Home >> Dot TEL Domain
Name Advantages and Information List
So
what is the big deal about the new .TEL domain name?
How does it differ from previous domain names? On
this page I'll attempt to explain the A-Z
possibilities this new domain can offer and why it
will be a success.
For
any new domain name I have broken down the success
into four main categories:
Currently we can conclude that, as far as
development goes, this is the fastest growing
domain name in the history of the internet.
There
are three main things encouraging this rapid
development:
Purchasing
and setting up a Dot Tel is
easy. Even
someone that is computer challenged can buy
and setup a Dot Tel domain name in minutes. Log into the system
and simply type your business card
information in the appropriate fields. No website
coding, hosting or maintenance is required.
Purchasing and setting up a Dot Tel is
quick.
Dot Tel domain names can point to website
content but will never have its own rich
content. This confuses many people. Content
defeats the whole purpose of what Dot Tel
which was designed to represent a standard
communication/content pointer for an entity.
Therefore setting up a Dot Tel can be done
very rapidly by anyone.
Purchasing and setting up and maintaining a Dot Tel is
very cost efficient.
With no website coding, hosting or maintenance,
there are no fees except the annual renewal cost of
the domain at $20.00/year.
2) Search
Engine Acceptance
Acceptance by search
engines is very important since this can greatly
increase the value of a domain name. I believe that
search engines including Google will add .TEL information to
search engine algorithms for two reasons:
Additional Unique Search Variables -
Search engines are always
looking for unique variables to make their searches
more accurate. I'm positive that their algorithm will
be altered to analyze each website for the words
located in
.TEL domain names. Currently, a large factor in
search engine optimization is the words that
are in the root domain used for a website.
For example if I have the domain
NewYorkLawyer.com as a root domain and have
it pointed to a site about a New York
lawyer, currently Google will give you an
extra advantage when people type the words
'New York Lawyer' into one of their search
engines. This is due to the fact that you
have a .com and the applicable words in the
domain.
I'm predicting that, in a
few years, if a user were to search for ‘Vancouver Lawyer’ and a
website has the .TEL ‘VancouverLawyer.tel’ Google
will instantly predict that the owner of the site is
a Vancouver lawyer and one that could afford a good
.TEL domain. This will be another variable that will
assist in search engine optimization.
Solves
the Problem of Connecting Entities to Other
Search Documentation - Another
reason they will accept this domain is that
it will solve a very difficult problem that
search engines have been trying to solve
over the years. This problem involves trying
to connect people/businesses to other
indexes such as company web pages, documents
etc. in their search.
Making connections between people, websites,
emails etc is very important to search
engines and they have had great difficulty
doing it. When people volunteer this
information in a Dot Tel domain with
keywords (Company.TEL -> Keywords 'Company')
it makes it a lot easier to piece the puzzle
together.
Search Engines such as Google have invested
a great deal of money trying to get around
this problem with very little success. http://code.google.com/apis/socialgraph/
Is social graphing
the best way to tie people to websites and other
entities? Very confusing.
If I do a search for 'Henri Asseily Telnic'
it is pretty easy for Google to figure out
the Dot Tel associated with this entity and
to put the other pieces of the puzzle
together such as his email, Facebook page
etc. A search without the .TEL in the
directory may give inaccurate results.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Henri+Asseily+telnic&btnG=Search
3) Unique
Usability/Benefits of Dot Tel Domains
Dot Tel is unique in
that it represents a single entry point for
accessing any entity, whether it be a business or a
person. The biggest mistake people make is by
thinking that a Dot Tel domain name is a website. It
is more like a tool that points to a website, and
many other things, an entity may have such as a
telephone numbers, faxes, emails, social network
ports etc.
All
traditional .com, .ca etc. websites for entities and
corporations are constructed for two different
reasons:
1) To Show Contact Details
(Usually through text on the Contact Us page) <-
Dot Tel
2) To Display Rich Content (Usually in the form
of text, pictures and video) <- Dot Com/CA/Asia
etc.
Dot
Tel was created to replace the first item offering
advantages with the unique way it was
created. The main advantages for moving the contact
information, of a company, into a Dot Tel are as
follows:
Download Speed Usability - Download speed on
mobile devices these days is an important factor.
There are two reasons accessing Dot Tel's are faster
on phones
One
Trip DNS (Domain Name System) Access
- Since Dot Tel's make only one trip to
a secure DNS to grab information it is
much quicker to download and populate
the pages. With other domain names they
must make two trips. The first trip to
the DNS to grab the IP address and then
a second trip to the IP Address to
download the web page.
