New .BLOG domain will be a mainly corporate thing

Written on January 30, 2008 – 3:04 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Not that we needed it, but according to blogger Andrew Messer the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) expressed its appreciation for all those bloggers out there by releasing the new top level domain .BLOG.

The massive increase in Internet traffic due to blogging made it unavoidable to label the 2.0 style journalists and writers. The new domain will become available on April 1st, 2008. I think we can say that April will be a great month for cybersquatters.

The question is though, who will use the new domain? Some predictions that immediately popped up when I was reading the announcement:

Naturally, tech blogs will battle for the technology.blog, political blogs for politics.blog, humor blogs for humor.blog and so on.
Some of the big guys will probably register theirname.blog, if they’re fast enough. Nobody wants brand squatting problems like ReadWriteWeb had recently. Yet not all of them will make that effort. Their ranking position in Google, Technorati and Alexa is all based on their old domain. .BLOG is just a fancy thing to own.
New blogs will use the new domain, yet their influence is marginal. Only few fresh blogs know to attract a large audience (We hope we’re one of them).
Companies will move their corporate blogs to the new domains, or finally decide to start one. We’ll see domains like Startbucks.blog, Sony.blog and Ford.blog.

But this is just my opinion, looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this new domain. What will you register?

I hope you like that post!

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blog, blogs, icann, prediction

About the author: Ernst-Jan is a blogger and journalist, who previously worked in New York to cover news at the United Nations. Next to writing, he's also a singer in the band Christina Five.

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8 comments to “New .BLOG domain will be a mainly corporate thing”

By Robert Gaal on Jan 30, 2008 | Reply

Ah April 1st, that’s interesting….
By Tijs Teulings on Jan 30, 2008 | Reply

no link to the actual announcement?
By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Jan 30, 2008 | Reply

In fact, I heard they will announce TWO new 4 letter top level domains that day! Next to .blog they will also launch .joke
By paras shah on Jan 30, 2008 | Reply

I hope this is not a aprilfool prank.
By carlos on Jan 30, 2008 | Reply

Nice idea.
I would know who will bring us that domain.
Blogger?Wordpress?TypePad?Google??

P.D:Nice idea the anti-spam word
By Doron on Jan 31, 2008 | Reply

Anyone remember what happened with the .jobs domain? Not much.
http://www.goto.jobs
By Mapy on Feb 13, 2008 | Reply

I dont believe blog domain will be more popular then jobs one.
Ppl used to 3 letter domains and this doesnt seem to change.
By Mackey on Mar 20, 2008 | Reply

I heard about that in http://www.inner-live.com
and it seems it coming in april. So we’ll see.