Former Mayor Ed Koch backs DotNYC group:

http://www.circleid.com/posts/former_new_york_city_mayor_support_for_dotnyc/

While the more remote ccTLD owners, across the board, have been dropping many of the top 500 premium keyword domains at an unprecedented rate, .la owners are not. Other than a few Geos for country/state names which make very little sense for .la, I’ve seen nothing else available for months. And even those .la Geos get snapped right up.

(Except for TalkRadio.LA, which I inadvertently dropped, much to my regret.)

Thanks. That’s all I’m saying.

I understand being skeptical. I don’t understand the reluctance to apply logic to a given set of circumstances and arrive at a reasonable conclusion.

Here’s another example of what I mean:

I can’t tell you the number of domainers who continue to tell me that longtail .com keywords will never get the kind of search placement I describe – notwithstanding the fact that I can show half a dozen examples where minisites (i.e., PayLaterCatalogs.com) went from nowhere to Google Top 10 search result placement in about 60 days. Arghhh!

.me is another extension that was marketed correctly from the get go.

It’s very hard to establish a brand when it was not done properly at the launch.

Look at .travel, would be one of the most sort after gTLD’s, except its already out there, screwed from the start and a failure 3 years latter.

MHB,

That’s exactly why I mentioned .Me & .TV. Both country codes as well. It’s all about the marketing. Dot-ME has done a nice job making us think about ourselves and not Montenegro. My point was that the success of .nyc will bring recognition from the LA population for no other reason than Los Angelinos wondering whether a premium keyword followed by .la will reveal a locally based website.

That’s why I have focused on domains such as these with a Geo based local flavor:

Dentists.LA
AirportShuttle.LA
Copies.LA
Tattoos.LA

The fact that several of these .LA domains are already on course to pay their own $40 hefty registration fees with only a minisite and Adsense is very promising. Not to mention the occasional email request I receive for brochure or printing services at Copies.la. There’s much more monetizing to be done before I am anywhere near the point of diminishing returns.

Many of the best premium keyword .com domains still having nothing but parked pages doesn’t dissuade the general population from continuing direct navigation searches through the URL address bar. My point is simply that the success of .nyc will only increase public awareness that a Los Angeles based website might just be hiding behind a domain ending in .la.

It’s not about domaining or domainers – just human nature.

What’s more, IMHO, perception changes when you can visually “get” the feel of a website by actually seeing it as opposed to owning a domain that appears nowhere else – except on a list with hundreds of similarly orphaned keywords followed by a TLD.

Plus, you have to admit (at least a little) that AirportShuttles.LA* looks pretty darn cool!

*(Props to Estibot for the minisite & design)

I guess that is how you would define success.

I think it has a chance to succeed if they keep it quite community based.

Its going to be a lot of work to make sure the best domains stay in local hands and as David pointed out, when it comes to assigning a name like lawyer.nyc who is going to get it and how will it be assigned.

If I was running the registry, I would make all interested parties submit paperwork demonstrating they were a lawyer or law firm admitted to the NY bar with offices in NY for at least 1 year prior to application.

I would then hold and auction opened to just the qualified bidders.

You take 1,000 different professions, businesses etc. and do the same and if those who won the right to use the .nyc actually create sites, and market them, then I think it would be successful.