If, like Latona, you are a domain investor who is “not entirely sure what to think about .TEL names, especially when it concerns the reseller market,” you should read this interview.

Here’s an excerpt:

Latona:                                                                                                                                                                                                                             How can my audience (professional domainers) profit from .TEL names?

Mahdavi:                                                                                                                                                                                                                The .TEL adds several monetization opportunities that investors should appreciate which widen the ability for a domain developer to generate revenue in parallel with traditional website-driven monetization strategies.

The .TEL spreads the risk of investing over multiple methods of generating revenue, such as PPC and premium rate numbers for voting and betting services.  There is also value in owning vanity names, whether business or consumer focused.  It’s also possible to run a commercial directory service under a .TEL domain and, of course, it is possible to provide links to revenue generating e-commerce storefronts.  Additionally, due to the unique content published in a .TEL domain, pairing it with existing investments in .com and other domain names will lead to better SEO – a key goal in revenue generation.

Other questions brought forward by Latona include:

How has your launch gone so far? Have you registered more, less or about what you expected?                                           
Don’t you think that bloggers and individuals would be more likely to get .TEL names if they were less expensive?

Addressing the domaining community, Mahdavi concludes the interview by saying: 

The .TEL is now creating new opportunities for the domainer community, as well as a new ecosystem that includes non-traditional players entering the domain name industry, such as social networking sites, directory service providers and Voice over IP companies. Some have already begun the process of becoming an ICANN Accredited registrar as they see the potential of the .TEL as a communications hub for businesses and individuals. We believe that these non-traditional players will be a driving force of growth for .TEL domains and the domain name industry as a whole and lead to a new value being assigned to domain names.

Read the interview for yourself and let us know if you think Mahdavi’s answers measure up.

Register/Pre-register .TEL domains risk free for Landrush and General Registration with an official .TEL registrar.

The vip.tel names can be accessed and viewed through web browsers and mobile devices; they will also work with Telnic’s demo applications for Outlook, Windows Mobile, iPhone and Blackberry.

Remember that the TelHosting platform and demo applications are in beta release; while they are not highly polished, they provide a feel for how .TEL will work in actual release. The privacy functionality has not been enabled in the vip.tel names, therefore all the contact information you enter will be public.

And here’s another tip –   the vip.tel requires your phone number to be in international format, eg. +16041231234.  As a North American user, it took an irritating ten minutes until I figured this out. Telnic, if you’re reading this, an example would have been helpful here. Sigh.

Signup for your vip.tel name today by going to http://www.telnic.org/vip/ . Your vip.tel will work until February 3, 2009 when Landrush registration begins.

Register/Pre-book your .TEL domains with an official .TEL registrar today.

A few notes about Sunrise:

• Trademark application date must be prior to May 30, 2008.
• Trademark registration date must be prior to December 3, 2008.
• Applications are considered on a world-wide basis, independently assessed by Deloitte and are awarded on a first come, first served basis.
• Application fee of US$399 applies for all submitted applications whether successful or not. If the application is successful, Webnames.ca will provide a three year registration (minimum term specified by the registry) of the name at no extra charge.

Register/Prebook your .TEL domain name today!

So do you jump or do you wait?  If you get laid off, you have to tell all your friends, family members, professional associates and clients that you can no longer be reached at your work email and phone. 

If you are lucky enough to get another job, you have to tell all your friends, family members, professional associates and clients that you can now be reached at your new work email and phone. 
 
I don’t know about you, but I never put people’s email addresses in my Contacts in Outlook anymore.  The nickname or autocomplete feature has taken away the need for that.  I type a letter or two and it shows me a list of names to choose from.

So now I am either at home or at my new office and I have to re-type all of the info into the address bar and send out the email that I can now be reached at the following address and phone.  Sure, I might have been a clever clogs and copied my .nk2 file from my old machine and copied it onto my new machine, thus preserving my nicknames, but how many people remember to do that?

Employed or unemployed, there has to be a better way. .tel shines a much needed beacon of hope onto the whole mess.

I have lisa.tel.  All my friends have laura.tel, dave.tel, suzi.tel etc.  We are “friended” within the Telnic TelHosting system.

