If you are in the domain name industry, today is a big day. It’s “General Availability” for one of the first batches of widely available and potentially popular “new Top Level Domains”.
For the uninitiated, a Top Level Domain, or TLD, is everything to the right of the last dot in a domain name. Verisign’s .com is the most familiar of these, but there have been in fact 22 generic TLDs and 255 country level TLDs. ICANN (the organization responsible for domain names) has been working for over a decade to expand the number of generic TLDs and those efforts are now coming to fruition.
Starting today Hover supports these new TLDs:
- .bike
- .clothing
- .guru
- .holdings
- .plumbing
- .singles
- .ventures
These are the first of what will, over the next few years, be hundreds of new TLDs.
So, big news if you’re in the domain industry.
But maybe not such a big deal if you’re not.
When we think about the “Job To Be Done” that you are hiring Hover for, it’s two-fold:
1. Help me find and register the best possible domain for my project.
2. Let me efficiently manage my domains so I can get back to my projects.
We’re excited about new TLDs because they help us with the first of those jobs. With over 248 million domains already registered it is becoming increasingly difficult to help you find a good domain name. The fact that these new TLDs have meaning built right into the TLD means domains can be shorter and with each new TLD we open up a new namespace to find closer matches.
Bottom-line is we believe it will now be far easier for you to find meaningful domain names.
And that’s a pretty big deal for us.
It’s super-simple to buy a domain based on a new TLD. Just do a search at Hover as you always did and you’ll now see any new TLDs we currently have available in the results.
The new TLDs are ready for registration at Hover today and there’s already been a lot of interest in them. The registries are working hard to keep up, but you may still find the process a little bumpier than usual for now.
