I mentioned last week that I was asked to be a judge for Afilias’ .INFO Awards. Well, that all started this week (though I nearly forgot about the fact that it was actually due today!!). I must say, like with any website…there are some really good ones out that (ones that really embraced the whole .INFO concept) and some pretty basic (if not crappy) ones out there as well.
You may or may not know who Afilias or .INFO is…so let me tell you a little about it.
The Internet was originally created with .com, .net, .org and some other domains. But in 2001 ICANN, the group that oversees the Internet’s naming system added more extensions called “new top-level domains.” .INFO was the first of these new TLDs to launch for the public to register. Afilias is the registry for .INFO – the man behind the screen as it were – that makes all .INFO domains work across the Internet. They also provide technology and DNS services to 14 other TLDs, together over 15 million domains worldwide.
It is fitting that this October Afilias would open an awards program, as it marks the 8th anniversary of open registration in the first new TLD launched since .COM. Since 2001, .INFO has grown to over 5 million domains with millions of live Web sites. Afilias highlights some of them in their growing directory at http://www.info.info/directory .
It is interesting to browse through those sites and those submitted for the awards. Resoundingly, people claim that they chose .INFO because their site shares information and it “just made sense” to put their information on a .INFO domain. Beyond it being intuitive, it is also clear that .INFO has global appeal with more of the submissions to the awards coming from outside of the United States than in. According to Afilias 53% of .INFO domains are registered in North America, 33% from Europe, and about 8% from Asia, Australia and the Pacific.
I along with 5 other fellow judges from around the globe are now working on reviewing the sites submitted to the 2009 .INFO Awards program. Afilias’ awards will reward a handful of .INFO site owners that took the effort to submit for this year’s Awards program with cash prizes including up to $7500 for first place.
The judges will score these sites against five criteria: Presentation of Content, Functionality, Design, Usability, and Originality. From our total scores as judges, Afilias will produce a list of top 10 sites. Then YOU get to vote! Afilias will post these top 10 sites for public vote beginning at 9:00 am ET on November 2. You can vote at www.info-award.info until November 6th!
The winners will be determined by our judges scores plus the tally of public votes and will be announced on November 9th.
