Will cities have a tld?

[kubativity]

Has anybody heard of any initiative to create city TLDs?

I have seen hacks such as .la being used for los angeles.

I am just wondering if actual assigned city domain extensions are a possibility

 

[sashas]

whoa
how TLDs will we have then? 100,000?

 

[Coopey]

.berlin .london and .nyc have been proposed.
I hate the idea, those are long and ugly, I'd much much rather cities use a subdomain of the ccTLD if they must have their own extension.
I think that there is an outside chance some of these major cities do get their own TLD, but I hate the idea.

 

[tdm300]

I hope they stop expanding these tlds.

 

[htmlindex]

It'd be absolutely crazy if all the cities got their own TLDs

 

[sashas]

Lets have a .john, a .jack, a .jane too

heck, I propose to start my own TLD - .sasha

 

[Peter]

Well Los Angeles has already got 1 .la http://www.la/

 

[Coopey]

Well Los Angeles has already got 1 .la http://www.la/

That's funny, what happened to the ccTLD for Laos?
That's like saying "Berlin already has one, .be"

 

[Peter]

True but the .la cctld has been 100% marketed for Los Angeles

 

[Web Master]

Sorry, I don't think so.

 

[htmlindex]

Lets have a .john, a .jack, a .jane too

heck, I propose to start my own TLD - .sasha

Maybe we should have every word in the dictionary as a TLD extention :hehe:

 

[Bill]

Every city in the US already has a .US domain..... I really don't see this happening. Try it for yourself. Type your Zipcode.us.

-Bill

 

[skylineleong]

the winner should be registrar?

 

[Gerrit]

Well Los Angeles has already got 1 .la http://www.la/

No matter how they try to brand it, .LA is for Laos and it is not for Los Angeles. .LA will never be for Los Angeles, unless you believe marketing tricks just like those who wish to believe .WS really stands for "WebSite".

By the way, the Laos government can decide anytime they want to take .LA back, so all people buying .la domains for Los Angeles will be stuffed in that case. Branding a country's domain as a city domain is a huge risk because you never know how long it will last before the country takes its ccTLD back.

In theory you could say .AM stands for Amsterdam, .BE stands for Berlin, .GL stands for Glasgow, .RO stands for Rome, .IS stands for Istanbul ... and so on. But I would never buy a domain for that purpose. It just sounds odd to me, and regardless how many people believe that .LA is Los Angeles, it really just isn't.





Creating city TLDs is a bad idea IMO. Who will decide which cities qualify? Does it depend on number of citizens, capital status, ... ? With a bit of bad luck it would lead to several hundreds of new TLDs and I don't see the point in that.

If you really want a city extention, having subdomains of for example .berlin.de seems the best solution to me, even though I would not consider buying any such domain.

 

[Peter]

No matter how they try to brand it, .LA is for Laos and it is not for Los Angeles. .LA will never be for Los Angeles, unless you believe marketing tricks just like those who wish to believe .WS really stands for "WebSite".

The point is it does not matter what you or I believe who are fairly knowledgeable about domain names. What matters at the end of the day is what the general user believes.

By the way, the Laos government can decide anytime they want to take .LA back, so all people buying .la domains for Los Angeles will be stuffed in that case. Branding a country's domain as a city domain is a huge risk because you never know how long it will last before the country takes its ccTLD back.

Look at the terms and conditions of any cctld and you would think twice about registering with any of them. The vast majority have clauses that stipulate that they can withdraw the service at any time without any prior notice. In fact I cannot remember which but 1 cctld decided to pull the plug on single char (or was it 2 char) domains recently, anyone who has 1 of them will simply lose them on the expiry date.

Creating city TLDs is a bad idea IMO. Who will decide which cities qualify? Does it depend on number of citizens, capital status, ... ? With a bit of bad luck it would lead to several hundreds of new TLDs and I don't see the point in that.

If you really want a city extention, having subdomains of for example .berlin.de seems the best solution to me, even though I would not consider buying any such domain.

I totally agree with this sentiment. It will of course lower the value of domain names if city tld's were created but it would also be very confusing for the user.

And as you say how would they decide which cities were eligible, or even what towns were indeed cities.

 

[Gerrit]

Good call on towns versus cities. For American or British standards, a place with 100000 people is a big town or a small city. For the standards of for example Iceland or Luxembourg, that same place would be considered a big city.

As for .LA : maybe my sentiment is the way it is because I don't trust the Laos government. Any government can take its ccTLD back whenever they want, not caring about the foreign registrants who own and will lose a domain. However, seeing the profit and benifits for these countries, I don't see Tuvalu or Western Samoa forbidding foreign registrations anytime soon. With an unstable government like the government of Laos, I would be a lot less confident. Maybe that's why I would never trust the .LA extention for Los Angeles.




But if you're creative you could create many city extentions:
.mo - Moscow
.to - Toronto
.la - Los Angeles
.be - Berlin
.is - Istanbul
.co - Copenhagen
.st - Stockholm
.ro - Rome
.at - Athens
.ca - Cairo
.be - Beijing
.to - Tokyo
.am - Amsterdam
.tv - Tel Aviv

The list is endless. I doubt you would get any internet user to really make the same link though.

 

[Steven]

yep sometimes .to for Toronto
is dine.to

 

[hostingsearch]

.be is not for BeiJing .bj.cn is for BeiJing

or you can say

.bj - Beijing
.sh - Shanghai

Some cities indeed have their tlds:
.hk - Hong Kong
.mo - Macao
.sg - Singapore (also a nation)

 

[TheBulldog]

Woah. You kind of skipped right over the States didn't you? Why not .NewYork or .Florida?

.LA could also be LardAss.

 

[Ross]

They would lower the value of the TLDs but would create some KILLER geo domains. Like Movies.LA.

To be honest i would think that it would level the playing field for domainers and for businesses that cant get a hold of those names they would like. Especially for local businesses.