I attended the ICANN Barcelona meeting and just returned home. It was nice to connect with friends and colleagues for a few days.
We did a bit of touring while there, and as usual, I was on the lookout for domain names. There were a few things I noticed while there:
- The .Cat domain extension seemed to be quite popular. .Cat is intended to be used to promote the Catalan language and culture. It’s not a ccTLD, but that seems to be how it is used in Barcelona.
- I also saw a mixture of .ES (Spain’s ccTLD) and .com domain names. Based on other European travels, I expected to see more .ES domain names. Maybe I was not looking hard enough.
- I noticed one .Barcelona domain name being promoted – Jazz.Barcelona. A couple of weeks ago, we discussed whether the www. or http are necessary next to a gTLD domain name. In this case, they added the www. before the domain name:
- The domain name I saw that stands out as my favorite during the trip was Mango.com. As the owner of two fruit .com domain names (Guava.com and Honeydew.com) I am totally biased, but it was my favorite domain name. Mango.com is owned by a trendy European clothing chain called Mango.
Sorry we didnt get to meet ( the #icann63 meeting still has 2+ days left, so you skipped out early )
– see you at Namescon ๐
There are quite a few .es names in use but many businesses still revert to .com
With the ongoing political thrust for Catalonian independence we will see more .cat registrations.
I actually own Catxit.com (just like Brexit.com) and there’s been quite a few enquiries so far.