Demand Approved as Registrar for Top-Level Domains

0

Santa Monica’s Demand Media has received approval to be the registrar for a new set of top-level domain names – the dot com or dot org that comes at the end of a Web address.

The company’s domain registry business has been approved as a registrar for the dot dance and dot democrat top-level domains, known as gTLDs, by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

United TLD, a Dublin subsidiary of Demand, will handle the registrations. It has also applied to register dot actor, dot army and dot ninja, among others.

“New gTLDs are coming to market before the year ends and, with these ICANN contracts, Demand Media is ready to go as both a platform through which these names will be available, as well as bringing specific new gTLDs such as .DANCE and .DEMOCRAT to market,” Taryn Naidu, executive vice president of Domain Services for Demand Media, said in a statement.

Demand’s other registrar properties, eNom and Name.com, have signed an agreement with ICANN to become an approved retailer of new gTLDs.

ICANN began creating new domain extensions in 2011 to widen the number of domains available for the Web. Registries such as Demand’s expect that the release of the new extensions beginning this month will provide a significant boost to their businesses.

The release of these extensions comes just months before Demand had planned to spin off its registrar business into a separate public company. Demand has said that the split might be delayed following the resignation of Chief Executive Richard Rosenblatt earlier this month.

No posts to display