PIR’s “new” .org domain is just temporary. Help it pick another new one!

Public Interest Registry unveiled a fancy new set of logos and a swanky new web site yesterday, but CEO Jon Nevett tells us that its new domain name is temporary.
The new site and logos are undeniably superior to those they replace, but what raised eyebrows was the fact that the non-profit company has replaced its old pir.org domain with thenew.org, and deprecated the PIR brand almost entirely on its site.
The old PIR domain now redirects to the new thenew one, but the older domain still ranks higher in search engines.
But Nevett tells us it’s not a permanent move.
“Think of it more as a marketing campaign,” Nevett said. “This is a limited campaign, then we’ll move to another name.”
The campaign is basically about PIR going back to its roots and repositioning itself as the .org guys.
It’s only been six years since PIR last rebranded. In September 2013, the company started calling itself “Your Public Interest Registry” in its logo, deliberately playing down the “.org”.
Then-CEO Brian Cute told us at the time that playing up .org “made a lot of sense when we were a single-product company” but that with the imminent launch of sister TLDs .ngo and .ong, the decision was made to lead with the PIR branding instead.
.ngo and .ong — for “non-governmental organization” in English and other languages — haven’t exactly flown off the shelves. Neither one has ever topped 5,000 domains under management, while .org, while declining for a few years, still sits comfortably at over 10 million domains.
“I wouldn’t say so,” Nevett said, when I asked him whether PIR is now essentially back to being a single-product company. “But .org is the flagship, and we’re going back to leading with .org as the key brand. It’s what we’re known for and to say otherwise would be silly.”
People outside the industry have no idea what PIR is, he said, but they all know what .org is.
Some suspect that the rebranding is a portent of PIR gearing up to raise prices, given its newly granted ability to up its registry fees beyond the 10% annual price increase cap that it has it has been to date contractually bound to.
But Nevett said the rebranding is “not at all related to a price increase”. He told me several times that PIR still has “no plans to raise prices”.
He said the rebranding was first put in motion over a year ago, after Cute’s departure but before Nevett’s hiring, during Jay Daley’s interim interregnum.
Anyway, here are the new logos:

To the untrained eye, like both of mine, the new, primary .org logo may just look like two blue circles and the word “org”, but PIR’s press release tells us it’s communicating so much more:

The open “ORG” lettering on either side of the sphere signals that .ORG is an open domain for anyone; it serves as a powerful and inclusive global connector. The logo uses a deep royal blue, evoking feelings of trust, security, and reliability that reflect .ORG’s long-standing reputation.

Because I don’t want to alienate any of PIR’s utterly lovely public relations agency people (the same PR agency that came up with the new branding), I’m not going to pass any comment whatsoever on this piffle.
I think the new logos and web site are improvements. They’re also long-term investments, while the new domain name is not.
“For three to six months we’ll be leading with the marketing campaign of thenew.org, after that we’ll be using a new name as the lead,” Nevett said.
But it won’t be back to pir.org or thenew.org, he said.
Which begs the question: what domain will PIR switch to?
During the course of our conversation, Nevett made the mistake of asking me what I thought the next domain should be, and I made the mistake of saying that I should open the question up to my readers.
So… what should PIR’s next domain be?
Be nice.

Charities “could move to .ngo” if .org prices rise

File this one under “wrong-headed argument of the day”.
The head of policy at the Charities Aid Foundation reportedly has said that the recent removal of price increase caps at .org could lead to charities moving to other TLDs, “like .ngo”, which would cause confusion among charitable givers.
Rhodri Davies told The Telegraph (registration required) newspaper:

One of the benefits at the moment is you have at least at least one very well known and globally recognised domain name, that indicates to people that what they’re looking at is likely to be a charity or a social purpose organisation. If in the future, the pricing changes, and suddenly organisations have all sorts of different domain names, it’s going to be much harder for the public to know what it is they’re looking at. And that will get confusing and will probably have a negative impact on on people’s trust

