The Liberalisation of the Internet

A new report called ‘The Liberalisation of the Internet’ explores how the Internet will change as a result of it being liberalised and the effect this will have on businesses and consumers.

Next year in 2010, the geography of the Internet is set to expand significantly, as the body that oversees the structure of the Internet: Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), will liberalise the market for domain name extensions (e.g. the .com or .co.uk part of a web address), so that anyone can apply to operate an extension (e.g. .hotel or .london etc)

The thinking behind this move is to increase choice (for consumers and businesses), promote some innovation and spur on competition.

The report was carried out by The Future Laboratory on behalf of domain name registrar Gandi.net.

Our Survey Said…

The research included a quantitative survey of 1,000 average Britons and a quantitative survey of 50 e-commerce managers from large high street businesses and 50 e-commerce managers from SMEs online.

Key Findings (Business)

Businesses use their websites to sell products and services (70%), to show their products and services (53%), to describe the company (44%) and manage their brand and identity (36%).

Key Findings (Consumer)

People use the internet for communication (92%), finding out about things (77%), shopping (75%), banking (67%), and social networking (46%). 10% of people self-publish their own content on the internet.

Download the Report

This report makes interesting reading for anyone who uses the web for business or is involved in marketing of any description so it’s worth the read.

You can download a short summary of the report from the Gandi.net website here (opens in a new window as a PDF document)

The full report may downloaded from here (again, opens in a new window as a PDF document).

NB: Text within this blog post has been reproduced from the Gandi.net summary report which is available from their blog.

For a long time now any Internet consultant or web designer worth their salt, have being advising their clients to grab at least the .com and .co.uk variations of their company and brand moniker as a domain name in order to safeguard against their competitors from getting them.

One of the driving factors behind this thinking is that it stops someone else getting hold of them, thus avoiding damaging and potentially expensive, cases of cyber squatting at worst or at best; loss of a company’s customers to the wrong website.

But What About Your Twitter ID?

Twitter continues to gain popularity and whether you consider it to be an addictive ‘must have’, or a flash-in-the-pan there’s no denying the fact that companies are starting to use it as a tool for marketing and promotion.

Consequently it’s no surprise that Twitter IDs are beginning to be treated like domain names.

Why Should I Claim My Twitter ID?

• Exxon Mobil failed to claim their name on Twitter and was forced to deal with reputation management problems when an imposter started tweeting using @ExxonMobilCorp.
• Jack Canfield , founder and CEO of Chicken Soup for the Soul Enterprises, had to take a different Twitter ID because he didn’t act quickly enough to secure his full name (he has @J_Canfield , not @JackCanfield ).
• The same thing happened to the large web developer community and book publisher SitePoint, which was forced to settle for @sitepointdotcom , rather than @sitepoint .

Because of this, a market in pre-registered Twitter IDs is emerging through sites like Tweet Exchange in a similar fashion to the domain resale market.

Claim Your Twitter ID

So if you’re serious about protecting your company’s brand and name on the web, get onto Twitter right now and reserve your preferred Usernames. The good news is that unlike domains, they don’t cost you anything. You simply need to set up a new Twitter account and either use it or leave it dormant.

Your website’s domain name e.g. www.yourdomainname.co.uk says a lot about who you are and what your business does and is the ‘location address’ for your website on the web.

So, if your business is looking to get online for the first time with its own website, it’s worth putting a lot of thought into the choice of domain name to use. Here are my top tips for choosing a domain name for your website.

1. Make it Memorable
   Your domain name forms your website address and must be easy to remember if your customers see it in adverts or hear it from colleagues. Avoid complex names and initials unless they are really obvious. For example the initials in the domain ‘bbc.co.uk ’ are obvious in their meaning to most people, but unless your business has the brand recognition that the BBC enjoys, initials are best avoided.
2. Short and Sweet
   The maximum characters you should use for your domain is twenty. The shorter the better, with many people saying 10 is the maximum to go for. Anything over this can be difficult to remember, and easily misspelt. For the same reason avoid using hyphens and numbers; both are known to cause confusion.
3. Choose your Extension Wisely
   The ‘must have’ domain extensions are .co.uk and .com. If you can’t get either of these, it’s worth considering renaming your website or even your company, to fit in with a .com and .co.uk domain name pair that you can obtain. The type of domain extension you use might be influenced by type of website you plan to operate. For example, many people have come to expect certain types of websites to have certain extensions. For example .org.uk extensions are used by UK based, non-profit organisations and .net extensions are often used by technology or internet related companies.
4. Spelling Rules KO
   A difficult to spell domain name could cause you problems as a misspelt name may drive visitors towards your competitor’s website. If you have a difficult to spell name, consider registering the possible misspellings of your main domain name and even the Americanised versions of the word if available. For example if you register the domain “thetyreshop.com” consider also registering its Americanised equivalent “thetireshop.com”.
5. I Wanna Tell You a Story
   Good domain names tell a story and are descriptive. One method is to use your company name as Tescos have done with ‘tesco.com’. Another angle is to use a phrase, unrelated to your company name; but instead describes what your business or website is all about. For example ‘diy.com’ as used by B&Q, is superb as it describes exactly what they do i.e. “do-it-yourself”. Added to that it’s short, easy to remember, easy to spell and say. Yes, this domain uses initials, however the brand recognition of B&Q in the UK is so great, as is usage of the phrase ‘DIY’ in everyday English that they can get away with it.