I arrive at my new job and I install the .tel Outlook tool (there is a beta version available from Telnic at the time of this writing).  I log in via the tool and all of my friends’ information comes down into my Outlook.  I don’t have to type their addresses in from a list.

But wait – it gets better.  I don’t have to email them that I have a new job. 

When they log into their Outlook in the morning, the .tel Outlook tool goes out to the TelHosting platform and polls to see if there are any changes.  Your new email address that you updated the night before, comes zooming down into their Outlook. 

They might not catch on for weeks that the address they are sending to has changed.  Your name comes up, they email you, you keep responding to dinner invites.

With .tel, staying connected just got easier.

Asking a prospective date for a phone number is so last century. Starting soon, it’ll be “what’s your dot.tel?”

There’s a new online gold rush gathering momentum as pre-registration ramps up for the Internet’s new .tel domain that lets individuals, companies and organizations store all their contact information in a virtual phone book for life.

Even though their phone numbers, e-mail or address may change, their .tel remains the same. It can be updated and customized by the user so they can be found by anyone who knows their .tel name. Or not, as the case may be, since the .tel service also lets users decide how much contact information they want to share and who they want to share it with.

It can include everything from a home or office phone number, to a mobile phone, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter or any of the increasing number of ways people choose to stay in touch. Unlike a phone book or a business card that can be outdated the minute someone moves or changes jobs, a .tel identity can be updated anytime.

In a customized twist on the old practice of an unlisted phone number, just like Facebook you can choose to share information with friends, keeping it hidden from others. Or you can share certain contact info with acquaintances and clients, saving your secret home cellphone number for only close friends and family.

For people you really don’t want to hear from or pesky telemarketers, you can send them on a wild-goose chase by giving them bogus contact information. You can also map your location, a plus for businesses that can direct customers straight to their door with nothing more than a .tel name.

“At a fairly straightforward level it is a way for you to give someone your contact information just by giving them your .tel name,” said John Demco, co-found and director of Webnames.ca and the man known as the godfather of .CA for his work in creating the Internet’s .ca country code top-level domain for Canada.

“If you gave me your .tel name, I would be able to put that into my cellphone and I’d be able to contact you automatically with whatever contact information you have put with that.”

Read the rest of the article.

Early indicators suggest .TEL is going to be very popular. In a recent press release the registry operator responsible for .TEL, Telnic.org, announced that more than 100 registrars are either accredited or intend to offer .TEL to the public.

Webnames.ca, an official accredited registrar for .TEL is encouraging prospective registrants, especially trademark holders to pre-book early. Webnames.ca noted that because .TEL names function more like directory listings than websites, it might be difficult for customers to know whether the information provided in a TEL domain is  from the right company. For example, if you hold the trademark for ABC Brand, but neglect to register the corresponding .TEL, a competitor could register ABCBRAND.TEL and divert your customers.

Trademark holders that do not pre-book to register their names during the Sunrise Period risk losing out to competitors during the Landrush and General Availability registration periods. Instead of chasing down .TEL domains in violation of your trademark after the fact, ensure your .TEL domains are protected from the get-go.

Sunrise Regsitration begins December 3, 2008.

Being found and protecting your maintaining your privacy used to be mutually exclusive. Now with the .TEL domain name it is possible to have your contact information in the public domain while maintaining full control of it.

Once you’ve registered your .TEL name, you’ll be able to configure and manage the information through the TelHosting interface.  It is possible to publish your contact details in a secure way and decide the level of privacy that you need.

Start by adding some contact information. For example:

• Work Website
• Work Telephone
• Cell Phone
• Work E-mail Address
• Home Telephone
• Gmail Address
• MSN Instant Message ID

You can then create security groups to which users may be added. For example:

• Coworkers
• Business Associates
• Friends
• Family

From there, it’s simply a question of mapping contact information to security groups to determine who can see what information.

In this case, the only thing that a member of the general public could see is your work website address.

How “Friending” words

To have access to some or all of your contact details, someone would have to send a “Friending” request. This is a request that includes their name, email address and a short message. You can manage your friending requests through the TelHosting interface and assign each requestor to the appropriate group. If you don’t know the friending requestor, simply decline the request.

Encryption

All private contact records (held as NAPTR records in the DNS) are encrypted with 1024 bit encryption, so unless you explicitly allow someone to see a record through the security groups you create and the friending requests you allow, there’s no way for them to see your information.

