Disruptive Conversations

Over on Domain Incite, Kevin Murphy reports on the first applicant to publicly state that they are applying for ".blog" as part of the massive generic top-level domain (gTLD) expansion by ICANN. Murphy expects that ".blog" will probably be the most heavily contested new gTLD, meaning that multiple companies will be vying to be the registry for ".blog". He points out:

Media analysts NM Incite (great name) tracked 181 million blogs in 2011, up by about 25 million from 2010. A gTLD that could grab just 1% of that business would still be a nice little earner.

I'm not sure, myself. I remain rather skeptical that people will break out of their reliance on ".com" and go for all these other gTLDs. We've seen some of the existing gTLDs like ".biz" and ".pro" that haven't really gone anywhere. (In fact, the only .biz address I personally am aware of is the FIR podcast.)

Still, with a range of more gTLDs perhaps we finally will see people starting to use and accept other domain endings beyond .com/.org or the various country codes.

But would I register "danyork.blog"? or "disruptiveconversations.blog"?

Probably not, given that I already own the .com and .org variants on the names... although admittedly "danyork.blog" would be tempting purely because I do own .com/.org/.me/etc. and could see that one fitting in well with my "personal brand" online. Probably not for my other sites because I already have established names for them.

If I were crazy enough to start up another new blog, the ".blog" gTLD might be interesting... although to be honest I find the name "blog" to be a bit tired these days. I tend to talk more about my "sites" versus my "blogs" as the difference between what is considered a "blog" and what is considered a regular "web site" seems to get increasingly narrow. I'm not sure if I would want a new site to be labeled as a "blog".

What about you? If a ".blog" becomes available sometime in 2013, would you buy one?

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