I don’t understand the protocol for visiting a web site at a top level domain name.
Let’s say a brand like Nike gets its own top level domain name — in this case .nike.
Just how would people visit that TLD, anyway?
I must confess I’m a bit confused by this issue. I’ve asked a number of people and haven’t gotten an answer, so I figured I’d throw this up on the blog and let anyone who knows respond.
Let’s say Nike gets the domain name .nike. How will the typical web user visit Nike’s web site?
-Will they need to visit a second level domain, such as www.nike or shoes.nike? Or could they type “.nike” in their browser and get it to resolve? Right now they can’t just type a top level domain in their browsers.
-How would you email someone at .nike? Could you email [email protected], or would it need to be something like [email protected]? (Again, a second level domain name.)
-Technically new TLDs will need to get software companies to recognize their TLDs. This could matter for both resolution and email. Will Nike have to go out individually to big software companies to get recognized?
Jakob says
finally
Andy says
Even if there were a concerted effort in the software community to support this behaviour it would still take a very long time before it was safe for Nike to market it in that way.
Would ICANN even allow it?
C.T. Kirkpatrick says
my.nike
And of course a wild card for any and all typo traffic to the TLD……
todaro says
plus “dot” is already trademarked but at least nike has their own lawyers.
Ace says
I would just type nike in the address bar 🙂
But normally I have seen a lot of people I know just type “nike” or “nike.com” in Google.
Dan says
Hi,
I never got this either…
Would you rather have:
tigerwoods.nike/nike
nike.nike/tigerwoods
Or,
tigerwoods.nike.com
nike.com/tigerwoods
I do not get how or where the value is…especially after already establishing: nike.com after all these years.
Whatever they put before the .nike, if it is important enough,they can just buy the .com domain…or use it as “sub” or extension off the: nike.com website.
Are company’s going to be force to buy them, to protect their “brand name(s)”…even if they never have plans to use the extension at all?
I may be missing something…but I really do not “get it”.
I did not even think about the ’email’…a mess.
Good Post!
Best,
Dan
M. Menius says
home.nike maybe
The whole tld orgy is a joke.
Innovation? Please.
yanni says
Well, it will be no different than any other tld, so it makes sense it would be visited through a second level domain, whichever Nike chooses to train its customers with.
If they chose to ‘move over’ to the new tld, a simple .com redirect to, say, justdoit.nike will do the trick over time, combined with tv ad spots, etc.
Besides, various second level domains for each department, special, event, coupon, sales, etc. along with a wild-card for everything else, should be easily recognized and adopted by consumers eventually.
Also, shoes-dot-nike looks and sounds better than nike-dot-com-forward-slash-shoes
‘shoes.nike’ versus ‘nike.com/shoes’
Quicker typing as well – 4 chars less. Speed matters these days.
I don’t understand what all the fuss is about.
Stuart Lawley says
Andrew,
i am informed that notwithstanding browser and email software behavior , it would be technically possible by use of the A records at the lowest level to 1) just type in nike into the browser, with no www or http:// and even email addresses could just phil@nike
We all know, however that such addressing will spook the current browsers and email packages into search mode or appending or not recognizing these, so will be very interesting to see how it plays out.
Will try it with xxx when we get in the root 😉
Jean Guillon says
Wildcard are not allowed with new gTLDs
Gavin Brown says
As Stuart said, the TLD operator can put any records they like at the apex of their zone: not just A records but MX records as well: nike@nike would be perfectly valid email address.
Andrew Allemann says
@ Gavin – OK, that makes sense. Practically speaking though, wouldn’t that require working with all email software companies (and hosted email) to get them to change their software? And I doubt Google will want to change Chrome so that entering just one word will go direct to the site rather than a search page.
Vincent says
Once all these new tld’s get started, it will be a nightmare for email validation on forms etc. 🙁
Frank says
Currently if you type in a TLD into your browser it does not resolve as it has not been set up to do so. What would be the point of “com” resolving? and what would it resolve to? It is truly generic and has no product to sell.
If you type in http://www.se into your browser this TLD has been configured to resolve. Check it out.
In saying that NIKE is not generic and they would have every reason to set up “NIKE” to resolve to a home page.
In theory you would not even have to type the www or the “.”
The same would be for the email address – you would be johnsmith@nike
Andrew Allemann says
@ Frank – http://www.se resolves because www is the second level domain name. http://se does not resolve.
If you type in http://www.com it does resolve because www is registered as a second level domain.