will be sold through registrars like GoDaddy, Name.com, and Network Solutions. A good majority will sell for somewhere between $10 and $40 a year, although there will be some that come with a higher price tag; .luxury is expected to cost $800 when it’s made available later this year.

Others may start in the thousands of dollars to take advantage of initial demand before being lowered in price.

GoDaddy expects a rush of buyers in the coming weeks. To circumvent the demand, the company has opened up pre-registration queues for 25 extensions (for those curious, .guru and .photography are the most popular extensions being pre-registered for at the moment).

“Domain names are real estate of the Internet, and new land has just been opened up. So getting to stake your claim early is obviously better,” said Mike McLaughlin, vice president and general manager of domains at GoDaddy. He added that the new roster of domains will “fundamentally change how people navigate the Internet, with names that are much more meaningful and targeted.”

There are 22 generic, top-level domain extensions presently available, with .com being the most popular. Approximately 110 million addresses end in this particular address, out of 265 million domain names registered around the world (according to Verisign, Inc.)

Along with the aforementioned .photography extension, other domains coming down the pipeline are expected to include .construction, .menu, and .technology.

Not to be lost in the hype, large corporations will also be applying for their own domains, including .google, .apple, .nike, and .cartier.

But not everyone’s sold. According to the LA Times , there are many business owners out there that see value in the legacy of a long-serving .com web address, and view their company’s changing over as a marketing hassle.

The paper specifically cites Brent Han, manager at Safety Cycle, who said he had “zero interest” in investing in a .bike extension, especially given the fact that SafetyCycle.com has been in existence for nearly a decade.

“Everyone's so used to .com,” Han said. “I'm pretty sure if I said our website is SafetyCycle.bike, if they didn't write it down they would assume it was .com. I don't think there's any benefit to that.”

Story via latimes.com