Public/Private Key Encryption

The friending process is built on a popular and well used security model based on public and private “key” pairs. When you allow someone you’ve ‘friended’ to see secured information, the system encrypts the data using their public key. No one other than the recipient can unlock the data, but when the recipient receives the information, they can unlock it using their private key.

This is all managed transparently by the TelHosting software so it’s not something you need to be knowledgeable about in order to use it.

You likely know that .TEL names are awarded on a first come first serve basis, so as the interest heats up, the chances of someone else pre-booking the name you want increases. Remember, .TEL is global, so it could be anyone, anywhere in the world.

Obviously, the sooner you pre-book, the higher your chances are of getting the name you want. But even if you book right now, it’s possible your name has already gone.

If that’s the case, you may want a second, less popular variation of your name. But what if that’s gone too? How many should you pre-book to make sure you get at least one good name?

The most popular names and simplest names are likely to go first. Your chances of getting a single name like john.tel or jessica.tel or smith.tel are low. Of course you can take a gamble. If you get it, you have the choice of keeping it and being the envy of every Jessica on the planet, or selling it in the aftermarket and making handsome profit.

It’s more likely that a first name, last name combination has a better chance of success. If your name is John Smith, you may want a long list of back up names, but chances are your name is a bit less popular than John Smith.

The main question then, is how popular is your name, and how likely are you to get it before someone else does?

To get an idea of how popular your name is on a global level, you need to find a global address book. This is where Yahoo, Gmail and Facebook come in.

Facebook claims to have more than 100 million active users and an article in USA Today gives the following numbers for web mail providers:

Microsoft — 256.2 million users
Yahoo — 254.6 million users
Google — 91.6 million users

The bad news is that the people that have these accounts are the target market for .TEL, so the competition is potentially very steep.

The good news is that each of the sign up processes for the mail providers offers a feature to check the availability of your account name. If you have a Facebook account, you can use the search feature to search for names and determine their popularity.

For the web mail providers, head over to each of the sites and use the Check Availability feature to see if anyone else is currently using your preferred .TEL name already. Just enter your preferred name and click “Check Availability”.

If it’s available, there’s a pretty good chance your .TEL name will be too.

In a surprising number of cases though, the name is not available. If this is the case, you may want to submit one or two alternatives.

Try using a combination of first and last names, initials and diminutive or shortened versions of your name. Were he alive, James Dean might discover that jamesdean was not available. He might try jimmydean, jdean, jimd jamesbdean (middle name Byron) or other variations and submit one or two of these as backups to jamesdean.tel

Many registrars charge a non-refundable pre-booking fee, but with Webnames.ca, you only pay for the names you get. If you pre-book five variations but don’t get them, you pay nothing. On the other hand, if you get them all, you have to pay for them all.

Finally, if you really want a popular name, Landrush Registration allows you to apply seven weeks earlier than everyone else. It’s considerably more expensive but greatly increases your chances of getting the name you want. Again, you only pay if you’re successful and you still have the chance to sell a premium name in the aftermarket.

Your .TEL is going to be something you use for life and getting the name you want requires a bit of strategic thinking and knowledge of the likely demand.

• Pre-book early to improve your chances
• Understand the competition for a given name by checking existing availability on popular sites & services
• If you want a popular name, consider less popular alternatives as a fall back
• Use a registrar like Webnames.ca that only charges for successful registrations
• Balance the risk of not getting the name you want with the potential costs
• The aftermarket that can help offset the risk of multiple successful registrations

Links
Facebook  — www.facebook.com
Yahoo Sign Up — http://www.yahoo.com/r/m7
Microsoft Live Sign Up — https://signup.live.com/signup.aspx
Gmail — http://www.gmail.com

Pre-booking and Registration
Pre-booking for General Registration and Landrush is available now — http://www.webnames.ca/tel
General Registration opens March 24, 2009.
Landrush Registration opens seven weeks earlier on February 3, 2009.

Reference Links

USA Today:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2008-04-15-google-gmail-webmail_N.htm

On my commute this morning, I was stopped at the lights behind a small truck with advertising signage on its back doors. The sign gave the name of the company, their tag line and a local number to call. This got me to thinking whether such signage would survive the new dot TEL world after it officially launches next March.

