We just couldn’t come up with a way of marketing to them that didn’t sink us into tawdriness.

Well it looks like we are too late – they have discovered dot tel without our help.

Anyone who is on Twitter has a large number of “working girls” following them.   A review of the tweets that Dot Tel Finder aggregates http://www.dottelfinder.com/tweets/ shows two such ladies who believe .tel would be an asset to their business.

Some Googling on this particular demographic of  Twitter users shows that they are early adopters of all technologies as their job mandates the need for constant promotion and accessibility.

It seems that any sole proprietorship has the same needs – you have to constantly market yourself in different arenas and be available to clients through a myriad of channels.

So if  Twookers have discovered .tel ,  why  haven’t  you?

To search for your .TEL name, click here.

Anyways, read Luke’s article re-posted below, it opens the door to the underlying potential of .TEL that seems to be missing from much of the current dialogue about the new extension.

Are .TEL Addresses the New Vanity Phone Numbers?

Follow me for a second; in just a few lines, I aim to convince you that .tel addresses are not another TLD. There’s really something else going on here.

By far the most convincing attribute of .tel addresses isn’t what most blogs are talking about — quickly updating data, no hosting, etc. — but that, if apps are developed for mobile phones, instead of having phone numbers in your phone, you could store .tel domains that your friends can update as their info changes (putting your friends in control of *their* contact information stored in *your* phone). This means no more “dead numbers” or emails flying back and forth saying “I changed my number.” There must be 1,000s of Facebook status updates and 100,000s of emails daily that inform people of changes in phone numbers. All of these people would immediately understand what .tel offers: It takes a headache away for them — and that alone is worth the $10-$20/year to register a .tel.

What does this mean in the short term? It means that .tel addresses could become a new way to contact people (it’s easier to remember than a phone number AND, as the data stored on the .tel changes, those changes will automatically propagate to all the mobile devices the .tel contact is saved on). There are privacy issues that will need to be ironed out — not everyone wants just anyone to be able to contact them (as an aside, corporations do!) – but everyone evaluating .tel should understand this: It’s not what *you* see on the .tel “page”; it’s what your mobile device sees – up-to-date contact information stored not on your phone, but on a central server.

What does this mean in the long term? It means that .tel domains could become the new vanity phone numbers. Remember the trade in 1-800 numbers of the 1990s? Many early domainers do – that’s what got them to recognize the scarcity of domains early on.

Here’s a long shot: It’s possible that generic .tel domains could become more valuable than generic 1-800 numbers. If the concept of .tel domains as proxies for phone numbers takes off, you’ll get more unsolicited, pre-qualified leads from people typing RealEstate.tel (not one of mine) into a browser or mobile device than you would from 1-800-RealEstate. My rationale: When is the last time you dialed a generic 1-800 number when looking for something? For me, never. When is the last time you typed in a generic domain when you were looking for something? For me, a few times a day. .tel could have the characteristics of vanity 1-800 numbers AND some of the type-in-traffic benefits of TLDs.

If you agree with any of this at all, send it to Digg or Reddit, link to it, Twitter it, etc. and let’s let the public debate it.

Additional thought:
I emailed a version of this post to a friend the other day. Let’s say his name is John Doe. Right before I clicked “send,” I thought, “What if on my phone I typed JohnDoe2.tel (assuming JohnDoe.tel is taken) to call my friend and to email him I did the same – just typed JohnDoe2.tel into the email “To” field?” Similar to the discussion above, either my email provider or an app I’m using would identify my friend’s email address from JohnDoe2.tel and send the email to that. I wouldn’t have to remember his email address or look it up.

More Information:

Continuing with exploration of how .TEL can and might be used as things unfold, also check out our previously published article, .TEL – The Ultimate in Online Identity Protection.

Check out Luke’s blog Domain Synergies for further reading on domain names and related topics.

In partnerships with several ICANN accredited registrars, MySpace began offering .TEL last week.

MySpace has over 130 million active users, 20 million of which access the community via mobile devices each month.  This is a huge market for .TEL, and a great opportunity to mobilize, en masse, .TEL’s global directory.

On the surface of things, .TEL and MySpace appear to be a good fit. MySpace users can utilize their .TEL to promote their MySpace pages in organic search and securely share their more private contact information with non-MySpace users who wish to contact them.

