ICANN adds .jobs, .travel domains

Two new top-level domains, .jobs and .travel, will soon come to the Internet after the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved the two domains on Friday.

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ICANN, the body that oversees technical matters related to the Internet, granted approval to requests from Tralliance Corp. to operate the .travel domain and from Employ Media LLC to operate .jobs during the 22nd ICANN International conference, in Mar del Plata, Argentina.

Registration for names in both domains should start in several of months and the domains should be online by year's end, representatives for Tralliance and Employ Media said.

Employ Media said in its ICANN application that the .jobs domain will be promoted to human resources professionals. Companies that have job openings will be able to operate a .jobs Web sites, such as companyname.jobs, to advertise their job openings.

The .jobs domain is sponsored by the U.S. Society for Human Resource Management. Any legitimate employer or staffing agency will be able to get a .jobs domain, said Brian Johnson, general counsel for Employ Media. Johnson said his company will soon begin doing business with the name .Jobs.

A pre-registration period for .jobs is scheduled before the domain goes online in the second half of the year, Johnson said.

Tralliance will aim the .travel domain at the travel industry, according to information on its Web site. Registration for .travel domain names will be restricted to applicants authenticated by independent third parties, including industry associations. Registrants will also be limited to using Web site names that they already use or have rights to. Those rules will help establish travel industry brands, according to Tralliance.

The .travel domain is sponsored by The Travel Partnership Corp., a Washington, D.C., nonprofit organization backed by more than 100 organizations from the travel and tourism industry, said Ron Andruff, president and chief executive officer of Tralliance.

"The first .travel domains will hit the Web in the last quarter of 2005," Andruff said. There will also be a .travel directory to help Internet users find what they are looking for, he said. Early registration for the .travel domains is set to start in about three months, according to Andruff.

Pricing for the .travel and .jobs domains has not been set yet, the registry representatives said.

ICANN has a pool of 10 applications for other sponsored top-level domains, and the organization is in negotiations with groups wanting to offer .cat, .post and .mobi domains, according to an ICANN press release. In addition, the ICANN board and staff are also discussing five other sponsored top-level domains that have been proposed, including .asia, .tel and .XXX.

In other action, ICANN approved AfriNIC, based in Mauritius, as a regional Internet registry. AfriNIC will oversee allocation of Internet numbering in the Africa region, according to ICANN.