ICANN

Today, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) posted the complete list of new gTLD applicants and what they applied for. While Reveal Day is, understandably, an important and long-anticipated day, the day the Internet really began to change was June 20, 2011, when ICANN’s Board voted to approve the New gTLD Program. It was on that day that brand owners had to begin to truly consider applying for new gTLDs, weighing the potential opportunity for innovation against the risk of being left behind, should these new extensions catch on.

We are now happy to confirm that along with the 1,930 new gTLD applications submitted, FairWinds has applied for .FAIRWINDS. Just like our clients’ applications, our application is the result of much discussion and careful deliberation. We have taken our responsibility to help brand owners navigate the decision to apply very seriously. We chose to invest right alongside our clients because of the same beliefs we shared with them, in the potential opportunities new gTLDs may hold for brands.

With such a high level of participation in the Program, it will still be a number of years before ICANN will be able to fully process the numerous new gTLD applications, and even longer before these new gTLDs will be delegated, go live, and begin affecting the way Internet users navigate online. But as stewards of the new Internet landscape, new gTLD applicants still have a lot of work to do, and many decisions to make, ahead of them. FairWinds is excited to count itself among this group of brand owners and innovators and we are looking forward to continuing to push the boundaries of the Internet's frontier.

Yesterday, ICANN issued another announcement about the batching process for new gTLD applications. For the most part, it’s nothing we don’t already know (and haven’t already blogged about), but peppered throughout the announcement are some interesting new things to consider.

For one, we know that applicants will log back into the TLD Application System (TAS) to select and hit their target time. We now know that applicants will also be able to use a testing feature to gauge the response time of their system and, in some cases, their trigger finger. This can be helpful for those applicants who are still trying to decide whether to use a technology solution to hit their target time, or to just hit the button manually. (more...)

Anyone who put their money on June 13 as the date when ICANN would reveal the list of new gTLD applicants and their applied-for strings got some great news last night. In a new update, ICANN announced a series of important upcoming dates. First, the TLD Application System (TAS) will close tonight at 23:59 UTC, or 7:59 PM EDT, as scheduled. The Batching process will officially begin on June 8 and close on June 28. And during that timeframe, Reveal Day will take place on June 13. (more...)

So now we know how ICANN’s Digital Archery process will work, and have a very rough idea of when that process will take place. On the surface, it may seem like having the process start before before Reveal Day is not a big deal – perhaps ICANN is even trying to make up for some time lost during the month-long TAS delay. But there could be some really serious ramifications to the timing of this process. And like so many other aspects of the New gTLD Program, these ramifications result from ICANN keeping applicants in the dark. (more...)

It’s been more than two months since ICANN first announced its plans for how to deal with the “batching” issue – how it will order new gTLD applications for evaluation – and yet there still seems to be rampant confusion around the basics of the process and its implications.

Let’s start with the basics: what exactly does ICANN mean by “batching”? Well, according to the New gTLD Applicant Guidebook, if ICANN receives substantially more than 500 new gTLD applications, which we know with certainty that it will, it will divide those applications into groups in order to evaluate them. The first batch will consist of 500 applications, and subsequent batches will each contain 400 applications. In an announcement on May 4, ICANN stated that the TLD Application System (TAS) held 2,091 applications, plus 214 potential applications for which the payments had yet to be reconciled. Assuming that all 2,305 applications make it through, there will be a total of six batches. (more...)

We may not know precisely when ICANN will finally publish the full list of new gTLD applications and applicants, but we do know that it will be at least a month from now. And certain companies have come forward over the past few weeks, announcing that they are applying for certain new gTLDs. So while we’ll have to sit tight for the full list, we at least have a small sneak peak of a few of the 2,100+ applications we’ll see on Reveal Day. Here’s what we’re looking at so far: (more...)

Last night, ICANN posted a new update about the TAS. The organization has met its deadline of May 8 to inform applicants of whether or not their user names or file names were exposed during the glitch that first became public on April 12.

But the real news is that we finally know when the TAS will come back online – mostly.

ICANN says that it is “targeting 22 May 2012 as the intended reopening date for the TLD Application System.” Once it reopens, the TAS will stay open for five business days, closing for good on May 30 (accounting for the Memorial Day holiday on Monday, May 28, here in the U.S.). (more...)

ICANN’s TLD Application System (TAS) remains offline this week as ICANN is continuing to work through the data in order to determine which applicants’ information may have been compromised during the security glitch. ICANN has said that it will likely take until May 8 to notify all of the applicants whether or not their user names or file names were exposed, but this week, the organization did publish some stats about the TAS delay: (more...)

As promised, ICANN posted another update about the TAS closure on Friday night, sneaking in just minutes before the deadline it had set of 23:59 UTC (7:59 PM EDT). Essentially, because of the large volume of data that the organization has to sort through in order to fulfill its promise of alerting all applicants of whether or not their data was compromised during the security glitch, ICANN stated that at the time, it was not prepared to make an announcement about when it would reopen the TAS. Instead, the statement promised another update by Friday, April 27 at 23:59 UTC (7:59 PM EDT). (more...)