http://www.idg.net/idgns/1999/09/24/IDirectionsPromisesFreecomRegistration.shtml
IDirections promises free
'.com' registration
by James Niccolai, IDG News Service\San Francisco
Bureau
September 24, 1999
For the would-be famous who can't seem to
get their name in lights, including it in a Web
site address might be the next best thing.
Domain name registrar iDirections.com
announced plans this week to offer a service
that lets people to do just that -- and for
free.
The service will allow users to register
Internet addresses ending in .com, .net and
.org at no charge. Aimed primarily at
consumers, the service also lets them build
a "personal Web portal" that can incorporate
free e-mail, instant messaging, and links to
online retail stores and other Internet
content, the company said.
iDirections began accepting preregistrations
for the service on Tuesday. It is
encouraging customers to register Internet
addresses that include their own name, such
as www.FredBloggs.com.
iDirections.com will pay the required fee for
registering the domain name. The company
hopes to make money through advertising
and marketing deals, and by offering online
vendors a spot on the portal pages that
users create, said Bruce Keiser, iDirections'
president.
The start-up firm, which has six full-time
staffers and was founded earlier this year,
hopes to launch the service by the end of
November, Keiser said.
iDirections.com will face stiff competition
from market leader Network Solutions Inc.
(NSI), however, as well as from dozens of
other firms expected to roll out domain name
registration services in the next few months.
iDirections is hoping its "free" service will lure
users away from its larger, more established
competitors, most of whom charge $70 to
register a domain name for two years.
Until recently, NSI handled all registration for
the .com, .net and .org top-level domains
under a contract with the U.S. government.
The business is currently being opened to
competition, and other firms are stepping up
their efforts to cash in on what many
analysts expect to be a huge market.
Tonic Corp. this week began allowing
customers to register Internet addresses
ending in ".to" for 100 years for a fee of
$2,500, according to information on the
company's Web site. The .to domain is the
country domain for of Tonga, a tiny island in
the South Pacific.
Most other registrars, including NSI, register
domain names for only two years at a time.
Tonic hopes that saving customers the
inconvenience of having to keep renewing
their registrations will make its service more
attractive. The company also offers a
two-year registration for $100, a five-year
registration for $200, and other options.
Meanwhile, NameSecure.com Inc. launched
a Web site called Qwho, where users can
search to see if an Internet address is
already taken and, if so, find out who owns
it and where it's registered. Several
companies already offer so-called "who is"
services, but NameSecure claims its site, at
http://www.qwho.com/, is unique because it
searches the databases of all other domain
name registrars.
The service is designed to drive users to
NameSecure.com's own domain name
registration service, and the company will
very soon include a link on Qwho that takes
them there, company founder Jeff Field said.
iDirections.com, in Los Gatos, California, can
be contacted at +1-408-395-1706, and at
http://www.idirections.com/.
NameSecure.com, in Moraga, California, is at
+1-925-377-1212, and at
http://www.namesecure.com/. Tonic, in San
Francisco, is on the Web at
http://www.tonic.to/.
Copyright (c) 1999 International Data Group.
All Rights Reserved.
