According to The LA Times, GoDaddy, will kick off a marketing campaign Monday to re-brand .LA as the Web suffix for Los Angeles after partnering with CentralNic, the company that handles the database for .the .LA ccTLD.
.LA is the ccTLD for Laos.
Godaddy and CentralNic are apparently taking the upcoming new gTLD launch as an opportunity to re-brand .LA in the same light as other cities that have backed new gTLD applications including New York City’s .NYC, Miami’s application for .Miami
Rich Merdinger, GoDaddy’s vice president of domains is quoted as saying:
“When we carry a TLD [top-level domain], it moves the needle,” said
GoDaddy said it plans to market the suffix using billboards and online ads targeting users in Los Angeles.
“We are going to really be pushing and presenting out to the citizens of Los Angeles that they have a new domain extension that is really ripe for use in promoting their businesses in southern California,” Merdinger said.
GoDaddy is selling .la addresses at $39.99 each per year.
But some premium domain names will be auctioned starting on Monday with reserves starting at $100.
GoDaddy began selling .LA addresses a few weeks ago to make sure there were no glitches with its new domain names, the company said there have already been some purchases.
“There are some names that are already taken, but there’s an awful lot of good names that are still available, such as moviestars.la, acting.la, etc.,” Merdinger said.
I heard about .LA being positioned for Los Angeles business websites years ago, so I’m assuming this is just something new for GoDaddy, who are trying to kickstart the whole “L.A.” idea again?
Two famous domains are Madonna.LA (registered in 2000) and Arnie.LA, (registered in 2007), but neither resolve any longer… if they ever did.
In any event, 40 bucks per year is pricey…
@ Grim: same applies to cocaco.la
Few nice .la hacks can be also seen in this list: http://spot.ify.me/category/tld/la/
Hacks can be cool… but they’ll only have a chance of catching on if they have above average content, or offer something unique, and get sufficient marketing via word of mouth because of that. Otherwise, waste of cash, except for bragging rights of owning one. Plus they’re just more difficult to tell people about…
Example Coca-Co.LA. “So, I type ‘Coca-cola’?” “No, type ‘Coca-co’ then the ‘dot’ then ‘la’.” Telling people to go to ‘CocaCola.com’ or just ‘Coke.com’ (both which forward to Coca-Cola.com) is what people are used to, thereby making the suggestion to visit the site, so much more easy and intuitive.
Anyway, Coca-Co.la is owned by an individual in Japan, so it just looks like another UDRP in the making… if Coke cares about it at all, anyway…
“cocaco.la”
and pep.si