New York City Heralds Approval of .NYC gTLD in Press Release

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker  Christine Quinn (who is running for Mayor) issued a press release today heralding the approval of the .NYC gTLD, which had received support from the City. I don’t know how much NYC will help promote .NYC, but it’s clear from the press release, the plan is to target local businesses.

Having our own unique, top-level domain – .nyc – puts New York City at the forefront of the digital landscape and creates new opportunities for our small businesses,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “They’ll now be able to identify themselves as connected to New York City, one of the world’s strongest and most prestigious brands.”

Registering .NYC domain names won’t be available to everyone. In fact, to register a .NYC domain name, the owner has to either live in the City or have an office and conduct business in NYC.

The City has said they expect .NYC domain names to be available for sale by late 2013, although I personally wouldn’t be surprised to see delays.

Neustar is taking care of the operations and marketing for the new TLD. I am interested to see how they market the extension because there are so many options in NYC. I wouldn’t be surprised to see local sponsorships, subway and bus stop advertising, and other guerrilla marketing. I also wouldn’t be surprised if they gave away keyword names to well known NYC businesses like Duane Reade and Patsy’s to promote the .NYC brand.

To learn more about the .NYC extension, you can visit the .NYC Registry website.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

11 COMMENTS

  1. I’m still doubting the real viability of getting businesses sold on the need to have gTLD’s.

    Certainly most every business of any kind of importance in New York City has already branded themselves with huge advertising and marketing investments int their .com for the last 15 to 20 years. Now you’re going to get them sold on using .nyc instead or as a supplement and needing to investing lots of capital to establish a .nyc brand? I just don’t see it happening on a mass scale.

    What’s the benefit? Most will think it will cause confusion for their business’s .com brand. And companies are watching every dollar in this economy. You think they’re going to start spending a ton of money in advertising for a .nyc version of their brand?

    The only buyer might be for a startup small business guy or service type company perhaps where .nyc could tie in well with a geo type business idea. But I can’t millions of those users being popping up either.

    Plus you’ll see a slew of domainers with their neverending pie in the sky dreams of hitting the domain name lotto grabbing the good names like always. And then history will repeat itself once again with the same snap crackle pop reality of a hyped up worthless domain.

    But good luck to everyone who is getting into this gTLD adventure. I think a few will indeed find success and make money, but most of these deals will never get traction and be fails.

    • Kevin, your comment completely sidesteps both Eliot’s initial comment – “…it’s clear from the press release, the plan is to target local businesses” and the the thrust of the Mayor’s press release, to wit:

      “Having our own unique, top-level domain – .nyc – puts New York City at the forefront of the digital landscape and creates new opportunities for our small businesses,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “They’ll now be able to identify themselves as connected to New York City, one of the world’s strongest and most prestigious brands.”

      This is a hyper local (i.e., “Mom and Pop”) initiative – aiming directly at the countless tens of thousands of LOCAL businesses that still own no website.

      Clearly, this is not about businesses in NYC that have “already branded themselves with huge advertising and marketing investments int their .com for the last 15 to 20 years”.

    • OK so the hot dog guy at 1407 Broadway is going to be the buyer for

      TheHotDogStandAt1407Broadway.nyc

      Yeh that’s the ticket.

      There’s a reason why lots of mom and pops still don’t have websites and domain names.

      And .nyc isn’t going to change that reason.

    • Yeah, how ’bout we just endeavor to “dumb this down” as far as we can get, Kevin.

      I’m not passing on the relative merits of the initiative (that’s a different conversation entirely); I’m merely clarifying the published objectives of the .NYC gLTD. press conference, which you – quite obviously – completely overlooked or ignored in your initial rant.

      Frankly, it just made you look “silly” (I’m sure you’re not); sort of the order of someone who carelessly copies & pastes a comment from a blog on a completely unrelated topic – all by accident.

      And while I admire the sloppy “stab” at extreme examples, I clearly wasn’t alluding to the likes of a mobile food cart (e.g., “The Hot Dog Stand At 1407 Broadway”) when I referenced their target market of hyper-local Mom & Pops…

      I can see you’re just itchin’ for a “dust-up” on whether or not it’s a good idea – I get that – but this ain’t it.

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