.gay not coming out this year after all
We won’t be seeing .gay on the internet this year.
Top Level Design has postponed the release of its hard-won gTLD until the second quarter of 2020, having recently said it was planning an October 2019 launch.
The company told registrars yesterday that it wants “to move forward on a timeline that will allow us to create greater impact in a more measured manner”.
The October date was meant to coincide with National Coming Out Day, which I said was “absolutely perfect”.
The 2020 date will instead coincide with one of the Pride events, the registry said.
The story is that Top Level Design wants to spend more time building up support from gay community groups, before it comes to market.
But CEO Ray King denied that it’s facing resistance from groups that supported the rival community-based application from dotgay LLC, which lost the chance to run .gay when it was auctioned.
“It’s really just about having enough time to do a thoughtful launch,” King told DI.
The company recently blogged about one of its .gay marketing brainstorming sessions.
I suspect they have misjudged this, it is not going to get “community support” when they just want to make money from it and outbidded genuine community interests. It has no authenticity.
I suspect there is also little bit of karma getting served given how aggressive the winning registry was in slandering the people and community groups behind the community supported bid for .gay, and all of their “straight-splaining” on what’s best for the gay community.