The Telegraph gave .ngo (for non-governmental organization) as an example of a TLD they could move to. It’s not clear whether that was the example Davies gave or something the reporter came up with.
While Davies’ argument is of course sound — if charities were forced en masse to leave .org due to oppressive pricing, it would almost certainly lead to new opportunities for fraud — the choice of .ngo as an alternative destination is a weird one.
.ngo, like .org, is run by Public Interest Registry. It also runs .ong, which means the same thing in other languages.
But as 2012-round new gTLDs, neither .ngo or .ong have ever been subject to any pricing controls whatsoever.
At $30 a year, PIR’s wholesale price for .ngo is already a little more than three times higher than what it charges for .org domains. I find it difficult to imagine that .org will be the more expensive option any time soon.
.org domains currently cost $9.93 per year, and PIR has said it has no current plans to increase prices.
PIR does not have a monopoly on charity-related TLDs. Donuts runs .charity itself, which is believed to wholesale for $20 a year. It’s quite a new TLD, on the market for about a year, and has around 1,500 domains under management compared to .org’s 10 million.
Of course, .charity doesn’t have price caps either.
In the gTLD world, the only major TLDs left with ICANN-imposed price restrictions are Verisign’s .com and .net.

PIR rebrands, talks up “Facebook-like” new gTLDs

Public Interest Registry is dropping the .org from its primary branding in preparation for the launch of its new gTLDs.
CEO Brian Cute said that branding the registry around .org “made a lot of sense when we were a single product company”, but that the time has come to put the PIR name front and center.
The new logo incorporates “Your”, as a result of focus groups, testing and because Cute says “really reflects to us our commitment to the communities we serve”.
PIR has applied to ICANN for .ngo, for Non-Governmental Organization, along with Latin equivalent .ong and four transliterations of .org in Cyrillic, Hindi and Chinese.
Cute told DI that the plan for .ngo and .ong is to have a space in which, unlike .org, the identities of the registrants have been validated.
There’s going to be a searchable directory, a portal, and a “Facebook-like” service for registrants, he said.
“We’re going to have profile pages, so if a registrant doesn’t want to stand up a full website, there’ll be a Facebook-like profile they can populate,” he said.
It sounds like PIR is thinking about a template-driven approach to getting content on .ngo domains, somewhat similar to how .tel works (though it won’t be mandatory in .ngo) or Employ Media’s .Jobs Universe.
But Cute said neither of those concepts inspired PIR, which is building its profile service from scratch.
It’s an interesting way to market a TLD, and I’m positive that PIR won’t be the only new gTLD applicant to do something along these lines.

PIR starts pre-registration for .ngo domain names

Public Interest Registry has become the first major gTLD registry to start taking pre-registrations for a not-yet-approved gTLD.
PIR said today that it’s allowing non-governmental organizations to register an “expression of interest” for .ngo and .ong domains.
Pre-registrations are of course free and non-binding. They’re mainly a way to opening the marketing communications channel with customers well in advance of the launch of a TLD.
PIR does not expect to launch .ngo or .ong until 2014. Its ICANN evaluation priority numbers for the two TLDs are 810 and 958, in the first half of the list.
Pre-registration is not a new concept, of course, but it’s one generally embraced more often by registrars (eNom and United Domains are the two most prominent examples) rather than incumbent registries.
For PIR to start engaging directly with potential registrants is one of the first signs that, in the wake of ICANN’s lifting of the ban on vertical integration between registries and registrars, the new gTLD market won’t be playing by the old rules.

