Get ready for the gold rush of 2009.  ICANN announced on June 26th that starting in the second quarter of 2009, you'll be able to purchase a generic Top Level Domain (TLD).  Up until now, web addresses have ended with one of 21 TLDs accepted by ICANN, the organization which oversees the names allowed in the Internet addresses we use every day.  This is great news for organizations which may have showed up late to the first domain name party only to find that another guest had taken the domain of choice for their association.  This new ruling by ICANN will pave the way for names that end in any unique string, not just .com, .org, .net or .info.

This ruling opens the domain space up to a whole new world of names that will make it easier for organizations to fully brand the addresses for any of their web based content.  Associations will want to pay special attention to this, especially associations who may have missed the first chance to purchase the domain name for their acronym.  Let's say you're the MIS or IT manager for the National Association of Body Builders, an association of which, strangely enough, I am not a member.  Furthermore, let's say someone progressive business owner already purchased NABB.com before you.  If that's the case for your organization, as it has been for many of my clients, you'll be interested to know that in the summer of 2009 ICANN plans to begin taking applications for generic TLDs.  This is your chance to be first to the party and nab the TLD .NABB. 

In addition to approving generic TLDs, ICANN also approved the use of international characters in domain names, a much needed move for the non-English speaking countries that have, up to this point, been forced to make use of a restricted set of 37 Roman characters for the current, world-wide set of domain names. 

I'm hoping that this move by ICANN will reduce the number of strange names chosen for businesses.  With almost every short, recognizable word or phrase already taken, it seemed that the only choice for the name of a new company was some made up or misspelled word. 

The final approval is months away, so the details may change before applications are taken in 2009 for the new generic TLDs are available to the public, but the direction set by this recent decision of the Board of ICANN is pointing us toward an exciting new frontier that may be open to the public as early as next year.  I'll keep you posted on what I hear.