EuroDNS chatting with the New TLD Company

I understand the New TLD Company started with you and your partner Peter Delbanco, bringing together the huge experience of the domain industry you both have; tell us more.

Peter Delbanco and I began our careers at VeriSign, we worked there for about 3-4 years. In 2002 we founded the B2B domain registrar, Cedel AB; it became Sweden’s third largest domain name management company. It was a great experience and a lot of fun. In March 2012 we sold the company to Group NBT/NetNames so we could focus on our new idea: .JETZT.

Today Peter and I work as closely as possible with our colleagues, partner registrars and resellers. This close working relationship is extremely motivating; we start with a single idea and it builds into a project with awesome potential. Being open minded has always been our ethos; it brings success and very rewarding results.

Tell us about the creation of .JETZT and your vision for the future.

Knowing how crowded the German-speaking domain market is, along with consumers’ constant demand for ways to share the latest news – we recognised the amazing potential of .JETZT.

It will be challenging to develop an entirely new market, but with our combined experience and with the insight we've gained from the end-users, we know that our solution will match customers’ needs.

So, what was the inspiration behind your choice of new domain extension?

When the new gTLDs were first talked about we knew we wanted to be involved and decided to look at existing successful domains, for inspiration. The ccTLD for the island state of Niue came from nowhere and proved an unlikely winner. The term ‘nu’ means ‘now’ in Swedish, Danish and Dutch; registrations are most popular in Sweden, then the Netherlands, Denmark, and Belgium. Last year, due to this surge in popularity, the .SE registry took over administration of the .NU domain.

.NU has long been an alternative to .SE, .COM, .NET, and .ORG, and it’s very common for trademark and company owners to register them as a package. With the .SE registry taking over control of the .NU domain, the difficulty Swedes face finding a great .SE domain has been significantly reduced.

There are about 13 times more .DE domains registered so the need for alternative domain extensions is vast. But, I should point out - our market does not stop with Germany.

What’s the story behind a Swedish registry applying to run a German-word domain?

It turned out to be a no brainer, ‘jetzt’ is a synonym of ‘nu’, translating as ‘now’ in German; the German speaking market is not exclusive to one country but spreads all over the world. We have a huge audience to work with, if it works with .NU, why not with .JETZT? Six different companies applied for .NOW, proving it to be a very popular and useful word, and no other country has as many ccTLDs registered as Germany. It’s also quite a funky word, without the meaning behind.

When promoting .JETZT to the German-speaking market, what benefits highlight?

We think .JETZT is ideal for websites dealing with topics that are constantly updating; sites offering politics, news, fashion, sports results, new products and technology. I could go on, but you get the idea. Nachrichten.jetzt (news.now), what could be clearer than that? Put your company name before .JETZT and tell the world what’s going on with your business right now!

We want to give our German-speaking audience a new way to find information, and .JETZT is the way ahead.

A world of German-content websites with a .JETZT domain name, that’s your goal?

If customers register a .JETZT domain name exclusively or as a complement to their existing domain they make it so much easier for customers to remember them. A .JETZT domain name creates a sense of urgency with regard to your content, and it calls for action. It’s now, it’s fresh, out of the ordinary, take a look!

Thank you, we look forward to being able to offer .JETZT for registration. Last question; your company is on the frontline, how do you see the future shaping up with regard to the launch of so many new domains?

I think we can expect a very exciting future. Obviously we will all need to change the way we search for information online but I think it won’t be long before it becomes second nature to enter the domain extension in browsers when running a search. Competition will be high which means websites will have to produce superior content, which can only benefit everyone.

Thank you Meg, nice meeting you; what are your thoughts about .JETZT?

I think you've done your homework, and history has proved that your idea for the .JETZT domain is already working in Europe with the .NU extension. There aren’t many new TLDs that can say that yet. You've definitely created a buzz in the industry and we’re already getting expressions of interest from our customers. I can’t see how you can fail :)

The New TLD Company was created by a group of Swedish guys. The've set themselves a challenge, to restructure how German-speaking users look for information on the Internet. Oh, and if they have any quiet time - they'll be working towards being the most desirable and fastest growing Top Level Domain company in the German-speaking market.

Personally, I'm intrigued and will be watching their progress.

Photo credit