No
Download from an IP Address after
Grabbing the DNS Info - Unlike
the other domain names it does not have
to download stuff from a hosted site.
These items are generally very data
costly and timely such as content text,
images, graphics etc. This begs the
question. If I am a user and I'm looking
for company contact information why
would I need to wait for content text,
images, graphics etc., when all I need
is a telephone number? It costs me
additional money and wastes more time.
If I want rich content then I would
download the TEL and click on the
website link in the Dot Tel.
User-Friendly Usability - Many people complain
about the simplified generic template that Dot Tel
domain names use, missing the point of Dot Tel. The
generic template does not allow people to alter it
significantly for two reasons:
A
Structured, User Friendly Template That
People are Familiar With Enhances User
Speed and Comfort - If people
could make these changes it could slow
down or confuse people when trying to
get quick access to an entities
communication ports.
Tradeoff of Rich Content for Quicker
Download Speed and Cheaper Data Download
Cost - When you are looking for
a company email or telephone number do
you care about rich content? If so you
can click on the website in the Dot Tel
and visit the main entity site.
Cost Reduction Benefits - For entities that set
up Dot Tel domain names there are several ways they
can save thousands of dollars in costly expenses.
Cost of
Maintenance Expenses
- Changing contact information on
websites, business cards etc. requires
an entity to spend time/money on getting
the website updated and the business
cards redone. Having one Dot Tel on the
website 'Contact Us' page or on the site
in general means that the entity only
has to change the Dot Tel. Changing the
Dot Tel can be done by anyone, whether
they have computer skills or not, in
seconds.
Time
and Financial Cost of Lost Business From
Contact Changes - When a part of
an entities contact us page changes,
without a Dot Tel, it usually means that
there is other companies and people that
will have problems contacting you. For
example if I change my company contact
telephone number, I may find that I lose
business from my yellow pages ad that
has my old number.
It also requires me to call dozens of
important contacts that
have my telephone number and tell them that I have
changed my number. Most of the time when people get
informed of a number change they don’t even change
it until they realize they need it.
Cost
and Usability Drawback of Maintaining a
Complex IVR phone navigational
structures can be simplified using the
visual aspect of Dot Tel - There are many companies that have a phone
navigation structure. For example you dial a
telephone number and a friendly voice guides you
through a list of options such as 'Press 1 for
British Columbia, press 2 for Alberta, press 3 etc.'
Once you press your desired province some of these
navigation structures have several levels guiding
you through more steps 'Press 1 for customer
support, Press 2 for sales etc.'
There
are many problem with these navigations system.
First of all you have to wait until they reach what
your correct option. Secondly, if you miss your
option you have to select the final option to repeat
the list. Thirdly it is very easy to make a mistake
if you are thinking about which option you want to
select.
Take
also into consideration the financial aspect of
starting and maintaining a IVR platform. Dot Tel can
be easily maintained and done for a cost of
$20.00/year.
Dot Tel can also offer easy
multi-language directories saving
additional money on creating separate
directories for each area. This
could be seen as extremely useful for international
advertising. For example if I am Hertz.com the first
screen could break down the languages and then
countries to make sure that I don't lose potential
customers that don't speak a common language in a
particular area of the world.
Unique Usability - Along with being a single
point of communication for an entity Dot Tel with
it's familiar usable structure can have many other
applications.
Replace
Directory Sites
- As more and more pages are created the
.TEL directory is expanding. Due to the
cheap cost and easy setup I would not be
surprised if we see a full directory of valuable content within a
year of its release.
Could this directory structure be competition down
the road for Craigslist.org?
Most
people use Craigslist.org for its simplicity. Although
simple it could be argued that the Dot Tel directory
may be more simple and cheaper to
navigate. With Craigslist.org, most users have to click through to their
city first and then browse through listings. With
voice recognition being perfected, the
ability to jump directly to a service in a
particular location gives the Dot Tel Directory a
lot of power. For example if I pick up
my phone and say NewYorkElectronics.tel
and this directory displays listings of
electronic equipment in the New York
area I may become more familiar with
this directory and use this more often.
All it would take is for
a developer to create an application that could upload
.TEL listings and remove .TEL listings (based on
timestamp) for this model to be replicated.
Segmentations of Craigslist listings could fall into
individual Dot Tel business owners hands and they
could use Craigslist.org to draw new
users into their personal directories.
Media Social Interaction Structures
- Many TV shows have websites that allow
people to interact with the show such as
voting. The problem is that as soon as a
TV show tells people they can vote they
leave the TV to vote and usually get
distracted. Dot Tel may offer a solution
in that it is very easy and cheap to
access via a mobile phone.