As new gTLDs enter a new phase, the first wave of announcements crashes

Go Daddy, Web.com and the Public Interest Registry were among the first to reveal their new generic top-level domain plans as ICANN’s new gTLD program enters the “reveal” phase.
Announcements from several companies were timed to closely coincide with the closure of ICANN’s TLD Application System at a minute before midnight UTC last night.
After a false start (false end?) on April 12, and weeks of subsequent procrastination, the end of the new gTLD application window seems to have gone off without a hitch.
We’re now entering a new phase of the program, one which is expected to hold far fewer secrets.
Between now and the official Big Reveal, currently targeted for June 13, I’m expecting a deluge of announcements from new gTLD applicants, no longer scared of encouraging competitive bids.
Any company with any hope of standing out from the crowd of almost 2,000 applications needs to make its presence felt as loudly and as early as possible.
.web
The first to do so was number-three registrar Web.com, owner of Network Solutions and Register.com, which confirmed its long-expected bid for .web shortly before midnight.
It’s one of many companies with a claim to the gTLD, in what is certain to be a fiercely fought contention set.
The firm reckons, dubiously, that it has rights due to its trademark on Web.com, which I predict will be anything but a slam dunk argument when it comes to a Legal Rights Objection.
“We believe we possess the natural platform from which to successfully market the new .WEB top level domain since we are the sole owner of the Web.com trademark as issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark office,” CEO David Brown said.
I wonder what the other 300 or so owners of web.[tld] domain names think about that.
.bank and .insurance
The Association of National Bankers and the Financial Services Roundtable, both US trade groups for the banking industry, provided the first post-TAS announcement to hit my inbox, at 0006 UTC.
The groups have confirmed their joint bids for .bank and .insurance, having wisely decided against the less SEO-friendly, less intuitive .banking, .invest, .investment, and .insure.
These proposed gTLDs will be secured and restricted, but they still face the substantial risk of objections from European banking regulators.
There’s also one other unconfirmed .bank applicant.
.home and .casa
Go Daddy has also revealed its two applications, giving the scoop to Domain Name Wire. It’s applied for .home and the Spanish translation, .casa, in addition to the previously announced .godaddy.
While they look benign on the face of it, I’m expecting .home to face opposition on technical grounds.
It’s on DI PRO’s list of frequently requested invalid TLDs, due to the amount of traffic it already gets from misconfigured routers.
Go Daddy may also face competition scrutiny if it wants to act as a registry and registrar, given its overwhelming dominance of the registrar market.
Both applications are also likely to find themselves in contention sets.
.ngo and .ong
The Public Interest Registry cleverly got its .ngo and .ong bids some big-readership attention a few hours ago by letting Mashable think it was getting a scoop. Ahem.
To be fair, the .ong application – a translation of .ngo for Spanish, French and Italian markets – was news. Both will target non-governmental organizations, of which there are millions.
The .ong bid stands a reasonable chance of being challenged due to its visual similarity with .org – which PIR already manages – but ICANN’s similarity tool only gives it a score of 63%.
.cloud and .global
Finally this morning, CloudNames announced applications for .cloud and .global, two unrestricted gTLDs being pitched explicitly as alternatives to .com, .biz and .info.
“A .cloud domain will allow businesses and individuals to have their own cloud on the Internet. Likewise, a .global domain will allow businesses to secure a position on an international level,” CEO Rolf Larsen said in a statement.
They’re the first examples of both strings to be announced, but CloudNames expects them both to be contested. I suspect the buzzy .cloud will be the harder to obtain.

PIR sets its sights on .ngo

The .org registry hopes to add .ngo – for Non-Governmental Organization – to its stable of top-level domains, when ICANN opens its new gTLD program next year.
It may well face competition for the domain, however.
It’s quite difficult to narrowly define what an NGO is, but the Public Internet Registry plans to adopt a fairly broad definition that will give it potentially “millions” of new registrants.
“We’re looking at global, regional, and local NGOs, we’re engaging with all of them,” said PIR chief Brian Cute. “This acronym is something that these organizations strongly identify with.”
Cute said PIR has letters of support from some NGOs already, but is not prepared to disclose the identities of its supporters just yet.
Many NGOs are based in emerging markets – according to Wikipedia, India has as many as 3.3 million of them. PIR hopes to encourage domain growth in developing nations, Cute said.
With that in mind, we’re probably not looking at super-premium pricing, though PIR is not talking specific details of its plan yet.
It will be a self-designated “community” application, meaning it will qualify for a Community Priority Evaluation in the event that ICANN receives more than one bid for .ngo.
When a CPE kicks in, applications are scored against a number of criteria and have to get 14 out 16 points in order to win a contested gTLD without going to auction.
Those 14 points are not easy to win, however. Even .ngo, with its commonly understood meaning, may be a hard call.
As it happens, there is already potentially one other .ngo bidder.
The British charity Article 25 has been pondering a .ngo application since 2008, according to its web site at dotngo.net.
That initiative seems to have roughly similar goals to PIR — global, restricted, non-profit — and VeriSign seems to have been engaged as a possible registry services provider.
PIR plans to stick to its existing back-end infrastructure provider, Afilias.
As a community application, it will be a “closed domain”, Cute said. Unlike .org, there will be eligibility criteria to pass before you’re allowed to register a domain name.
PIR also plans to apply for internationalized domain name transliterations of .org, in Chinese, Hindi, Cyrillic and Arabic, Cute said.
Here‘s the site for the application.