One of the ever-present questions in the domain name community is “have new TLDs been a success in the marketplace?”

As many within the industry will appreciate, it’s a difficult question to answer using traditional metrics (such as domain registration volumes), and it is important to remember that the new TLD expansion in 2012 was all about diversity, competition and choice.

I think this is exactly what has happened over the last few years. To explore exactly this topic, I’ll be participating alongside a fantastic line-up of TLD representatives who will be sharing their story at next week’s ICANN meeting in Puerto Rico.

This session will be moderated by industry legend Kurt Pritz and include speakers such as;

• Dirk Krischenowski of .berlin
• GG Levine of .pharmacy
• Andrew Merriam of .design
• Craig Schwartz of .bank
• Matt Embrescia of .realtor

So what can you expect from this session?

In essence, we’re going to give a ‘pulse check’ on the new TLD program, from those who are in amongst it every day. The TLDs represented have a wide range of purposes, business models, target markets, and strategies. We’re at different stages of launch, rollout or availability, and we comprise a combination of brands, generics and geographic domains.

One of the difficulties of assessing the success of the new TLD program is that there is no one definition of ‘success.’ That’s why I believe a panel like this is so important—to hear perspectives from different facets of our space and hear in their own words how they’re working towards (or achieving) their goals and impacting their audiences and communities.

From a Neustar perspective, I’ll be sharing some of our experiences in transitioning our online presence from neustar.biz to our new home.neustar identity. It’s been a long and complicated road, but we’re excited about the early results and are doing all we can to share what we’ve learned to assist and inspire others. If you’re attending the ICANN meeting in Puerto Rico, I strongly encourage you to come along to the session.

The details are below—I look forward to seeing you there.

ICANN 61 – Puerto Rico
Presentation to Cross Community Working Group
‘A walk in the shoes of a Registry operator’
Monday 12th March, 1:30 – 3:00pm
Ballroom A