The video above shows an example
of how American Idol could offer voting
using Dot Tel. Ignore the fact that it
is a rehearsed video with horrible
acting.
4) Other Things to
Consider
A) Dot Tel is quick for people using this
technology. There are two reasons .TEL
domain names can be accessed quicker:
Secondly Dot Tel is quicker in that regular web
pages must load content which beats the purpose of
the Dot Tel technology.
Traditionally web pages had two values for
companies.
Communication information - Telephone numbers,
fax numbers, contact emails, links to associated
websites, links to social media etc.
Content - Pictures, videos and written
information etc.
The
problem is the majority of the time people visit
company web pages, especially on mobile, people want
to bypass the content and go strictly to the
communication ports.
Accessing the communication information requires a
timely and unstructured approach by downloading the
web page and searching for where the contact
information is stored. On cell phones this is time
consuming and costs a lot of money in wasted data
usage - downloading everything from the graphics to
text.
Dot
Tel simplifies the process in a structured manner.
As a
simple test and tell me which is faster. Without
looking at your credit card try to find, online, the
telephone number to cancel your credit card. Now try
Cancel.Tel and tell me which one was quicker? Did
you get the same telephone number trying it the
other route? If you were doing this from your cell
phone which route would have been cheaper when it
comes to mobile data download.
B) Dot Tel is less expensive for people using this
technology. Bandwidth on cell phones is
expensive. Studies have shown that 87% of
phone web surfing is done by people that access web
pages exclusively for communication information
rather than content. The problem is that when you
download a web site, 95% of the data you are
downloading is bypassed by the user if they are not
looking for content. Data on cell phones is
expensive. What a waste of bandwidth, time and
money.
C) One to many relationship ->
One DOT Tel could point to multiple communication
telephone number, websites etc. Having a
single entry point for multiple communication and
contact information has many large benefits. First
of all relaying this level of communication to a
customer or a person of interest is easy. This
condenses, shortens and simplifies every form of
advertising including the most important... word of
mouth.
People
in general these days are in a rush and if you lose
your credit card you can guarantee you will want to
access this number ASAP.
D) Many to one relationship -> Multiple .TEL names could be pointed to one
telephone number or communication device. As
with web traffic, the same rules apply.
VancouverLawyer.TEL, LawyerVancouver.TEL etc. You
could expect many calls from people that you never
advertised or handed your number to. This should
greatly increase the demand/value of these domain
names.
E) A memorable .TEL could allow
people to store all of my information in their human
memory. If my company
sells gold and I own Gold.tel very few people would
forget how to access my information even a year
after talking to me.
Keep in mind all communication in a Dot Tel can be
protect by the owner. If you call the
number on my Gold.tel it may go to an answering
machine while my girlfriend doing the same steps
could reach me directly.
A quality, memorable .TEL would make a great gift to a loved
one.
F) .TEL is simple to use. If I’m in my
car and I want to find something not always do I
want to pull my car to the side of the road and
visit a website, write the telephone number on a
sheet of paper, and then dial that number.
Google and Microsoft have been pouring millions into
voice recognition. They have made many advancements
in this area and it would be foolish for anyone to
write off the fact that we will be using voice
recognition with telephones shortly. This should
allow quicker access to .TEL names.
Getting back to the car scenario, I can see a day in
the next 5 years where we click a special .TEL
button and say a .TEL domain into a phone resulting
in the phone sending us back the telephone number of
who we are trying to reach. The technology trends
are all leading to this.
G) .TEL can be used by people that are not
familiar with the technology. I recently bought my company .tel
domain name which I’ve been handing out instead of
my telephone number. In fact I refuse to hand out my
telephone number anymore since, like all numbers, it
is hard to remember and there is more likely a
mistake verbally.
What is sweet about this is that if people don’t
know how to access it properly or don't have a phone
I just tell them to type it into a stationary
computer browser until they figure it out. The
advantage here, from my point of view, is that I
know they will never forget my telephone or contact
information ever again unless they forget my company
name. If they forget the fact that I own a .TEL and
call me up a year later I’ll once again train them
to use my CompanyName.TEL. It is quicker than
waiting for them to get a pen and paper.
H) Avoiding long distance costs can be simplified.
Most of the cheapest and most convenient long
distance services these days require you to call a
number first and then dial out from that telephone
number. You can bet that LongDistance.tel will be
owned by one of these companies which will latch
onto this new technology. I could see a day where I
click on a .TEL phone button, say into a telephone
the words 'Long Distance' which is picked up by
voice recognition, instantly get prompted to say or
dial the long distance .TEL you want to reach.