I counted another 96 easily noticeable signs and advertisements in the remaining fifteen minutes of my drive. Most of these were vehicle signs for small and large companies, but others were at bus stops, on bus sidings or on billboards. For the most part they contain a logo, message and a telephone number, web site address or both.

I believe that .TEL will create a change in advertising and marketing, but I think it will be more pervasive than dramatic. After all, trade vehicle signage has been popular since before the automobile and the image of the horse drawn wagon with the medicine show sidings is a familiar one.

The change will be more in keeping with the addition of a telephone number or web site address as the underlying technologies became popular.

In a post dot TEL world, I believe the dot TEL address will replace the telephone number and the web address. This change won’t be limited to mobile or roadside billboards, but will be extend to any form of advertising that contains contact information.

The driving force behind the change won’t be the technology itself. It will come from you and me, and will stem mainly from our laziness.

As consumers, we like ease. If it’s one less step in a process, one more barrier removed or one more advantage, we’re happier consumers. We’re also one step closer to a purchasing decision.

Dot TEL offers this small advantage. It’s going to make things just a little bit easier. As a result my actions might be just a bit different. And from a marketing perspective, that might just be enough to warrant change.

A telephone number has discrete utility. There’s only one thing I can really do with it. The same is largely true of a web address. With a telephone number or web address I have one thing to store or one thing to remember and when I use it, I get one result.

With a dot TEL however, I still have one thing to store or remember, but I can do a multitude of things I can do with it.

A dot TEL gives me the telephone number and the web address but can additionally give me a list of direct phone numbers to connect me to the department of my choice, e-mail addresses, fax numbers, physical and mailing addresses and even the geo location to view it on a map or get directions.

Given the choice, I’d rather have a single piece of information to store but multiple things it can do for me. And because of this I think the advertising landscape will change.

Anywhere that contact information is currently displayed we’ll see the growing use of the dot TEL address, whether it be in print, television, radio, computer screen or the side of a delivery truck.

In the short term, this may not mean a lot to marketers, but dot TEL is a flexible technology and that gives scope to innovation. Early software applications are already experimenting with combining the built in GPS functionality of the telephone with the geo-location capabilities of dot TEL. It’s a little spooky, but the application uses individual .TEL’s to tell you how far away your friends are.

My friend Lisa Wills was speculating that a similar application could offer a subscription service that allows a shop or coffee shop to ‘call out’ with specials when you’re passing.

A simpler opportunity might be to use the .TEL’s privacy option to display special offers or discounts, but only to members that have signed up using the “friending” system.

When a new technology emerges that has application to nearly every consumer on the planet, it’s going to attract the attention of marketing professionals. If it’s also one that is explicitly about communication and inherently flexible, it has the potential to change an industry.

One of these new and innovative ways is via a .TEL domain. I know, I know you are thinking didn’t we just learn about .MOBI, wasn’t that supposed to usher us into the new world of mobile web surfing? Well as we all found as great as getting to our favorite websites via a .MOBI domain name is it left us wanting more… something beyond a paired down version or the regular websites we visit on our lap and desktop PCs.

We may not have known what that new technology may have been but we knew we wanted it. Something simple, a new way to connect and find each other on this big blue ball we call earth. What if I need to look someone’s contact information up while I am on the run? I mean sure it is great not having to carry around all those quarters for the pay phone but with the gradual disappearance of those little booths also, was the fate of those bound and hanging from the often dirty little shelf below the pay phone… that bulky un-environmentally friendly beast we called the phonebook.

So what is one to do when on the run and in need of a restaurant, some new Jimmy Choos or my best friend who changes their contact information with every new mobile device that hits the market? Well let me .TEL you what you can do, you can search for them by their .TEL domain name that will have all of their up to date contact details and maybe even a few extras. Imagine a world where your friends, your stylist, or your favorite eatery can be found by typing in their NAME.tel and that’s it, no flipping through the white or yellow pages, no more endless googling, just enter their NAME.TEL and there they are.

Ok, ok I know you are saying to yourself, “yeah, but first they have to buy their NAME.TEL in order for me to find them via the .TEL domain name”, well yeah of course you do, but why wouldn’t you? You certainly don’t want to be the last in your circle of friends to get your .TEL, remember resistance is futile.