Recently, ICANN announced that it was going to take domain names to a whole new level, by allowing registrations with any prefix and suffix. People won’t be limited to .com, .co.za and the like. Needless to say, this move will revamp the way we use the Internet, and already there are questions as to what this will eventually become.

I thought about this for a while, and I realised something that made me burst out laughing, but I’ll get to that later. For now, I’d like to dispel some of the myths that may well be circulating. Or, at least, offer the most level-headed approach to this whole thing.

Firstly, I don’t think registrations will be open. By “open”, I mean the ability to visit any registrar of your choice, and register any domain name as long as it’s still available. I’m willing to bet that ICANN will be regulating this with incredible scrutiny for the first few months.

I’m also willing to bet that they won’t allow easy access to recognizable trademarks like “microsoft”, “pokemon”, and “apple”. I think that ICANN will operate on the prove-you-own-it basis, and use whatever internal means they have of solving conflicts. I’m not anticipating a landrush grab, at least not for the branded domains.

The generic potentials - like international.tourism, it.jobs, human.sciences - these will probably be under a first-come, first-serve basis, with ICANN controlling every step of the process. As Naseem Jamed rightly states - we are in the era of cyber-branding, where the domain name is every bit as important as the brand behind it.

This brings me to another possible effect, one which I quite frankly will welcome. Domain squatters. They go by many names - “SEO guru” and “black-hat marketer” and whatever else. One of the major tactics when it comes to domains is to register derivitave domains that contain a popular brand, and a generic term. This boosts natural search rankings, which in turn leads to ad profits.

I doubt whether ICANN will tolerate behaviour of this sort. They already removed the domain-tasting system , and with stricter controls over who gets what domain, they can tighten the noose even further. I’m all for it - it will create a cleaner internet, albeit the dramatically shifted marketing landscape. That’s another post, though.

Big brands and generics aside, there are plenty of names left, and these will probably operate on the first-come-first-serve basis we’ve come to expect. But with ICANN being more involved in the process, registrations for real names, etc, might just take a little longer.

What will happen to the current-standing .com’s and .net’s of our era? I’m sure they’ll be around for a while yet - COMmercial and NETworking and ORGanisation domains will still be necessary, and will still be cheaper - these new domains are estimated to cost anywhere between $100 - $500′000 just for the initial application. Until those prices lower themselves, most people probably won’t jump on the bandwagon.

Overall, I think it’s a welcome change, one that reflects the changing nature of the Web. At its conception, it was little more than a tool for exchanging and sharing information. When it became globally accessible, it also became personal, and it became a far greater platform for business than the real world.

Think about it. Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, Google - they exist from smallish office buildings (albeit lavish, in Google’s case), and in the real world, might only have dominated the markets in their states. But throw the Internet into the equation, and suddenly we have globally-recognisable brands.

What I find really funny (this was what got me laughing), is that the reason all of this is happening is because more and more people started spending time online - engaging in conversations and social networking, thereby creating a platform for business to peddle their wares.

When these new domain names hit the scene, we will eventually establish a few like “discuss.politics” and “technology.talk” and “share.photos”, which will no doubt evolve into discussion/interaction platforms, using advanced protocols like Google’s OpenSocial platform (or maybe even a derivitave of OpenID?) to keep them all in sync.

People will be able to connect to the Internet, log in to a very descriptive domain name, and share discussions, opinions, thoughts, pictures, videos - whatever they wish to share, even across multiple domains with the same credentials. And in the meanwhile, companies will establish and market and sponsor these sites, drawing attention to their brands. The World Wide Web will attain the social-networking reach and power it was meant to have in the first place.

I can think of one other system that already does this.

UseNet.

After 30-odd years of evolution, we’re right back at the beginning - right back at the mailing lists. Only this time, we have companies and bodies and standards and alliances and conventions and all this human hubris slowing it down, not to mention greedy ISPs and fragile fiberoptic pipes and more than 15 scripting languages, 5 versions of HTML and 2 (maybe 3) versions of CSS, several XML protocols (of which Atom is the handiest), and one Google ruling them all.

Oh, and Flash. How can we forget about Flash?