The .ORG TLD is one of the originals. Primarily though of as a non-profit or organizational type domain, it is actually available to everyone. From the domainer’s prospective, it is less desirable than a .COM, but does have its place. There are certain terms that fit well with a .ORG, especially if they seem to fit the common interest of the public. Wikipedia, for example, uses wikipedia.org. In fact, wikipedia.com redirects to wikipedia.org, the opposite of what a similar domain in the business community might do.
Today, Public Interest Registry, the official manager of .ORG, announced it has hired Allison & Partners as its public relations agency of record. The goal is to “raise brand awareness of the .ORG domain, educating the technology, non-profit and business communities about the benefits of the .ORG domain and addressing common misperceptions,” as outlined in a recent press release.
It sounds like there is a rebranding effort on the horizon for the .ORG which I think is positive for the industry. With new TLDs being introduce and sometimes failing, I find it refreshing that the .ORG may work its way up the ranks a bit with a new image. It won’t be easy to change the perception of .ORG, although it is not necessarily a bad one. It’s just difficult change the way we see things. That’s part of the reason .com is still the best TLD to own, in most cases.
8 comments
The .org extension once seemed to have a real purpose and meaning – specifically for use by real organizations, non-profits, trade organizations, etc. It has since been watered down and is increasingly being taken off course primarily by domainers and worthless parked pages. The original intent for the extension was not for business use or any kind or general commercial use. That is .com’s purpose. “Organization” means organization.
Longer term, if the .org is continually diluted it will definitely not mean anything special. Once it totally loses that remaining trustmark it will be drowned out by all the other extensions already here and those on the way. So what if it was one of the originals? IMO, there are plenty of extensions available for commercial use, so it’s disappointing to see how .org has been bastardized the way it has and where it is going.
What’s next, .EDU becoming an open extension for businesses and domainer parking pages for “EDUcating consumers” … ughh.
Bill, i think you got it all wrong, expet the part where you say “Organization” means organization”, So it is not only for not for proffits , or NGO´s, it is for anything that is organized. Any comunity regardless of their seeking for profit or not status.
And ofcourse there are a lot of parked pages by domainers (arent there even more in .com?) that doesnt dilute the value of the extension, if such were the casa then .com would be the absolute worst.
just my 2 cents
@Bill – while .org did have a specific intention, the landscape is changing. Why allow almost everything other than .org to represent business purposes? There are several organizations (not for profit included) that use .coms as well.
.ORG, A comeback… Where did it go?!
@Mike Law – maybe “A New Image for .ORG” would have been a better fit?
.org already has morphed into something else. wasn’t it not long ago when poker.org was sold for $1M?
I laughed when I saw your title. I have been telling people for quite some time that the .org extension is a joke.
I have been watching the .info extension catching up to the .org extension for quite some time at http://www.DailyDomains.com. This site tells one how many domains were registered under each extension within the past 24 hours.
I have also watched the .info extension catching up with the .net extension as well and leave .biz and .us in the dust. At the six month mark, there were 1.1 million additional .info extensions registered since January 1, 2010.
@John A…
Of course .info is surging. At a 99 cents reg fee I’ll take a dozen without blinking. See how many drop when fees go up and renewals come around… you’ll need a strong umbrella.