Search Engine Optimization

Well its finally here.

The internet has finally made its own red light district.
ICANN approved the creation of a .xxx suffix. The design for websites under this extension will be those with pornographic content, as ICANN officials have stated.

The .xxx domain was first proposed in 2005. As expected,  it was rejected immediately, then un-rejected multiple times since inception. However the ICANN announcement means that it will actually become a reality. Unless there are more issues, .xxx will be live in about 9 months. How is that for irony?

ICM Registry Inc. finally got their wish for ICANN to sign off on the .xxx domain. ICM is the company that has been up to bat all these times since 2005, and got rejected over and over until now.

Members of ICANN’s board have argued that in order to maintain neutrality, it should create .xxx and allow websites with sexually explicit content to start using the suffix on a voluntary basis.

The basic idea as I alluded to earlier, is to create a virtual “red light district,” which could be monitored and set to official guidelines. The benefit would be to go to a .xxx site and know that it is safe from viruses or spyware. In addition, it would keep the porn sites in a known area.

Even with this idea of keeping all the “rotten eggs in one basket” there are still opponents of the move, like religious groups and the Free Speech Coalition.
These groups dislike the idea that such an official designation would be given to online porn, despite nearly being on opposite sides of the spectrum.

I have always been of the opinion that having adult sites in one location will make it easier to filter or block access to adult content on their computers. It seems as though this would be a great help for parents.

A few in the adult entertainment industry oppose .xxx, saying it will invite censorship, but then members of religious groups also oppose its creation on obvious moral grounds.

Given that there are an estimated 5 to 6 million adult sites on the World Wide Web, oddly it’s expected that most will have absolutely no interest in moving to the .xxx domain.

Some existing porn sites will surely register xxx versions of their domains, but it seems that this will be in a defensive manner rather than as a new site or a moved site. ICANN expects around half a million .xxx sites will be registered when it finally goes live.

Keep in mind that online pornography is a major industry.  Statistics allude to the fact that $3,000 is spent on Internet porn per second. The math is that there is an estimated 370 million pornographic websites on the Internet. What this adds up to is that .xxx could possibly outpace .com in a perfect storm.  Especially when you factor in that “sex” is the number one search term, globally. “Sex” accounts for 25 percent of all Internet searches.

ICM said it already has 110,000 pre-reservations for .xxx domains, which would possibly cost $60 a year to register.

Less known, but approved today also, is the ICANN decision for domain names written entirely in Chinese characters. This includes the final characters to the right of the last dot where previously, you could have all Chinese characters except for the “.cn”. Now you can even have the “.cn” in Chinese characters.

Now if only someone would tell the .cn registry to allow registrations again.

In the last few years, the number of Russian Internet users has grown significantly. In 2004, according to a survey by Global Reach, there were just 22 million Russians using the Internet, while in 2008, the Russian Network Information Center said the number had grown to 34 million people. Today there is currently around 45 million Internet users in Russia and approximately two million country-specific domain names.

Russia has registered it’s national Cyrillic domain as .??, with ICANN which stands for “Russian Federation”.

These cyrillic characters translate to the Latin alphabet characters “rf” and according to the Russian Federation, they have become the first country in the world to launch a Cyrillic domain  with the “.??,” characters.

Russia’s Coordination Center for the National Internet Domain, which administered the process, said ICANN’s decision was the final step towards the creation of the Russian-language domain. Russian is purported to be the ninth most popular language among Internet users with approximately 38 million native speaking internet users.

They feel that all bureaucratic obstacles have now been overcome in the creation of the Russian-language domain. Both the principal and the physical delegation of the domain has been approved according to all accounts.

Other National language domains were also given to Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, but these were of course in Arabic.

The first Cyrillic domain name in the Internet is “Rossia.rf”. However the restrictions are not fully “off” yet,  “Rossia.rf” will need to be administered by the coordination center during their reservation period. Then when the period is over, it will be handed over to the relevant state government bodies.

According to Russia’s Coordination Center for the National Internet Domain, Governmental bodies and trademark owners were given priority in registering second-level Cyrillic domain names, and registration of domain names for state requirements is free.

Pricing for trademark owners will depend on the company registering and ranges from $40 to $350 US, depending.

Since April 20, 2010, companies and individuals have been eligible to register a Cyrillic domain names. The first round was a staggering$347,500 US per domain in an attempt to prevent “cornering of the market”. However by July, the prices should be in line with “.ru” for example, which just celebrated its 15th anniversary.

Add to that the news that Russian based Mobile TeleSystems (MTS).
has become the first Russian operator to outsource its network operations to Nokia Siemens. The idea is to simplify its overall network operations model, which is especially important with the rollout of 3G services for millions of subscribers in Russia’s central region.

Nokia Siemens Networks currently has more than 240 managed services contracts in mobile and fixed networks, servicing more than 300 million subscribers on its customers’ networks.

Now it will manage a significant part of Russia as well.

Next,  at a recent Internet Conference, the U.S. and Russia have begun to hash out agreements on Internet issues ranging from native languages to differences in how the respective governments view the future management of the Internet and inherent problems.

In the past, America’s concerns speak to direct and finite computer security and phishing and hacking based issues, while the Russians take a broad view under the blanket of “information security”. Each party seems to be moving closer on these issues.

But as you grow, you get noticed, as in the case of China’s Tencentto buy into Digital Sky Technologies Ltd (DST); a Facebook shareholder.

In May 2009, Digital Sky bought 200 million dollars worth of Facebook’s preferred stocks representing a 1.96 percent equity stake in the US firm. It also completed a tender offer to buy 100 million dollars of Facebook common stock in August.

China could effectively kill two birds with one stone strategically, by playing this move out carefully.

They will position themselves into an effective position in both Russian and US internet concerns.

What does this mean for this industry?

With jurisdictions being debated, foreign languages being introduced and a range of new extensions being approved, monitoring and enforcement becomes more crucial than ever.
Staying up date and understanding the new challenges to your online reputation will be key.

If you need help staying up to date beyond reading this blog, please contact Metamend with industry professionals and solutions for you online reputation management.