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Facebook
Founder Mark Zuckerberg
and some of the world's top tech leaders,
representing companies including Google, Yahoo,
LinkedIn, PayPal and Cisco
and many others, has launched a new bipartisan political
advocacy group called Forward U.S.
that has set up shop on the domain FWD.us. Zuckerberg
wrote about the joint effort to keep the
American workforce competitive in the
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global
marketplace in an op-ed
piece he penned for the Washington
Post. Zuckerberg made it clear that immigration
reform and support for education
would be the first issues the organization will
tackle. Zuckerberg,
whose grandparents came through Ellis Island,
wrote "My
parents are doctors. I started a company. None
of this could have happened without a welcoming
immigration policy, a great education
system and the world’s leading scientific
community that created the Internet. Today’s
students should have the same opportunities —
but our current system blocks them. We
have a strange immigration policy for a nation
of immigrants. And it’s a policy unfit
for today’s world." Josh
Constine has a very good article at TechCrunch.com
today detailing who all of the players in the
Forward U.S. effort are, what their goals are
and how they plan to reach them. Constine noted,
"Beyond immigration, FWD.us plans to
campaign for policies that will produce
more math, science, and technology graduates,
and ensure every child gains a great education
from high-quality teachers in accountable
schools."
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Domainers
will find the choice of FWD.us as the
powerful group's home base to be an
interesting sidelight. While .US, as America's
country code, is a perfect fit
for the organization's mission, these
kinds of groups typically choose .org
or .com domains. Though it may not
have been part of their educational plan,
it's likely that many average citizens
will learn about the American ccTLD for
the first time by virtue of Forward U.S.'s
use of the extension. |
I
found it interesting that the group didn't find
it necessary to elaborate on its .US address -
the assumption apparently being that people will
recognize it as a web address and no further
explanation is needed. If more Americans see it
the same way, that vote of confidence will give
their country's TLD a welcome boost. Given
the Zuckerberg group's name, I did wonder why
they didn't go after the exact match Forward.us
domain rather than an acronym (one would assume
money would be no object to this group of
players). However, a WhoIs search showed that
Forward.us, though currently inactive, is
owned by the State of Wisconsin who may
have other plans for it. If they don't, it would
be nice if Forward U.S. could get the name, or
at least have Wisconsin re-direct it to
the FWD.us site. After all, the group's efforts to create more and better American jobs
could benefit Wisconsin and the rest of the
country greatly, given the amazing line up of
tech powerhouses supporting the initiative.
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