The
only way someone could end up paying for long
distance is if they forget the words 'Long Distance'
(LongDistance.tel) domain which is unlikely or they
don't realize they are calling long distance.
This could save cell/mobile and land line phone
users a lot of money.
I) How often do you write down a telephone
number and make a mistake. The other day I
was talking to a telephone representative that gave
me a number to her direct line. Usually
representatives will do this for you when they are
doing something important to your account and need
some time to sort the problem out. With most people
on cell phones these days they don’t want their
customers paying by the minute listening to ‘Hmmm,
just give me a second.
I wrote the telephone number down on a piece of
paper next to me and tried to call the number back.
Darn, I wrote it down wrong and disturbed the owner
of the wrong number. So my next step was to try to
guess which digit I confused since connecting to the
representative was very important. I interrupted a
few other people with phone calls until I guessed
what mistake I made.
J) You can have a buffer for you main personal
telephone number. When you are filling out
an online form and you see a field with the label
'Phone *' (* meaning mandatory) don't you cringe.
Sometimes companies have a legitimate reason for
requesting your telephone number, but it scares many
signups away.
Here is the logic to this
one. Most people these days have at
least two email addresses. One email represents your main
email while the second email represents your spam
email address. If you sign up for something online
that you don’t 100% trust you use your spam email
which is usually a hotmail/gmail/yahoo address which
has a strong filter.
As
with email, you can do the same with telephone by
using .TEL. If you buy two .TEL names you
can do the same with telephone or other
communication devices.
How many times have you given out
your telephone number only to find that the next
thing you get is phone spam or… fax spam? How many
times have you given out your telephone number only
to find that you don’t want these unimportant
contacts to contact you anymore? How many times have
you given out your telephone number as your business
line and personal line only to realize that you
should have separated the two? If the spam builds
you can abandon the spam email and start with a new
one.
Telemarketing and unimportant phone calls can kill a
lot of important time.
K) Dialing telephone numbers often leads to
mistakes. So many people type in the wrong
digits when going through 10 numbers. Good telephone
numbers such as 222-2222 are valuable because they
are easy to remember and can reduce the odds of lost
sales.
.TEL could
reduce the odds of a mistake.
L) Business cards could be shortened by just
using one .TEL line and a logo. Look at the
lines of communication on the average business card
these days. Every decade there seems to be more
communication methods adding more lines. i.e. Name,
Position, Address, Direct, Cell, Fax, Email, Web. I
even saw a business card the other day with social
networking and a line for their blog website.
M) Address books are not so important.
Anyone that goes through their phone address book or
a book address book will find dead contact numbers.
If you can remember all of your friends .TEL names
and the companies that you deal with there would be
very few contacts you would need to store.
N) Emergency situation leaves you stranded.
Recently I was on a fishing trip and while pulling
the fish in my cell phone and car keys fell in the
water. At first I thought it was no big deal since
all I had to do was call for someone to pick me up
and replace my phone when I get back. After a few
minutes it dawned on me that I also lost my sim card
(the card in the phone that stores your
information.) I couldn't remember any of my friends
or families telephone numbers which would have been
different in the event that one of them had a .TEL.
O) Billboards can now advertise direct
communication methods easier in unison or
independent of website advertising. If I
pass a billboard with a picture and
NewYorkLawyer.tel, you can bet I will remember how
to contact that lawyer when I get home. It will also
encourage me to type in SeattleLawyer.tel if I need
a Lawyer in the Seattle area.
Picture this, a guy goes to a nightclub wearing his
.TEL on the back of his shirt and a woman on the
other side of the bar calls him. Incidents like
this, and the recent deal with MySpace.com could
move this technology giving it a trendy appeal.
Or how about a .TEL being used instead of
those goofy 'Hello My Name Is + Your Name' tags at
conferences. This way people can contact others even
after the show.
Rather than putting a telephone number on a 'For
Sale' sign, realtors can put a TEL name so that
people driving by don't have to pull over on the
side of the road to write down their number, as
discussed in point 5 above.
P) Mobile phone telephone companies can get extreme
technology advantages using such a system. Telephone
companies have been trying to reduce the size of
telephones but they are restricted by the screen
size and keyboard size. Although most phones down
the road will still have keys, I could see some
phones developed without all of the number buttons
and just one .TEL button. Voice recognition
advancements could allow this.
The phone could be reduced in size or allow more
room for the screen. Maybe telephone watches wasn’t
that far fetched afterwards.
