I am not such a good runner but I have decided to run early in the morning. It is what I just started to do today and to be honest, I hated it. But it does not matter, I will run again tomorrow morning.

There are 2 applications for .RUN

So while I was running in Paris, I wondered if there would be a TLD for runners like me… and guess what… there are 2 applications for .RUN and they are in contention:

• First one is from dot Run Limited (Famous Four Media);
• The other one is from Snow Park, LLC (Donuts).

There will be a .RUN Registry in the end and it will become possible to register domain names ending in .RUN (instead of .com :-). So what is the market for .RUN? Do runners communicate on Internet? Do they need to communicate because they are runners? Is .RUN for runners only?

Many questions

Again, I must say I seriously hated it when I reached the end of the loop in the Parc Montsouris because I sweared I would not stop and… I had to stop because I was so tired. Prior to leaving home, I installed “Runstastic” on my mobile: it is an application for “runners” and it tells you how long you run, some stats, how fast you run, etc…

While running and playing with my app at the same time, I also wondered how to link a domain name to the activity of running and here are a few figures that I found for the .RUN market (I did that at home):

• I entered “run” in the Google Play Store and found that there are more than 250 applications for this string. It seems there are many applications but I also noticed that most are games using the word “run” (i.e. “Temple Run 2”). Since both applications are open to all, it means future .RUN domain names won’t necessarily have to be related to running. These domain names will also be used to present websites such as the one for a game like “Jungle Death Run”, no matter if it is about running or not. The Runstatic website uses a .COM, let’s hope it is the first to change to a .RUN domain name.
• I entered “run” in Google but found that results were not relevant so I changed to “running” and it appears “running” is used in many second level domains (more than 2 billion results). I’d say the potential of this string appears in the first page of Google when entering “running”.
• Then I went to Wikipedia and hit “run”. There’s a page just for this word and “run” is not only about running: “Run” on Wikipedia. Let’s just hope domainers don’t think about using that page as a tool for domaining.

Super runners

At the end of this little morning run, I checked my application and clicked on “stop”. I did not notice the first time but my Facebook account was connected to Runstastic (I had installed it a long ago and created the connection) and my route appeared on my Facebook front page automatically.

Some people really like to run, they do that everyday and publish the result of their course on Facebook: my cousins do that. So could that be a target for .RUN domain names: runners or travelers who like to publish their journey on a website… because running is what describes them best and is the perfect identity to express what they like on Internet?