In teasing us with a date for the big reveal for new gTLD applicants ICANN has left off something pretty important.
The time.
While announcing the April 30th as the date for the big reveal, they didn’t announce at time or even which time zone they would be using.
ICANN typically works off of UTC time zone which at this time of the year is 4 hours ahead of EST so midnight April 30th is really 8 PM EST April 29th.
For those attending the informal Vegas meetup (in full disclosure as part of RightoftheDot.com I have been invited) an April 30th reveal date could be as early as 5pm April 29th Vegas time.
However ICANN itself is based on the west coast of the US so they may just use that time.
Moreover while ICANN said that the date of April 30th is the “target date” previous announcements have mentioned May 1 or even May 2.
Applicant’s have already plunked down hundreds of thousands of dollars each and are obviously wanting to know what their fate is ASAP.
On Friday night, Tens of millions of people who plunked down just a dollar for a Mega Millions lotto ticket were glued to their TV sets waiting to see what numbers were selected.
They knew the date and time the drawing would be held and the result announced.
Not surprisingly those who have spent hundreds of thousand of dollars not to mention a lot of time and effort to apply for a new gTLD or several of them, want to be around when the big announcement is made.
So why wouldn’t ICANN give the same courtesy to those who sprung for a buck on the biggest lottery on earth, to see where they stand on the 2nd biggest lottery one earth?
Not knowing what time frame ICANN is locked into when the speak of the date, means for those awaiting official word of who applied for what, especially if they are waiting in Vegas, can turn out to be an even more expensive proposition than the $185K application fee.