After clicking on the creative and running through the MySpace .TEL registration process, I have to admit Myspace has done a good job with its UI. The dot TEL search and registration process is smooth, the price is right, so only time will tell if MySpace users embrace .TEL like MySpace and Telnic hope they will.

Read More:
Telnic Limited to Offer .TEL Domains Through MySpace

And here are some examples of the dot TEL creative MySpace is running:

When Telnic opens .TEL registration to the public, prices will drop to an average of $20 US from the Landrush price of $375. The day before a TLD opens for General Registration is always a busy time for domain investors and participating registrars – and judging by talk on blogs and Twitter, TEL is no exception. Registrars are reporting thousands of last minute pre-registrations.

I was curious to see if there were quality names left, so I did some quick dot-TEL searches on random words and phrases. It appears that tonnes of GREAT names are still available on this last day of Landrush. While this shouldn’t be a big surprise give the price tag for Landrush, it’s exciting because it means those willing to invest in .TEL names at $20 a pop will probably snag some good ones.

Here’s a sample of what I found in 10 minutes of searching:

In other .TEL news, Telnic, the .TEL registry operator recently launched a free, open source iPhone application for .TEL names that has been submitted to the Apple App Store and should be available in the near future.

Register .TEL on March 24 with an official .TEL registrar.

The premium fees that were applied during the public Landrush registration period to dissuade domain squatters from buying .TEL domains for resale purposes will drop by 90% on Tuesday, March 24, 2009. General Registration will see registration fees fall from nearly $400 USD to approximately $20 USD at many participating registrars.

The Sunrise registration period was reserved for Trademark owners and allowed them exclusive rights to protect their trademark names. The first-come, first-served Landrush registration period has been designed to allow anyone to apply early for brand oriented names not protected by a trademark, as well as premium names.

With the floodgates opening on .TEL next Tuesday, businesses and organizations might want to act now to ensure they control important .TEL domains related to their initiatives. While all businesses risk losing important variations of their primary domain names by neglecting to register them, it is typically high-traffic, high profile companies or organizations that are targeted.

Even if trademark laws are on your side, the Landrush registration fee is probably a bargain when compared to costs of legally wresting your domain back from a cybersquatter. The cheapest and easiest method to protecting your trademarks and variants online is to register your domains before someone else does.

Businesses and organizations should also consider registering variations of their trademarks and brands including: common misspellings and/or typos, plurals and singulars.

Register .TEL names during Landrush, or Pre-book .TEL names risk free for General Registration with an official .TEL registrar.

The .TEL WHOIS Lookup is presently available off of Telnic’s website, and that of other official .TEL registrars. A .TEL WhoIs entry varies slightly from other TLD’s and ccTLD’s in the following addition at the end:

By executing this query, in any manner whatsoever, you agree to abide by these terms.
Contact information: Disclosure of contact data is restricted because of UK and EU Data Protection legislation. The contact details for this contact ID may be available by looking up a domain object in the WHOIS system. The information can also be obtained through the Telnic Special Access Service. Visit http://www.sas.nic.tel for more details.

Visit Telnic’s site for more information about .TEL Privacy and how private data is encrypted and stored inside to NAPTR records of type “x-crypto”. A PDF of Telnic’s WhoIs Policy can be found here.

TEL WHOIS example - BMW.tel

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

Key Highlights:

#3 – The .TEL Story

Telnic has broken a Guinness World Record for…

The longest startup Guinness Book of Records nine years without revenue!

Haha… before you think these guys are crazy, they have US$36 million of funding from serious investors and equally serious technical backup from the likes of Siemens and leading DNS experts.

Nine years without revenue is quite a challenge, but also gives them plenty of time to grow this service, I would guess?

# 6 – Explanation of .TEL’s Directory Advantages

.TEL can even be used for large and complex corporate directories.

.TEL  can be used for implementing complex global directories for large or multinational corporations using hierarchical pages and sub pages.

• Replacing complex IVR solutions for customers (hertz.tel: try to get the phone number of a local rental agency while on the move)

 • Exposing easily and quickly the main address and phone coordinates, usually available on its Web site at the last page of the annual report

• Allowing multilingual key words for each sub page–extend the brand in the communications area

For example, I was shown a demo by Fabien on how it can easily replace a directory like our Singapore government directory SGDI in a flash. Now, if only this service was introduced a couple of years back, I bet our Singapore Government would have saved a lot of money setting up and maintaining SGDI.

Read the full article – 10 things you didn’t know about .tel domains

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