This article was published on November 27, 2008

Listen but don’t .TEL


Listen but don’t .TEL

Telnic vcardIn 6 days you will be able to register .TEL domain names. But only if you have a registered domain name. If you don’t and just want to have a personal .TEL domain name you will have to wait until February 3, 2009.

The .TEL is different though. It won’t be used as ‘just’ a top level domain. The company behind this new extension, Telnic, has different plans and I’m not sure I totally get it.

What it comes down to is that you can buy a domain name but you won’t be able to use it for anything else expect to redirect it to their server where you will be able to host something that looks like a vCard. If people visit your domain in a browser or on a (supported) phone they will see your contact data.

Yep, that’s it. You won’t be able to use these domains for your blog, or host anything else on them.

Do you get it? I don’t. Maybe watching this video will help.

[poll id=”13″]

UPDATE: The kind people at TelNic are taking the time to educate it in the comments and via email. I have received a test account here: thenextweb.vip.tel. Right now it isn’t working yet (“The server at telpages.pilot.tel is taking too long to respond.”) but that might be because the record is still new. The good news: I start ‘getting it’ now. As far as I understand now .TEL is basically LinkedIn or Plaxo for companies but with their own TLD. Sort of like if LinkedIn would start offering “boris.personal.info” as domain names. As Justin Hayward from .TEL mentions “It’s difficult to introduce new uses of technology that have been around for a while and I welcome the opportunity to respond to your concerns”. So maybe I will ‘get it’ once they launch and I see it being used.

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