1. When are the new TLDs that make up gTLDMOU actually expected to
accept registrations?
2. What are realistic expectations for the success of gTLD
to technically be integrated into existing DNS hierarchies?
High? Medium? Low? Nonexistent?
3. More importantly, what do folks think the odds of gTLD domains to
crack the mass-psychology barrier of the big-5 TLDs, especially
.com? Will acme.firm ever be as valuable a chunk of real estate
as acme.com? Half as valuable? Answers in form of "x% as valuable,
after y length of time to become that valuable" appreciated.
4. What is the value, if any, of using a pre-registration service,
to line up early for entry into a .firm gTLD registration? If
there is value, pointers to which CORE registrar(s), and
justifications for why pick it/them?
5. How highly would you rank the direct, character-for-character,
correspondence between a company's registered name, and it's
chosen TLD registration. Ie, if ACME INC. can't get acme.com
or acme.firm or whatever, and settles for acme1.com or acme_inc.com,
etc, are they long term suicidal? Would you go so far as to
change the company name to allow you to get a matching domain
registration? (I know, this depends on the nature of your
business, how well known your brand name is entrenched in the market,
how well you leverage your web presence independently of domain
registration, etc.etc.) But still, assuming those factors
normalized, would you rank domain name==legal corp. name
as a "must have" or just a "would be nice" for your typical
cyber business?
6. What's the word on www.newdomains.net, and particularly
their .inc TLD? Eg, they'd offer to let you register acme.inc .
Their fees are carbon copy of Network Solutions - $100 first
2years, $50/year thereafter. And the promise to refund
everything if their new TLDs fizzle. I do note that
their whois server is seriously busted right now, not instilling
much confidence that they're for real. But, acme.inc seems
to have a better ring than acme.firm, n'est pas?
7. Is alternic.net a 'cool' thing, or not? Sure, I know (partly
through FoRK osmosis months back) that Eugene Kashpureff
is an official Internet Bad Boy. But is he a 'cool' bad boy, like
Robin Hood? Or a 'bad' bad boy, like Spamford Wallace?
And regardless of him individually and his internic hijacking stunts,
what about alternic itself as a corporate entity advocating
rebellion against the existing world order? Cool or lame?
I know there's lots of info available about these and related
topics. I've done some research, and absorbed some already.
But I'm interested in a consensus FoRK opinion on this stuff
as a better/faster gauge of the real picture here.
Thanks for any tips,
Ron