New York City Set to Cash in on .NYC

With the economic crisis causing a major impact to New York City’s revenue, the city is hoping to cash in on the .nyc extension, which they hope will be approved quickly and available to sell by next summer.

According to an article appearing today in Crain’s, “City Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced during her state-of-the-city address Thursday that the “.nyc” domain will start generating a fresh stream of revenue for the city next summer.” Quinn also said that the .nyc extension will generate millions of dollars per year in licensing fees for allowing the group to create the extension.

With the uncertainty of gTLD approvals, I certainly hope the city isn’t counting on the revenue too soon.   My biggest question related to the .nyc extension… who is going to get RaysPizza.nyc?

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

17 COMMENTS

  1. I’d bet they push it through in a hurry to spark interest in others.

    Also since it’s the “real” city applying there may not be any other bidders for it…not sure how it will work but I wouldn’t want to bidding against the actual city.

    Maybe we’ll read someday that .nyc was down today for 4 hours due to the cleaning person kicking the plug out of the wall 🙂

  2. A New York Post reporter called me today for a comment on this. She had absolutely no clue what a domain extension even is or that there is a still a process to go through before .nyc could come into existence. I have no idea why the paper didn’t assign someone with at least a small amount of technical knowledge to do the story. I will be amazed if the article and my comments are not completely butchered. It was the most frustrating phone call with a reporter I have ever had.

  3. PS to Tim

    According to the reporter it would not be the city applying – she told me it is a private company. My guess is that some company, wanting to get city backing for their bid for the TLD, sold this council member a bill of goods and the official, like the reporter, has no clue what is really involved – only stars in her eyes of non-existant millions that will soon be flowing in.

    There is no way any of the new gTLDs will be live by this summer and many don’t expect to see any this year. With the DOC’s NTIA (ICANN’s overseer) having already expressed extreme doubts about the need for the ICANN new gTLD program and big business firmly against them – we may never seen any at all – they could be laid to rest, a la .xxx, as opposition mounts.

  4. PS to Tim

    According to the reporter it would not be the city applying – she told me it is a private company. My guess is that some company, wanting to get city backing for their bid for the TLD, sold this council member a bill of goods and the official, like the reporter, has no clue what is really involved – only stars in her eyes of non-existant millions that will soon be flowing in.

    There is no way any of the new gTLDs will be live by this summer and many don’t expect to see any this year. With the DOC’s NTIA (ICANN’s overseer) having already expressed extreme doubts about the need for the ICANN new gTLD program and big business firmly against them – we may never seen any at all.

  5. It’s an interesting problem – putting a city on the Internet. We at Connectingnyc.org are very concerned with how our beloved NYC functions and the needs of our neighbors. Technology can help promote local businesses such as neighborhood pizza parlors and dry cleaners become more visible. The Internet can expedite solutions to problems of noise and open bike routes, etc. To accomplish this streets must be mapped, neighborhoods must be explored, and business must provide their hours of operation and services offered. It is a big job. That said ICANN hasn’t finalized the application criteria or process for dotNYC. We expect more clarity after the meeting in Mexico City on March 1-6, 2009.

  6. Hi Ron and everyone,

    I’m the one doing the .NYC project. I’ve been working with the city for about a year for this current incarnation, and since 2000 for earlier efforts.

    There’s more information — not a lot more, it’s an infant site — at http://www.dotnyc.net

    The “Press” section of the site has the NY Post article in full as well as other press from AM New York and Metro New York.

  7. I’m relieved to know that Antony is heading the team the city chose to work with in going after .nyc . From the council member’s comments I was afraid they were being taken advantage of by a group with no real knowledge of domains or what they will be up against in trying to get a new TLD off the ground.

    I still believe that, as history has shown us over and over, the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against any new TLD gaining critical mass. Given the fact that ICANN plans to flood the market with them – I think the odds of success are diminished even further and that the vast majority of any that do launch will be huge flops. But at least if the City plans to buy a ticket in this lottery, it looks like have made a good choice on who to partner with.

  8. Ron, thank you for the kinds words. Our research (in other places where multiple TLDs are common, for instance Hong Kong, Europe, etc.) shows that people treat domain names as complementary, not substitutable goods. In other words, people are happy to own and use more than one, and frequently do. To me, .NYC is a winner because of the natural affinity New Yorkers have with the city. I walk down the street every day and see Mets and Yankees caps, the “I Heart NY” t-shirts, and a large variety of other clothing sporting NYC emblems of various kinds on them.

    For a TLD to work, people need to have a natural affinity with it. Geography is a proven signifier of affinity, and New York especially.

  9. As a New Yorker, .NYC sounds good on paper.
    Let’s see what happens, I hope it has legs.

    @andrew
    Yes, like OTB (The only bookie to ever lose money.)
    The lottery, where the money was to go towards
    education. (That sure worked out great.)

  10. What this city councilor is missing is that ANYONE can register to roll out the .nyc domain extension.

    She says she might want to put it out to bid. Great but that is meaningless to ICANN.

    What if I wanted to roll out .nyc myself and got in an application before this other company.

    What if I wanted to partner up with a chamber of commerce or cultural society and put in an application with ICANN. There is no guarantee that the city itself would even have any preferential access to .nyc let alone any share in the profits.

  11. Rob – that’s incorrect. Somehow ICANN decided that they should start giving some sort of power to local governments with regards to their own names. So .nyc would need the support of the appropriate “authority” in new york city.

    Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Well it is. I hope this doesn’t become a slippery slope…

  12. Okay, I understand but there are plenty of “authorities” in NYC.

    Mayor
    City Council
    Housing Authority
    Port Authority
    Transit Authority
    Greater New York Chamber of Commerce
    Partnership for New York City
    Manhattan Chamber of Commerce

    How about NYC.com having a priority?

    I was just reading at Berken’s place that in order to get a .mx domain, you have to be the registered owner of the .com.mx. So, maybe NYC.com should have a shot at .nyc or maybe even a lawsuit claiming trademark infringement. I can see a case for that.

    Then, what if you have unpaid parking tickets and want rayspizza.nyc and the city won’t give it to you until you pay them up?

    What if you have to be a good citizen in order to get a .nyc from the city council or other government agency?

    Seems like ICANN will get sued by someone to fight to get .nyc.

    Should be interesting. This is why I could care less about ICANN.

  13. Rob, therein lies the problem. A U.S. city can be fairly well defined…the documents have some details on it. But when you get to the state level you may need the gov to sign off. Or is it the CIO?

    Take it to other countries and it gets more convoluted.

  14. If anyone is interested in ICANN’s current policies on geographical names (and in my opinion these are highly unlikely to change in their next draft of their TLD guidebook), you can find it here (PDF):

    http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/geographic-names-22oct08-en.pdf

    This needs to be read in conjunction with the morass of other things in the Guidebook, but you’ll get a basic sense of the rules here. Bottom line for cities: get the city government’s approval, you’re in, and everyone else is out. For regions and subregions, it’s more complicated.

    In NYC’s case, all the branches of the government are aligned, so far at least. I don’t see that changing either.

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