gTLD comms masterstroke: tell people not to apply

Just when you thought ICANN's new gTLD communications plan couldn't get any worse... the organization actually launches it.

It's taken three months and the program launches in just four, but that will be academic when the strikingly simple message from ICANN is delivered to the corners of the world, resulting in a collective global burst of excitement and energy.

The future of the Internet is coming! It will change the world forever! You will never see things in the same way again!

ICANN has sent its best man - CEO Rod Beckstrom - on a World Tour to spread the message. And that message was duly delivered yesterday at the FutureCom conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

And it was this: Don't bother applying.

It is either some weird twisted genius, or the most incompetent piece of PR we have ever witnessed. Having spent seven years developing the policy, 12 months fighting with trademark holders and governments and advertising organizations, and two years putting together a communications plan for new gTLDs, the messages that have issued forth are:

• New Internet extensions are probably not for you
• They are very expensive
• They are technically complex and you have to maintain it forever
• We do not advocate new gTLDs
• We are here to warn you about our own program

ICANN is apparently so embarrassed by its own program that even these anti-gTLD messages are stuck at the bottom of a press release [pdf] that for some inexplicable reason lauds the Brazilian multi-stakeholder model.

This is what the press release says about the gTLD program that ICANN has spent seven years on and stands to make tens of millions of dollars from:

The gTLD program will greatly expand the current number of 22 Top-Level Domains (i.e., .com, .gov, .net, etc.) to include almost any word or name.

But Beckstrom made clear that new gTLDs are not intended for every company or organization, since running a gTLD means an applicant is committing to run an Internet registry – an expensive and highly technical operation.

'I want to make clear that ICANN is an organization that is not advocating new gTLDs for anyone,' said Beckstrom. 'Our role is merely facilitation to implement the policy and the programs approved by our community, so we are here to educate not to advocate.'

Beckstrom's World Tour is scheduled to stop off in London, Nairobi, Dubai, Paris, Berlin and Sofia, where he will spread his "Don't bother" message far and wide. Money well spent.

Some suggested alternatives

As you can tell, we're not big fans of the gTLD messaging coming out of ICANN. So we have put together some alternatives that the organization may wish to consider instead. We hope they prove useful:

• Apply if you want. But don't come crying to us afterwards.
• Have you got nothing better to spend $200,000 on?
• We haven't even decided the rules yet. We just pretended.
• Do you really think you'll make it through all our evaluation panels?
• We get to keep your money even when you fail
• Help keep ICANN dysfunctional. Apply today!