There is a lot more, that the registries and registrars of new internet top level domains (like .berlin, .ngo or .ninja) need to do, to make the new names a success, said Akram Atallah, President of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) talking to the Internet Policy Review at the Munich Conference on New Top-Level Domains 2013, this week. During the conference, the CEOs of dot.berlin and punkt.at signed their contracts with the private internet governing body. Still, signing is one thing, the other is to promote the new names (e.g., cometo.berlin, love.ninja, privacy.ngo). Furthermore, beside the marketing challenge of the new names, a few process hurdles do remain.
Until the last moment, ICANN was not sure whether these babies would really be born. ICANN’s CEO and President Fadi Chehade even acknowledged this at the start of the two day conference, which brings together the new TLD applicants, registries, registrars and a tonne of experts of the new TLD business. Just a week ago, the first new TLDs were pushed to the root zone of the internet and will become available after a period allowing trademark owners to secure their rights. ICANN allowed all of the non-latin TLDs to run first, in an effort to show sensitiveness towards a growing non-English-speaking internet community. read more from policyreview.info