A charity top level domain wants you to be charitable to get it off the ground.
A group hoping to launch the .HIV top level domain name is turning to crowdfunding to raise the six figures required to apply for the domain.
The idea is that companies can use a .hiv domain in addition to .com to generate money for HIV/AIDS research. The group’s site says that money will be earned with each click to a .hiv web site, although it’s unclear if the owner of the second level domain is the one that ends up making the donation.
The group is raising money through crowdfunding platform indiegogo.com. So far it’s $100 toward its $150,000 goal. Although raising the money is feasible (probably through a larger grant, though), they need to aim for much more than $150,000 to make this work.
If you donate $150 you’ll get a coupon for a free .hiv domain assuming it becomes reality.
Kemji says
Irrespective of my support for charitable causes like this, this domain extension is HORRIBLE.
Horrible might even be an underestimation. This extension makes .biz look like an american idol winner(domain version) of some sort. Chance of good marketability of it is close to 0% IMO.
Gnanes says
Dumbest idea ever. Money could be used for research.
Josh says
sex.hiv should do well.
owen frager says
DUMB!!!
Ever heard of dotORG?
David J Castello says
When I read this story I had to look at my calendar to make sure it wasn’t April 1st.
dotHIV says
Thanks for sharing our idea.
The crowd funding campaign on indiegogo.com/dothiv will help to complete the fundraising for the application – together with individual investors, pro bono partners and a lot of benevolent work, the initiative is ready to apply if the campaign succeeds.
Sure, $150,000 is a lot of money and you could argue that the money would be put to better use if invested in research. But there already are numerous great research projects and .hiv is set out to create a platform for generating donations for the fight against HIV and AIDS. This will have longterm effects and multiply the outcome for the fight against the virus:
Once the domain ending is approved, we expect to be able to pay back ten times the amount through donations to HIV-projects all over the world within the first year!
This money, to answer one of your questions, stems from the registration fees only – no additional donations are necessary, neither from the website holder nor from the internet user who vitits .hiv-domains.
We are working with professional partners – inside and outside the TLD industry: the TLD consultancy DOTZON, the creative agency kempertrautmann, the online donation platform betterplace.org and others. They all believe in the idea and support us on a pro bono basis. Also, we are looking forward to announcing the partnership with a wonderful backend provider within the next two weeks. Also, we have received great feedback from different online- and HIV/AIDS-communities.
To learn more about dotHIV, visit our website dothiv.org or watch a video that explains the idea in 100 seconds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3ZHd8qbSpE
dotHIV and .hiv-domains will add a new angle on how to deploy a TLD namespace.
And we hope, that the idea doesn’t seem as dumb as one might think at first sight.
We are always open for improvement or suggestions, so feel free to give us your feedback, on this website or to mif@dothiv.org
All the best, your dotHIV-team.
Andrew Allemann says
@dotHIV – can you explain more about small donations every time a .hiv domain is visited? How will that work?
dotHIV says
Sure! It works like this: When a company buys their .hiv-website, the money fills a pool. Then, with every click on a .hiv-Website, an Internet user redirects a small amount of money to a charity of his/her choice until the funds are completely dispensed.
The money is distributed on a platform, where initiatives and organizations from all over the world can gather support by presenting their work. Transparency and expediency are ensured, because the Internet community decides, which projects should be supported. In addition, an independent board of experts will supervise the process and the online donation platform betterplace.org will provide the necessary donation tools and advise us throughout the process.