How to .Tel the Difference
November 4, 2008 by Rick Latona
One of the more interesting companies I’ve talked to during this ICANN meeting has been Telnic. On December 3rd they will start their sunrise registration of .tel domains. There are a few notable and fascinating things about this extension worth discussing.
The domains won’t be used for websites, per se. You won’t actually be using A records, C-Name records or MX records. You won’t have a hosting company. There will be no FTPing or html pages of any sort.
It’s always when you think you know a thing or two that someone turns everything upside down on you. While even rookie domainers quickly learn what A, C-name and MX records are, even the most savvy of us have never heard of NAPTR records. From what I understand, they are DNS records that can contain phone numbers, email address, links or other communication services.
In other words, they are using the central name servers to propogate out to the world’s DNS servers all of the content that any .Tel will display. If you visit hotels.tel you will be pulling the content from a name server near you, not from a hosting company.
Their goal appears to be to become the yellow and white pages of the 21st century. Besides business opportunities for people that want to setup and sell listings for hotels.tel or taxis.tel, they hope that companies will jump on board with names like microsoft.tel and post all of their contact information. As an individual you could put up your contact information along with links to your Facebook and/or linkedin.com profiles.
The jury, as they say, is out on this point. I think its important to distinguish .Tel from .mobi domains. The purpose of .mobi domains is to point to properly formatted mobile websites while the purpose of .Tel domains is to point to contact information and keyword for individuals and businesses and all information is immediately clickable for a “click-to-call” feature.
The technical aspects of how they are pulling this off, however, is nothing less than astounding. Someone may come up with very clever ways of monetizing a service like this if they think way outside the box like Telnic has.
They are not auctioning off premium names and will not be running a lottery system. When they start their landrush they want it to be a free-for-all. Those who snag the obvious premium names like hotels, taxis and common first and last names will certainly have sellable names on the aftermarket.
I agree on your point that the .tel will be particular be useful more of as a business listing of some sort. Right now, I’m waiting on how it will turn out on search engine results.
I’ve requested my own vip.tel trial to get the full experience of .tel this early. Although they’d admit that most functionalities are not available yet. I think the .tel has a great chance of turning out bigger than what it is right now. Below is my vip.tel URL:
http://jamarie.vip.tel
Ruel, they are assuring me that their sites are being indexed by Google. Remember that Google is also ICANN accredited so they have access to all of that information in the zone files.
or you can wait for .tele or .telecom or .nytele or .usatele .eutele or .teleteletele
next thing you know everyone will be register domain extensions
Rick,
When and where are these going to be sold?
Thank you.
Olivia
Olivia, full details for Sunrise, Landrush, and General Availability registrations for telnic (including timing, eligibility, minimum term, selection method, and validation) can be found here: http://www.telnic.org/launch-landing.html.
1. Why can’t I just use a Contact Me page for this?
2. Why would I want all my contact information in Google?
Hello,
Spoke with Justin from Telnic, very helpful in setting up a VIP account. Check out
http://victor.vip.tel
I’m bullish on this new extension.
cant use for as website?
@Rob think about the mobile experience - check your bill when you download html-based sites as opposed to downloading data from a .tel - less than 1k. A big difference when you’re on roaming data or non-fixed mobile contract
Also, you can fuel your contacts page with a .tel - check out http://telnic.org/contact.html to see how.
Justin@Telnic
tel may has good future after 2009, better book and buy few now
IMHO, its a new version of Yellow Pages hence, it will be a success. Lets see what happened after mid 2009…
And AT&T just grabbed YP.com for a cool $3.85 million! Seems like yellow pages business getting hotter and hotter…
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I like that a user can make a call directly from the .tel site; that may turn out to be the most important feature of this TLD. Just click on the phone number.
Some savvy domainer will come up with a monetization plan.
From what I understand, the way the NAPTR records are configured will make it easier for .tel sites to rank high in their prospective keywords. Don’t ask me how–I’m not at all techie.
Also, one will not have to pay for hosting (at least that’s my understanding; correct me if I’m wrong).
I, too, have a VIP site; it took about 15 minutes to set up the card:
msdomainer.vip.tel.
I assume these VIP sites are temporary and will disappear once landrush begins. Too bad.
These electronic business cards could become little cyber gems and highly sought after, especially in high-ranking keywords.
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To Rob Sequin:
You get to choose what info you want to share.
You can offer a list of websites, a list of keywords, a bit of text.
In my VIP site, I don’t even have a phone number listed, just some keywords and links to my Ms Domainer site and Feed list.
It also looks like you will be able to create subdomains.
I saw paris.hotels.tel on Google; can you imagine offering a select list of phone numbers for hotels in Paris, instantly clickable? How would you like to be one of those hotels on that directory? How about the owner of hotels.tel,who will likely have subdomains for New York, London, L.A., Dubai, etc?
Of course, a lot is riding on how the .tel TLD is marketed and how convincingly telnic can establish need for it.
(Note: I’m old enough to remember the Pet Rock mania, so I know that anything is possible.)
FWIW, I’m not employed or in any way connected with the telnic organization.
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Suppose you want to communicate with someone who happens to have a dozen options, the preferred means changing at different times of day, week, etc. Also, suppose you are using a device such as a smartphone that can be used for a variety of communications…
the potential use of .tel addresses is quite phenomenal.
Yes, it is not a tld like others, which turns off many domainers who find it hard to think out of their ppc box… but that certainly doesn’t prevent innovators from monetizing .tel addresses in a number ways.
The greatest strength will be in terms of mobile usage… light fast predictable access to communications info, which is afterall the primary function of mobile devices. If I were a corp, I would optimize my .tel to point people to my .mobi address… (or mobile friendly .com webpage). Think about the fact of 4 billion plus mobile users.
It won’t take long and there will be some great .tel applications out for the myriad of handsets on the market, as well as a number of .tel search engines.
My guess is that Google will give quite a bit of trust rank to .tel links, based on the domain itself, it’s registration date (sunrise > landrush > general), etc. .tel domains would imho be attractive to Google because they love information that is well-formed, predictable, and useful to their users. Furthermore, .tel won’t be a haven for junk ads.
BTW
There is now a community website that is specifically for dot-tel developers (also known as “telsters”).
Telsters Dot-Tel Developer Community
Anyone who is interested in the development of the dot-tel domain should take a look.
I have set up my .tel already and it is working now for 1 week , I have already submitted the site to google and it is not indexed yet by google, telnic says it may take up to 3 months for google to index the site, I keep wondering , on telnics site there is an interview with justin where he shows justin.tel showing up first on google upon entering his keywords, he also says it is free no ppc , can that be marketing only an he is laying? I think the only way .tel can succed is for the sites to be index by google and show up on searches, if not it will be very difficult, I am hoping it works as I have invested over $15,000 on some great generic names, any comments !
@giovani: care to tell us some of the domains you got?
to make google index your .tel faster why don’t you try linking to it from another website? that should get it indexed way faster.
I just grabber my rafyta.tel 2 days go.
My dot tel has been indexed after a week.
mortgagebroker.tel
on page 3 for a few searches
if I can get page 1 organically I will be very pleased with my purchase.
I’m adding a load of data over the next couple of months so we shall wait and see…