Recent Thunks

Jackson Hts., New York, April 9, 2015 - An innovative idea was brought to our attention last year by a civicly spirited domain investor, Kw Boswell. Kw’s suggestion was that the 26 single character .nyc domain names - a.nyc, b.nyc, c.nyc, all the way to z.nyc - be developed in a coordinated manner. The utility of the idea took a few months to sink in, but it did and we’d like to thank Kw and offer a first showing.

Recently, with these 26 premium names heading to auction, via 26 independent auctions, we decided to add some flesh to the innovative idea and present it for comparison with the current plan. Reflecting our early analysis, we named the current plan Willy-Nilly and the new one, the Beacon Project.

Looking first at the likely results of Willy-Nilly auctions, we’d expect each name to be programmed to serve an entirely different goal. For example, the auction for “w.nyc” might lead to its serving as the home page for the W Hotel chain’s New York  properties or the radio station WNYC. While both are positive uses, the synergistic benefit to .nyc is slight, perhaps even negative.

The Beacon Project advocates that the names be auctioned or otherwise allocated as a block, and with a contractual requirement that they serve as predictable beacons, barometers, and indexes of the .nyc TLD. Let’s take a look what one of our 26 Beacons - a.nyc - might offer. Minimally, we imagine four helpful features:

• An Alpha List - An enhanced index of all sites beginning with the character “a.”
• The Gov Corner - A list of sites important to the the city’s health, education, and safety. For example, “a.nyc” would include ambulance.nyc.
• # Trending - An up to the minute listing of the most accessed domain names beginning with “a”.
• Peoples Choice - City residents will be able to vote for a favorite site within each of the 26 characters.

While we’ve identified 4 possible components, we’d suggest a community engagement and a hackathon to flesh out the idea. Keep in mind when evaluating Beacon that we’re talking about .nyc domain names only, a small bookshelf, not Google’s vastness.

So we see two choices:

We faced a decision with similar scope in the early 1800s when the time arrived to plan for the development of the northern sections of Manhattan. Through a Commissioners’ Plan of 1811, our ancestors plotted east-west streets and north-south avenues that guided New York’s orderly development, providing a grid system that facilitated transportation and property transfer. The Beacon Project follows in that spirit.

Let us know what you think. Perhaps you’d like to join us in sponsoring a hackathon or otherwise flesh out this idea.

And thanks again to Kw for her suggestion. With ideas like this she might more appropriately be named Mw.

(Commons graphic courtesy of pixabay.com.)