You guys aren't seeing the big picture here. This isn't a lame attempt for the creation of some industry-specific TLD by a long shot and it has nothing to do with domaining in the traditional sense. This is basically the beginning workings of a massive global effort for postal services all over the world to try to start charging for email. It's no news that the Internet has essentially taken a MASSIVE chunk out of the post office revenues, due to the fact that you can now send pretty much anything over the net for free, barring actual package deliveries. And even a lot of the things that required package deliveries in the past can now be downloaded over the net. (i.e. CDs, DVDs, Video Games, Books, etc).
The .post TLD is a way for the post offices to try to start making money from secure, online email delivery.
It will work like this:
1. Post offices all over the world will get a .post domain.
2. Government officials will get email addresses from their local postoffice.post.
3. Post offices will start pushing this secure email framework to businesses.
4. Post offices will start pushing this secure email framework to individuals.
Some things to note:
It's the post office, so they have unlimited advertising capabilities. They can send direct mailings to your door for free and they're all subsidized by governments so they can probably afford major advertising campaigns. They're going to try to push businesses into their framework, because it will be secure. The TLD will be locked down, everything will use secure certificates, and every party will be verified, they'll probably require photo ID for individuals to activate their FREE post office email account. They'll probably come out with some advertising campaign that plays on the imagery that your .post email address is like your "second home."
The idea is that businesses will buy into it, because everything can be verified secure. Businesses like security. There's also the fact that businesses spend tons of money every year on direct mail advertising. Wouldn't it be nice if, as a business, you could cut down on mailing costs (i.e. paper, printing, envelopes, etc) and just send a secure, digital version that will always go to the correct person, regardless if their address has changed? You don't have to worry about your customer information being outdated, because that customer will always have the same .post address. No more wasting money sending direct mailings to incorrect addresses. If the customer moves to a different city, their email will be forwarded in the backend from their old city address to their new city address. Everyone will probably have a unique routing ID, so domain structure will mostly just be for show and can easily be manipulated through redirects.
There is also the fact that "SPAM" doesn't exist in the world of the post office. AOL was notorious for taking advantage of that loophole. Since this TLD will be setup and run exclusively by the post office, and since they would be directly profiting from businesses who are paying them money in order to send secure emails with verified delivery (and probably the ability to verify whether the person opened the email or not), it's not a far stretch to imagine that businesses will LOVE this crap.
They'll probably also push businesses to require their customers to use a .post email address for everything, such as online bill payments and ordering from online stores. It's all secure and verifiable and would considerably cut down on fraud.
I know this all may sound completely fantastic or insane... But why the hell else would they want to create a .post TLD?
Lol, at least that's what I would do if I ran the post office.
