October 23, 2012 / Thoughts & Opinion

Hey! Do you have a “family“? Were you “born“? If so, then this new set of Top Level Domains (TLDs) is for you! .mom .family .baby .pets and the sadly ripe-for-misuse .kids.

Fret no more. You can get your “mom” that special Mother’s day gift after all. Now when she stares, bewildered at the battered hand-me-down laptop that dad passed on to her (you know… The one she can only use when plugged in because the battery is fried), and asks you “how do I make the Internet work so that Jean can email me?” you can smile and say: “Fear not mumsie, I got you a .mom TLD so you can get all your other friends with email addresses to contact you at your new address!” She’s bound to be delighted!

“Just what I always wanted son. You’re the best. I’ll never have to phone Jean again!”

“I know mumsie… I know.”

According to the BASICALLY AWESOME marketing email we got here at QC, the .family TLD is the most popular. That shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone really. Everybody knows that the best sort of websites are the ones set up for the whole family. The websites where there’s a particularly unflattering picture of everyone from about 5 years ago when dad got that new digital camera. The websites where it says “you can contact the Johnstons on i_want_to_be_in_your_awesome_family@thejohnstons.family“. Who could ask for more? In fact, stop reading this right now and go buy yourself a .family TLD. Unless your name’s Smith, Jones, Brown, Wilson or Sex. Trust me. They’re probably going to be taken.

If you’ve got kids and you don’t feel bad about putting them on the internet (who does?) then you might like to purchase a .kids TLD. Little Jimmy can get his own website now, so that when he wants to put swear words on the internet, he’s got his own domain to broadcast from. Hey… It beats Facebook, right?

On a serious note, I’m amazed the .kids one slipped through and was approved (perhaps it’s not approved yet), since it seems the most questionable. I’d be keen to know how they intend on regulating that sort of thing.

I’m informed that “baby” is consistently among the most popular web searches according to Google Web Trends, so it comes as no surprise that they’ve launched a .baby TLD. But how long before they do that with all of the most popular web searches? I won’t hold my breath for .presidentialdebate .lancearmstrong .romney .taylorswift .brunomars or .nippleslip.

The other TLD we’re being presented with is .pets. *sigh* Where do I even start? Sure, pet stores can get themselves a natty TLD which people might manage to remember, but honestly, along with all of these other domains, this is so ripe for abuse that I’m honestly just blown away by their mere existence. Do we really need these TLDs? Who are we kidding when we all presume they’ll be used responsibly? How much time and effort has gone in to setting these up? Surely it could be better spent doing something productive (like writing a whiny blog post)?

Perhaps while we’re at it with these TLDs, we could launch a few more appropriate ones. How about .dad (or even .pops) for a start? .boss .mistress and .affair might prove popular and who’s to say we can’t have .weirdo .troll .awesomeballs .sodoff and maybe .god for the christians? I’d like a .alex and a .rage TLD please.

Incidentally, there’s actually a huge list of TLDs in the new gTLD program 2012 from ICANN. Not all have been approved mind you. Feast your eyes on the potentially forthcoming possibilities here. Not only that but with the infrastructure to host your own TLD registry business, you can petition for a new one if you’d like, so perhaps that .alex isn’t so far off after all.

Any thoughts on the new TLDs? Anybody want to point out that I’ve missed the point of these TLDs, and that I’m being obtuse about the whole thing? Leave us a comment!

This post was originally written for the QueryClick blog.