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Discover the Internet's future
This year, the Internet will see its greatest ever transformation as literally hundreds of new Internet extensions - new dot-coms - are put in place.
Anyone can apply. And you can apply for anything. The change will herald a revolution in how we view, use and interact with the Internet. If that sounds like something you want to know more about, then you can't afford to miss the .nxt conference, held 8-10 February in downtown San Francisco.
.nxt is the first conference of its kind, featuring experts from across the world as they try to predict, unravel and profit from a radical new expansion of the Internet's domain name space.
At the moment, the Internet contains just 21 "generic top-level domains", or gTLDs, from the most famous - dot-com - to lesser known extensions like dot-name or dot-travel.
But with the Internet becoming a part of our everyday lives, the Internet needs to expand to accommodate the billions of users.
.nxt is here to find out what is going to happen, whether it's .shop, .music, .berlin or .love, the possibilities are enormous. [If you are thinking of going for a new extension, read Why .nxt is crucial to your application.] You can view all the public plans so far here on one page.
Business
With new extensions comes new opportunities and new markets.
.nxt covers the business side of Internet space liberalization. The conference will introduce you to those who already run giant pieces of the Internet, and the hard-learnt lessons they have discovered along the way.
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.nxt | A Conference About New Internet Extensions
So, as you can see, the Internet is about to undergo what's probably its biggest shift since the advent of Google and social media.
In a nutshell: there are currently 21 top-level domain on the Internet (e.g. .com, .net, .org, .edu, .ca). This summer, it will be possible
to fork over $185,000 to register your very own (e.g. .baraka, .tfp, .chocolatemilkshake).
This will change how the Internet will be organized.
You can imaging branding, such as .facebook, .apple, etc., which means you will have an entire domain of websites under brand names that are organized by the companies who own them. You can also imagine communities such as .gay, .green, etc., that will welcome members and their websites for like-minded people.
But how will this pan out? Will it be a transformation, or merely a shift?
Are there concerns? How does net neutrality factor in? Does the price tag go against the idea of an open and free Internet?
I mean, wow... am I overreacting or is this pretty crazy?
Have a look at the groups who have gone public already with their intent to register their own top-level domains:
Applicants for new gTLDs | .nxt
As soon as next year, we will see these rolling out online.
What do you think? If it's not broke, don't fix it? Are corporations essentially taking over the Internet? Is this an unnecessary abstraction? Is it a necessary expansion?