In a .anything world, the race is on to protect your brand

by: Ken Harris

As the Internet expands, the familiar .com, .net and .org domain names are making room for thousands of .anythings. Financial institutions used to operating in a yourbrand.com world must decide how to react to new Internet real estate that will soon include .bank and .creditunion. New .bank domains are available for purchase June 24, which means the race is on to secure your brand.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) – the agency that regulates and governs domain name policy and allocates top-level domains, or TLDs – has opened up this new Internet real estate. ICANN has determined an expansion in the number of TLDs – the unique identifiers immediately to the right of the last dot in an Internet URL address – is essential for the continued health of the Internet.

New .bank domains are available for purchase June 24, which means the race is on to secure your brand.

Does securing additional second-level domains make sense for your organization? New generic domains include .pizza, .paris, .insurance, .payment and hundreds more. Several brand owners are also launching TLDs, including .allstate, .americanexpress and .jpmorganchase. Although yourbrand.pizza is not a likely candidate, yourbrand.nyc may make sense for a New York-based financial institution, for example.

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