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Dot-coms Get Street Smart
As the Internet takes over the popular psyche, domain names are blossoming--and running out
By ERIC ELLIS
October 7, 1999
Web posted at 2 a.m. Hong Kong time, 2 p.m. EDT
O.K., time for a geography test. Where are the São Tomé and Príncipe islands? In the Caribbean? South Pacific? Somewhere in the Mediterranean? Full marks if you said in the Atlantic, straddling the Equator and off the coast of West Africa. Bonus points if you added that it is a former Portuguese colony.
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But where São Tomé and Príncipe actually are doesn't matter much in the cyberworld. Net nerds with dollar signs in their eyes love the fact that São Tomé and Príncipe was granted the Internet domain suffix ".st."
You know what I mean--Malaysia is .my, China .cn, Australia is .au. The .com suffix generally implies an American domicile, though not exclusively. (The U.S. also has a .us suffix, but it is rarely used.) Canny opportunists are registering site names like Amazon.com.nl in the Netherlands or Infoseek.com.id in Indonesia, anticipating that Jeff Bezos or Disney will pay big bucks for the names as they move ahead with international e-commerce plans. It's like registering Billgates.com (which someone did) and waiting for Microsoft to buy it (which it did--for a reported $1 million).
But as the Internet takes over the popular psyche, domain names are blossoming--and running out. I read recently that something like 95% of Oxford English Dictionary entries had been registered. And while the .com suffix has overwhelmingly captured the market's imagination, accounting for about 90% of all registrations, there are plenty of e-commerce opportunities in the less fashionable .net and .org. There is no law that says a .org has to be a nonprofit organization.
Which brings us back to tiny São Tomé and Príncipe. With a combined population of only 160,000 people and a per-capita GDP of just over $1,000, this tiny African republic, independent for just 24 years, could hardly be called Silicon Valley. But it has one of the world's highest per-capita levels of domain registrations. The image of 160,000 São Tomé peasants logging on to their e-mail after they bring in the day's catch is a compelling one, but the truth is rather less bucolic. São Tomé's registry is a joint venture between savvy locals at Tecnologia de Sistemas Informático and some smart Swedes at a Stockholm company called Bahnhof Internet AB, one of that country's oldest Internet service providers. The two figure that as the Net becomes more populated and addresses become more sophisticated, there is big opportunity in online brokering for addresses like wall.st (taken) or e-commerce with oxford.st (also taken).
One Asian who has caught the São Tomé trend is Al Ishsal Ishak of Kuala Lumpur's NeuroNet group. He has registered and is developing our.st, biz.st, education.st, career.st, geek.st, allwoman.st, allman.st and media.st, among others. Indeed, Neuronet exemplifies how geography doesn't matter in the cyberworld. Al Ishsal Ishak comes from Malaysia, has an office in San Francisco and thinks the São Tomé and Príncipe islands are "somewhere in the Caribbean, I believe."
So as you belatedly launch your Internet strategy and frustratingly find that your preferred domain name is not available, don't despair. The answer is to get inventive: what about the Pacific dot of Tuvalu and its .tv? How about a .dj music site (Djibouti) or a .md Web doctor (Moldova)--and shouldn't Nike hop onto just.do.it (Dominican Republic and Italy)? Former CNN anchor Lou Dobbs could relaunch his space.com in Ethiopia (.et) for a truly intergalactic profile. The possibilities are as endless--or as ridiculous--as your imagination.
Write to us at mail@web.timeasia.com
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