Reveal Day

Last week, ICANN revealed its list of 1,615 top-level domain applications. There are too many story threads to pull for a short-enough email newsletter, so I’ve instead bulleted knee-jerk reactions.

Programming note: This is the email newsletter leading up to my book about internet domains. It’s part storytelling and part behind-the-scenes book progress—thank you for following along. For a sense of what the book itself will be like, you can read my feature in WIRED on top-level domains and the people who make them.

• Taylor Swift applied for .taylorswift (but not .swift, which the international banking organization SWIFT applied for). Swifties will not be able to register their own .taylorswift fan domains, though
• .agent had the most applicants—13—including Google, OpenAI, and Meta. Unless the .agent community passes ICANN’s Community Priority Evaluation rubric, it could be the top dollar auction. Could it surpass $135 million that Verisign paid for .web?
• .human is a natural counterweight to .agent (6 applicants)
• A couple hundred TLDs have multiple applicants, meaning there will be lots of auctions. But I’m still surprised by how many good strings are uncontested (I really do have FOMO!)
• More yin and yang with .good and .bad
• Someone actually applied for .fart, presumably inspired by this 2013 SNL sketch. Reminder: it costs $227,000 just to apply for a TLD, with the actual cost somewhere closer to half a million
• The other potty-mouthed application is for .ass
• Big Tech was pretty active again, like in 2012. Google applied for 39, Meta for 18, OpenAI for 15, Amazon for 8
• Google’s include .alphabet, .api, .ask, .browser, .gemini, .intelligence, .maps, .sheets, .slides, .teach, .waymo, and .waze
• Meta’s include .aiglasses, .facebook, .instagram, .llama, .messenger, .meta, .metaverse, .superintelligence, .threads, and .whatsapp
• OpenAI’s include .agi, .asi, .chatgpt, .codex, .daybreak, .deploy, .evals, .gpt, .mcp, .model, .oai, .openai, .skill, and .voice
• Some not-for-profit organizations applied, too, like the queer nonprofit applying for .meow that I wrote about for WIRED
• Lots more AI-related TLDs, unsurprisingly: .agentic, .agi, .asi, .superintelligence, .intelligence, .llm, .model, .prompt, .robot (and plenty more)
• And plenty of crypto ones, too: .coin, .chain, .crypto, .btc, .bitcoin, .ape, .sol, .wallet, .token, .dao, (and plenty more, but not .eth because ETH is a country code for Ethiopia)
• I expect to see lots of .api domains in software ~five years from now
• Ditto .auth, maybe
• .pod for podcasts, on the other hand, I could see falling flat (8 applicants, and 3 for .podcast)
• .gym and .bbq are the kind of TLDs that, in a world where gTLDs succeed, small businesses like your local gym and barbecue joint will use (5 applicants for .gym and 2 for .bbq)
• Companies applied for 333 branded TLDs like .airbnb, .adidas, .applebees, .bankofamerica, .anthropic, .claude, .openai, .chatgpt, .bsky, .cloudflare, .converse, .meta, .facebook, .instagram, .ihop, .mazda, .mychart, .newbalance, .palantir, .notion, .ralphlauren, .salesforce, .shopify, .slack, and .stripe
• There’s also literally .brand (10 applicants)
• Identity Digital, formerly Donuts, applied for the most TLDs—216. Their existing portfolio of 270 TLDs is already the largest
• LFG (a.k.a. Link Freedom Group) applied for 158 TLDs, second most. I spoke to Vaughn Liley, LFG’s CEO, at ICANN86
• XYZ of .xyz fame (among others, like .lol and .mom) applied for 139 TLDs, third most
• GoDaddy, probably still the domain industry’s biggest household name from spicy Superbowl ads, applied for 77
• 13 cities and regions applied for geoTLDs, like .beijing and .québec
• .québec is also among the 21 applied-for IDNs (Internationalized Domain Names)
• 51 applications came from ICANN’s Applicant Support Program, its financial and operational aid
• .btw is a good one, and there’s only one applicant! It joins existing TLDs good for mini infosites like .fyi, .info, and .how
• .etc is another personal favorite. I use etc. in writing probably way too often, and this just moves the dot to the left
• .jazz is a cozy TLD that’ll join existing ones like .garden, unless the utah.jazz have something to say about it (there’s only one applicant, and it’s not the pro basketball team)
• Other cozy strings include .park, .zen, .chef, .story, .bakery
• Not-so-cozy strings include .corporation, .organization, .accounting
• I could see .artist taking off more than existing TLDs like .dentist and .doctor, but I wonder if artists will still prefer .art
• I can’t imagine .con will go through. I have seen way too many mistyped gmail.con email addresses at the companies I’ve worked at—the typo traffic would be insane (there’s actually a word for that! Typosquatting)
• The Internet Society Chapter of Hawaii applied for .aloha
• About half of applications came from North America, a third from Europe, a bit over 10% from Asia/Australia/Pacific, and only 16 from Africa and 11 from LatAm
• Finally, honorable mentions that I thought were interesting in some way: .bit, .ask, .therapy, .omg, .etc, .hello, .list, .merch, .yes, .bro, .big, .donate, .learn, .teach, .well, .demo, .easy, .hack, .hire, .king, .machine, .url, .zzz, .beach, .geek, .happy, .idea, .identity, .lfg, .nerd, .more, .nice, .road, .roofing, .self, .start, .server, .stock, .soul, .yeah, .wifi, .ball, .bao, .bug, .brew, .body, .boom, .internet, .vibe

This is not nearly exhaustive—there are so, so many of these strings. You can get lost for hours. For more complete coverage, check out Andrew Allemann’s ever-consistent reporting over at Domain Name Wire.

Applicants have two days left—until Wednesday—to switch to their “replacement” string, as a way to avoid an auction. Then November 17 is String Confirmation Day. That’s when we’ll have the final list of applications (but not the final list of TLDs—there are many more steps before these strings go live on the internet, starting with the Community Input and Objections Period from November to March).

NamesCon

ICANN87 is under way this week in Bali, Indonesia. I couldn’t swing it, sadly, but I will be in Miami next month for NamesCon to do book research on domain investing. Will you be there? Reply!