The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) have announced that the two sponsored Top Level Domain (sTLD) applications made earlier this year, have moved to the next stage.
The two domains in question, ".mobi" and ".jobs" will be targeting mobile services and the jobs market specifically (no surprise there then). Sponsored by mobile phone and technology companies, including Nokia, Microsoft and T-Mobile, the ".mobi" domain would set apart web sites and other services that are specially designed to work around the limitations of cell phones, including their smaller screen size and data capacity. The ".jobs" suffix, would go to members of the human resources community such as Monster.com.
Likewise, private firms might advertise vacancies at their own company using something like "www.a-company.jobs", rather than having visitors navigate their main site.
Some other proposed TLDs that are still being reviewed are ".asia", ".xxx" and ".eu"
The four names that have received preliminary approval differ from most existing names because they would be set aside for specific industries and interest groups. Applicants paid $45,000 each, just to have their proposals considered.
ICANN have published the board resolutions relating to proceedings into negotiations with ".mobi" and ".jobs".
There are currently over 200 domain names, mostly for specific countries like ".ie" for Ireland and ".uk" for the United Kingdom.
The last top level domain names introduced were back in 2000 when ICANN approved seven TLDs for global use, including ".biz" and ".info"