Biz appears to be slow for new Net domains
Business First of Buffalo - by Mark Webster Business First
It seems it's still a dot-com world after all when it comes to area businesses and their Internet presence.
Despite much hype when the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced the creation of seven new top-level domain (TLD) names to supplement familar extensions such as dot-com, dot-net and dot-org, few area businesses seem to be in a rush to secure the rights to new domains ending in dot-biz or dot-info.
While businesses and other groups have already registered for more than two million dot-biz names worldwide, Buffnet Public Relations Coordinator Tom Fazio said they're still waiting for their first inquiry regarding the new TLD.
"Not one customer has asked for the new extensions," Fazio pointed out, "and we have several thousand companies that are doing business with us."
Though it's likely some area businesses have secured such a domain through another brokerage firm, it seems clear that, even though registering a TLD is relatively inexpensive, most are not in any hurry to try to develop a new or altered Web presence.
"You're sort of on the horns of a dilemma," said Rod Hensel, vice president of Marketing for Technology Distribution Network in Tonawanda.
"You spend a lot of money branding your current Web address and you've got it on all of your letterhead and advertising and marketing materials, so you might not want to go into the expense of registering a (new domain.) On the other hand, you don't want to run the risk of somebody else taking it."
Elaine L'Esperance, a vice president in M & T Bank's Electronic Banking Group, said that was the thinking behind her company's decision to register dot-biz and dot-info TLDs during a pre-registration period early this year.
"From our perspective, `mandtbank.com' is part of our brand and anything with M&T Bank as part of the URL is part of our brand," she said. "So we want to make sure that we own that domain, even if the extension is slightly different. We may or may not use them, but we definitely want to have them."
That's an insurance strategy that may not be right for every business, according to Hensel.
"(M&T) would probably have the resources for it," he said. "I don't think every business really wants to do that on a maybe-we'll-use-it-sometime basis."
However, the shoulder of the Information Highway is littered with examples of TLDs being intentionally misused to cash in on the popularity of a similar sounding name.
The classic example is the porn site whitehouse.com -- a seemingly blatant attempt to snare people who were actually seeking the popular whitehouse.gov site run by the executive branch of the federal government.
The Feds later went to court to block what they view as a misuse of a similar TLD, to no avail.
It's safe to assume that someone at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. wishes they had secured the dot-com address early on.
And a common variation on the theme preys on typing mistakes. Enter mapquest.com and you get the expected travel direction service; but enter mapqurst.com -- subbing the `r' for the `e' -- and you're bounced to an outfit operating as superinternetdeals.com.
M & T doesn't want to run the risk of a similar malevolent hijacking of their name.
"When you're talking about somebody's bank account information, you want to make sure you're protecting them," explained L'Esperance.
"If somebody sets up a site that looks exactly like our site and has the log-in screens and is collecting individuals' passwords and pass codes, people will think it's M&T," she said. "So it's definitely worth a little bit of insurance to make sure your customers are protected."
The bottom line is that the new TLDs are aimed primarily at businesses that couldn't get their hands on the domain name they wanted because all of the `good' dot-coms were taken, according to Fazio.
Those are the businsses that are likely to try to make a big splash with their new domains while those with a firmly entrenched dot-com presence are likely to keep their emphasis there for the time being.
"The trends that I've seen indicate that when people think about the Internet, they think dot-com," he observed.
"It's going to take awhile. When people (sign up with) Buffnet, they still think their e-mail address is going to be something at Buffnet.com and we're Buffnet.net. We also own Buffnet.com and Buffnet.org, but people will just naturally assume that it's dot-com first."
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