1- First of all, congratulations ! PuntCat recently reached 40.000 domain names. what are the main factors of success for .cat ?
Thanks. We believe it’s because .cat is the way a cultural, linguistic and national reality has to be itself on the Internet, being known world wide and abandoning invisibility. It is not a surprise that a community that created the second Wikipedia just after the first one in English, that is regularly translating into Catalan Opensource tools like Firefox, OpenOffice, etc or even hacking iPhones to get an unnofficial Catalan translation for that device, is embracing the .cat as its main domain to be online.
But it’s not just identity, it’s also business. .cat is the easiest way multinationals and big companies have to address much more closely and efficiently a potential market of 10 million speakers. It is not an easy win, but smart marketeers do catch the opportunity.
We have also worked hard to offer the most professional and technical advanced platform. This is a world class competition and we’ve been always working hard to be in the leading group. To prove it, we offer IDN, EPP, IPv6 and DNSSEC. It’s our duty towards the community but also the best way to convince hesitants.
2- Given your experience and the feedbacks from your users, what are the benefits of a linguistioc and cultural TLD for the Catalan community ?
It offers different benefits for different kinds of users and also common benefits for all, also for the ones that do not have a domain but belong to the community.
For the community, the domain is a way to escape from invisiblility and announce its existence world wide under the TLD umbrella.
For many people, including companies, a clTLD is the closest and more natural choice. It is the domain that, like a DO (dénomination d’origin), better defines you. And as such, reinforces brand authenticity as demonstrates a given web site it’s much closer to the country. That’s ideal for small quality hotels, restaurants, of enterprises that want to benefit from it. But it is also important for multinationals and foreign companies that want to segment and address the market covered by the TLD.
That proximity to the community helps to raise quite a lot of interest amongst people and companies that will get prompted to register a domain for the first time. So the TLD has to welcome these new users into the advanced use of the Internet becoming a key player closing the digital gap.
3 What do you think about the new cultural and linguistic TLD projects, like .bzh, and what would be your advice to them?
I’m personally in favour of the so called cultural and linguistic top level domains (clTLD). Not just because I’m managing one, but because I do think they are the best way to close the digital gap and get thousands of Internet users into the advanced use of the Internet by being themselves using their own domain name. Having your own domain is the next step after being somehow proficient using email, web and chat. Because of proximity and easier identification, clTLDs are the entry point for future dot-whateverelse domain registrars.
Each community has its own reality and what works for us may not work for others, but it’s true that we can share certain similarities. A clTLD domain is a tool to project a language and culture world wide and increase community’s selfsteem, but it is also a very powerful marketing tool. Companies may use it as a way to segment markets, gain proximity to potential customers, and address more direct offers.
i think we can share certain development axes like prioritize quality versus quantity, provide excellent end user service, provide a sound and leading technical platform. In addition both share the goal to promote our respective languages, so there is a way to go sharing resources developed for campaigns, strategies to make both languages more visible, etc.
I hope we’ll soon see the first .bzh domains online and you can count on puntCAT to help you.
