This year will see hundreds of new top level domains (TLD) released and the face of the internet will be changed forever.
Leo Mirani has shed some interesting light on the subject via Quartz.
The chart below illustrates that the .com domain alone accounts for more than a third of the web, with country-code TLDs making up much of the rest.
"Until 2013, there were only 22 functioning gTLDs. The most familiar predated the creation of ICANN: .com, .net, .org, .edu, .gov, and .mil. Another seven came into existence in 2000, and a further eight in 2004," says Mirani.
"Most of the new domains in these two waves never really took off. You will sometimes spot .biz or .info in the wild, but more niche ones such as .mobi (aimed at mobile sites) and .xxx (for porn) got little attention from the markets they were aimed at."
My quandary is that if none of these other domains took off – why will any of the new domains? Web users trust the .com and country-specific TLDs so until the new TLDs become trusted sites, it is unlikely we will see .cool, .guru and .wtf becoming the norm.
