Web’s .info expands domains

Associated Press

NEW YORK — More than 52,000 domain names ending in ".info" were activated over the weekend in the Internet’s first major addressing expansion since the 1980s.

Afilias Ltd., the company running ".info," expects to enter another 250,000 names into the Net’s master directories this week.

Ronald LaPlante, the company’s chief marketing officer, said Monday that the numbers are slightly lower than expected because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

"There were not a lot of names that came in the week following the disaster," LaPlante said. "People were rightfully thinking about something else."

But he said the impact was likely "well under 10 percent of the total," largely because many of the 70 or so approved registration companies offered preregistration periods. Afilias formally began accepting submissions Sept. 12, a day after the attacks.

The first batch of 52,245 names were claimed by trademark holders, such as Dell Computer Corp. The Web site "www.dell.info," for instance, reaches the company’s regular dot-com site. Many names were reserved and don’t reach any sites yet, even though they were activated Sunday for companies to use.

The second round of names will be selected from about 700,000 applications submitted before Friday’s deadline. When there are duplicates, Afilias will choose one at random, leaving about 250,000 unique names.

Many individuals, companies and organizations are, for now, shunning ".info" and the other new domain names in favor of ".com," the suffix long associated with the Internet.

Afilias plans additional marketing in early October, delayed a week or two because of the terrorist attacks. The marketing effort will include television ads in Europe, where ".info" is being promoted as a global alternative to the U.S.-dominated ".com."

The ".info" suffix was one of seven approved last November to help relieve overcrowding in names ending in ".com." The ".biz" suffix will become active Oct. 1, followed by ".name" in December. Schedules for the remaining four have yet to be determined.