Here's the The Lowdown
from DN Journal,
updated daily
to
fill you in on the latest buzz going around the domain name industry.
The Lowdown is
compiled by DN Journal Editor & Publisher Ron
Jackson.
GeoDomain
Owners Organization Associated Cities Reboots as a
Non-Profit Trade Association
Associated
Cities, the association of geodomain
ownersthat
stages the annual GeoDomain
Expo, has completed an important
transformation. In the past AC has been
operated by a
for-profit
partnership controlled by a limited number of
founding shareholders. Today Chicago.com
owner Josh Metnick, the man who came with
the idea for a global association of .com
city domain owners in 2003, said "Associated
Cities, the world’s largest association of geographical
domain (geodomain) owners, has reconstituted
itself as a non-profit trade association.
With the fast growth in both the geodomain
industry and local digital media, it became
clear that the mission had outgrown the
operating structure. It is important that all
members have a voice.”
Since
starting up seven years ago, Associated Cities
has provided group advertising services to
intuitively-branded metropolitan websites and
over the years its membership has grown to
include most major cities in North America and
many throughout the world.
Josh
Metnick
Associated Cities Co-Founder
Dan
Pulcrano
Boulevards New Media
Dan
Pulcrano
, whose company, Boulevards
New Media, participates in
Associated Cities with twenty member
cities including LosAngeles.com, SanFrancisco.com
and Philadelphia.com, said
“These are among the most valuable
assets on the Web, and the media
properties of the future. By
organizing into an industry, we hope to
benefit local communities by promoting
local businesses, organizations, tourism,
economic development and cultural
activities under the best possible brand
that any locality can have: the .com
version of their natural city name."
AC
participants include websites that
represent cities both large and small with
examples ranging from New York City
to Kelowna, British Columbia, Vancouver
to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, New
Orleans to Albany, Hilton Head
to Chula Vista, San Diego to
Toledo. Latin America is
represented by members such
as
Acapulco.com and BuenosAires.com
while leading European members include
sites such as Barcelona.com, Glasgow.com
and Stockholm.com.
While
Associated Cities is an
organization devoted to a single
sector of the overall domain
industry (geodomains), I have
always felt that the group's unique
focus on development has made
it a vitally important
"guiding light" for the
industry at large.
Finding
ways to efficiently develop their
assets into useful websites
appears to be the best way for domain
owners to free themselves from
dependence on the whims of Google
and Yahoo and insulate
themselves from ICANN
policy changes and legal
machinations aimed at making it
easier for covetous parties to
take currently undeveloped domains
away from their rightful owners.
AC's
next annual Geodomain
Expo® is coming up next month
at the historic Roosevelt Waldorf Astoria
Hotel in New Orleans. The event
will run April 28-30 and will feature
a keynote address from David Litman,
the founder of Hotels.com and current
CEO of Getaroom.com. The conference
will also include an online auction of
geographical domain names as well as
sessions on commerce, monetization,
editorial development and other topics of
interest to city domain operators. For more
details check out the first
draft of the show's agenda that
is now online.
We need your help to keep giving
domainers The
Lowdown, so please email [email protected]with any interesting information you might have. If possible,
include the source of your information so we can check it out (for
example a URL if you read it in a forum or on a site
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