Stephane Van Gelder - .XXX

Promoted tweets, has Twitter finally found a way to make money?

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 10:01:55 +0100

A promoted .XXX tweet appearing as a permanent fixture at the top of a #icann search column.

I'm obviously way behind the times here, not being a Twitter fanatic, but thanks to the domain name industry, I've just noticed a new development on the short message site: promoted tweets. Perhaps Twitter has been doing this for months and I've just not seen it…

Today, I noticed one American registrar using these, as well as .XXX registry ICM.

According to Twitter's help center, promoted tweets will stay at the top of a search page used to display all tweets related to the promoted search term. And it works. For example, the .XXX promoted tweet that I can see now sits at the top of my #icann search column in my (excellent) Twitter client Tweetdeck.

Looks like Twitter's actually got around to selling stuff, and promoted tweets comes across as a good idea and an unobtrusive way of doing advertising.

First adult .XXX site goes live

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 15:48:25 +0200

Kevin Murphy reports in El Reg that the first of a new breed of websites has gone live. What's significant about the site is that it is an adult site that uses a .XXX address: Casting.xxx.

The Register article explains that the domain was awarded as part of .XXX registry ICM's Founders Program. "It's actually a perfect example of a Founders site," ICM president Stuart Lawley is quoted as saying. "It's a generic name... but with a special niche in the .xxx world."

Please be warned that the site shows extremely explicit content.

Kenya to block .XXX?

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Tue, 10 May 2011 22:03:47 +0200

Websites are reporting that Kenya's government has announced its intention to block .XXX. This was precisely one of the fears opponents of the adult entertainment domain voiced in San Francisco, where .XXX was given a definitive go-ahead by the ICANN Board.

Kenyan Communications Secretary Bitange Ndemo was quoted by www.xbiz.com as saying "We are not going to allow .XXX in this country. It's actually a certificate for people to watch pornography."

It remains to be seen what effect the wholescale blocking of a TLD will have on the way the Internet works, if any.

In related news, www.domainincite.com reports that the European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes wrote a letter to US Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke on April 6, 2011 asking him to wait before adding .XXX to the Internet root.