As far as phone sizes go, this phone is just plain
goofy. All I want is a screen and a .TEL button for
voice recognition.
Q) This application has the potential to wipe
out 411 systems since our vocabulary will be the
ultimate telephone book. If I am looking for
Flowers to give to my girlfriend and I am currently
in Burnaby, British Columbia I would pick up and my
phone and guess BurnabyFlowers.tel similar to if I
was sitting in front of a computer browsing for a
webpage. On the flip side, the owner of
BurnabyFlowers.tel would most likely point it to a
flower place in Burnaby to reward people that use
their .tel domain names.
It would be to the owner’s advantage even if he
isn’t making money using it (repeat customers, using
his .tel, start to build while the owner of the
domain name has control of where it is pointed).
R) Since .TEL domains, store the GPS Google
Maps location of where a .TEL business or person
profile resides, it can also be used by people
trying to find where you currently are. If
my friend moves tomorrow, he could update his .TEL
GPS location so that everyone that has been added
(securely) to his .TEL gets this information when
looking him up.
S) I can see how car GPS systems could use
voice recognition and .TEL to navigate people
quickly and efficiently. If I tell the car
GPS system BurnabyFlowers.tel the GPS location point
would instantly click in telling me to turn in the
right directions until I arrive at the location.
T) Security
concerns can be addressed. People that try
to hack computers are most interested in email and
telephone address lists. Rather than storing contact
information on your computer you can store it
virtually online behind the secure settings offered
by .TEL.
Since
these addresses are much easier to remember you may
also elect to store many of your .TEL's in your head
rather then online.
U) Keeping your
telephone number safe will lose its importance.
We are always guarding our telephone number, email
addresses and social networking id's from all of the
possible telemarketers and people we don't want to
have call/view us. In a communication world
protecting this information is getting harder and
harder to manage.
Under a Dot Tel name however changing this
information does not have the workload and ordeal
that it used to have. Simply change it in your .TEL
and a decision to hide or share with public, friends
or family can be switched on or off any time.
V) An alternative to getting your information
visually. This technology really opens the
door to a lot of creative thinking for alternative
ways to get content.
For example a person that is walking or driving
would prefer to access information in an audio
format rather than a visual format. That is why we
listen to the radio while driving rather than read a
magazine.
I believe this technology will be used to drive
content to users. An example would be
SportScores.tel. Such a domain could have a recorded
message giving updated sport score information
daily. Anyone that needs the score in a game could
call this number and listen to it in the same
fashion that someone would listen to a radio.
W) It is enables easier word of mouth advertising.
Every business will tell you that word of mount is
the best advertising. If I know that
VancouverHairCut.tel gives great hair cuts and
someone asks me where I got my hair cut, I could
easily spread the .TEL.
X) Filling out forms will be easier with
.TEL.
When we fill out forms we are always writing the
same stuff. Address, postal code, city, country etc.
Under the .TEL system online forms can be easier by
having one field that asks for the .TEL domain.
If you think about it, not only is it easier for the
user but it is also easier for the site operators
since collecting the .TEL will mean that when users
change their info they can still have them as
subscribers.
Think
about how many times you have entered a site and
were about to signup only to change your mind when
seeing the length of the form.
Y) Massive acceptance by speculators, of a
domain name, a good sign this domain has merit.
Telnic
is in the Guinness Book of World record for the
longest period a startup has lasted without making
any revenue. Before you laugh, let it be known that
they have raised $36.00 million in funding from
serious investors that include Siemens and leading
DNS experts.
With a hundred thousand domain names sold on its
release you can bet that Telnic won't last in the
red long. It shows that there are quite a few
people thinking that this domain has lasting power.
Z) Dot tel has opened the door to a whole new
world of creative applications spawning its own
developer community.
Most .TEL forums have a development community
brainstorming extremely useful and powerful
applications/devices based on this domain name.
Below is a link to Telnic's main download page which
shows a very useful application add on for Microsoft
Outlook.
ii) Dot tel has opens the possibility for an
open ID. One username and password to log
into your DOT Tel and you wouldn't have to log into
other applications such as Facebook, Hotmail, Gmail
etc.
iii) Double their online exposure on search
engines.
Dot TEL was not created to replace websites. That
would be equivalent to saying a business card could
replace a company. It is a tool that should be used
in combination with a website.
With this understanding any company can double their
search engine listings by setting up a .TEL domain
name since Google will index both. This is unique
because if a .com site uses any other domain name to
create another site for their company Google will
penalize the all pages indexed.
As shown earlier, Dot Tel is doing very well
on search engines.
