On December 5 Domain forum organized with support from Core Association, registry of domain .САЙТ and .ОНЛАЙН was held in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. The main topics of the conference were development prospects of the IDN domains and experience of the registries that administer them. Representative of the Coordination Center for the TLD RU/РФ Mikhail Anisimov took part in the discussion section “Multilingual Internet”.
In his speech Mikhail spoke about the launch of the domain .РФ and the experience of promotion among Russian users. According to him, the domain was successful for several reasons. The first one is positioning of the domain zone. In contrast to the top-level domains that are massively being launched now within the New gTLD program, this project was not just a business, it became the symbol of Russian national identity on the Internet, it’s launch was considered a national project. The second reason is that the domain is mainly oriented towards causal users, its mission is to make Internet more user-friendly for those who are not fluent in foreign languages.
“Domain names in .РФ zone became widespread in outdoor advertising. For example, if you drive a car, you only have a few tenth of a second to see, read and remember the domain name. It is much easier if the address in written in you mother tongue. This is why Cyrillic domain has found it’s unique niche, by promoting Internet resources offline.”
Registries of ccTLDs and gTLDs from Eastern and Western Europe, registrars, operators of the secondary market, representatives of ICANN and Bulgarian Ministry of Transport and Telecommunications also tool part in the Domain forum.
