New Internet extensions

Yes, you heard right.

You can have your own dot-com. Between 12 January and 12 April 2012, anyone will be able to apply for any name they wish - in any language they wish - to sit at the top level of the Internet.

This change has effectively launched a new Internet landrush in which organizations will be given the extraordinary ability to create a new online space of their own devising.

There are, of course, rules associated with running a piece of the Internet and those rules were approved in June of this year with the final "Applicant Guidebook" expected in August. You now have just a few months to learn about this next Internet revolution and put together a business plan and application before the application window closes.

Process

The introduction of new Internet extensions (officially "generic top-level domains," or gTLDs) has been the result of more than five years of policy and implementation work by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Headquartered in Los Angeles, ICANN has expanded the top-level domain space twice before, in 2000 and again in 2004, but both times the number of extra extensions was purposefully restricted to just seven. This new process will liberalize the domain name space by allowing anyone to apply for a "gTLD," subject to a series of rules and checks.

ICANN has estimated that it will receive around 500 applications. So far more than 100 different groups have gone public with specific names that they plan to apply for.

The application rules are explained in the "gTLD Applicant Guidebook," which has been through five iterations and was approved at ICANN's 41st meeting in Singapore in June 2011.

All applications will be evaluated by ICANN. Successful applicants' gTLDs will be up and running in 2013.

The .nxt conference is ideally timed to provide all those considering applying for and running a new piece of the Internet with a place to meet and do business before the application window opens.