Check the availability of your required .co.uk domains at www.nominet.org.uk and other domain types including .com ones at www.internic.net/whois

That’s an awful lot of hosting accounts to manage and an even greater number of domain names to control on behalf of our clients. Needless to say, you can bet your bottom-dollar that over the years, we’ve devised a pretty effective system that ensures we don’t miss any renewals and that each client gets plenty of notice and the opportunity to renew their domain or hosting account with us before it expires.

All in all, in practice what this means is that there isn’t much we don’t know about the management of domain names or hosting accounts. Whether it’s the complexities of CNAME or A records for a domain through to the configuration of Apache modules on our servers; I like to think this knowledge is one of our unique selling points (USP) over the automated web based domain and hosting commodity portals that are out there selling domains and hosting at thrupence a go. Yes we charge more, but unlike these portals, we’re there when you need us to sort out any issues.

An example where this USP of ours scores above the commodity providers may be demonstrated by the recent example of a domain dispute case which we arbitrated in on behalf of a client.

Here’s how the story goes;

Our client, a large UK based management group, found themselves in dispute with the former IT provider of one of its subsidiary companies. The IT provider was proving to be particularly uncooperative in many areas including the task of handing back control of the client’s own domain names at renewal time.

Subsequently their domains lapsed resulting in loss of their website and email. A nasty situation all round!

The exact nature of this dispute I haven’t been privy to and to be honest it’s not really important to this story from our point of view. What is important though, is that the client understood our expertise in this area and asked us to “get the domains back” if we could.

The domains in dispute were .CO.UK domains which means they are under the ultimate control of the domain registrar Nominet. Now Nominet do offer a domain dispute policy for circumstances like this but to be honest, unless you’re familiar with it and know what you’re doing; it can be a time consuming and confusing process for the uninitiated.

So to save our client the possible expense of legal litigation against this IT provider and the possibility of them getting wrapped up in something they don’t understand, they asked us to work with Nominet on their behalf.

After satisfying ourselves that the client was actually legally entitled to own the domains to which they lay claim (they were), we set about contacting Nominet and working through their domain dispute procedure.

Where we added value to this process as far as the client was concerned, was basically to take all the leg work out of the process. This involved a number of tasks which included;

• Writing faxes and letters to Nominet and their former IT provider, for the client to sign.
• Verifying the client’s identity with Nominet.
• Modifying IPS TAGS and Nameserver settings when and where needed.
• Paying Nominet’s fees.
• Acting as the client’s domain administrators.

Ultimately the whole process took just under two weeks to complete with the end result being that Nominet intervened and forcibly removed the disputed domains away from the IT provider in question and gave them to us to manage.

So there you have it! We now have a happy client who has control of his domains back, a website that is back on the web and emails that work.

All is well with the world although I don’t suppose the IT provider is smiling.

Here’s what transpired (the client’s names and URLs are not given out for obvious reasons):

• Director A of client company A Ltd leaves the company under a bit of a cloud.
• After a few months, Director A sets up in business again offering similar services to company A Ltd and as such becomes a competitor to them.
• iNet Engineers continues to manage the websites and hosting/email accounts of company A Ltd and Director A in his new business (but not their domain names).
• In time, the domain name of A Ltd approaches its renewal, however due to an oversight, it expires, goes into redemption and eventually becomes free for registration again.
• Director A immediatley re-registers the domain name previously owned by his former company A Ltd, in his own name and tries to sell it back to them at an inflated price.
• Company A Ltd decline and ask us for advice. They are not very happy as you can imagine.

Here’s what we said:

In situations like this there’s probably a case of “cybersquatting” to be had by Director A. Cybersquatting is where an individual or organisation knowingly registers the domain of another company or brand owner with the intention of either selling it back to them for a large profit or profitering from its use for their own ends: i.e. they capitalise upon someone elses intellectual property (IP) or brand values without permission.

There have been many cases over the last few years where “cybersquatters” have ended up in court and lost. Two of the most notable cases in recent include the use of Tolkein’s name and that of Robbie Williams.

In the case of our two clients above, we don’t manage either clients’ domains and as such, I felt it was not really our position to take a stand either way; so I suggested that company A Ltd contact Nominet, the controlling body for .co.uk domain names: and take a look at their Dispute Resolution Service (DRS) in an attempt to resolve the situation.

My personal opinion is that Director A is on shaky ground legally and that he could end up creating a load of hassle for himself for very little or no return. Still we’ll see.