I’m so excited. And I just can’t hide it.

by Rebecca Burn-Callander - Wednesday, 25th June 2008 - - Business comment

Anyone else gearing up to go wild over the new domain name changes? No? Just think of the wit, variety and confusion it will bring to the world wide web.

To be fair, it doesn’t take a lot to get me excited, but this has really got my spine tingling. Tomorrow, Icann will decide whether or not to relax the strict domain name rules, from .com, .co.uk, .org and the like to, well, pretty much anything.

This is partly for practical reasons: domain names are starting to run out, and as the net sprawls increasingly wider, these rules are becoming prohibitive. This is also an opportunity to internationalise the internet. People from foreign climes will no longer be limited to English language domain names, there will be urls in Chinese, Arabic, even Sanscrit.

So, in brief, here’s the new deal. Companies will [fingers crossed] soon be able to register their brand name, or any smattering of letters, as a domain name.

www.realbusiness.co.uk could become real.business or realbusiness.magazine or even realbiz.hellyeah.

Fun, huh?!

This is not to say that all companies will take advantage of this new world of choice. For one, this new system could seriously screw with your carefully crafted SEO. Changing your web address is tantamount to starting from scratch. The rule of thumb here is, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Bet you're excited now...

Picture source

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