Business is good. Your lavatory equipment firm has transposed the conveniences in half the homes in your neighbourhood. But there's a tiny fly in your ointment.
You were a bit late to the diversion when it came to the internet.
And when you at last motionless to go online, www.bloggsbogs.com was already taken. You're flattering certain this must be the reason you haven't done considerably the dash you longed for in other towns.
Is there other way?
Beginning in January 2012, applications open for a new category of gTLD (generic tip turn domain).
The people who manage the use of internet domains, Icann (Internet Committee for Assigned Names and Numbers), voiced in June they were fluctuating the suffixes used for web addresses over the existing 22 (.com, .net, .uk, etc).
Interested parties can request to run one, and possibly keep it for themselves, or set up as a registrar selling domains inside of groups similar to .car or .bank.
The suffixes do not have to be roman letters, so could for e.g. be Chinese characters.
Some manners do request - for instance, they must have at least 3 letters (Icann is keeping onto the outstanding two e-mail domains in box new countries are created).
So right away companies can bid for their own gTLD is to initial time. Think .hitachi, .coke, .facebook.
Could .com's prevalence be forthcoming to an end?
If your mental condition of induction .bloggsbogs is going to become reality, you'd improved obtain your skates on. The focus time opens on 12 January 2012, and closes 3 months after that on 12 April.
Miss this and you might be twiddling your thumbs compartment 2015 according to Tim Callan, arch selling executive at domain experts Melbourne IT DBS.
"[Companies] have to be prepping, and they have to be getting ready and reckoning out what they're carrying out so they're ready."
Some might be left behind, says Simon Briskman, associate and IT dilettante at law firm Field Fisher Waterhouse.
"I regard it's tough for brands to take this really partial time we've got - the last entertain of this year - to evaluate and make a full business case."
Mr Briskman says a few companies have stalled, primarily put off by the cost.
"I regard we've right away got to the indicate where people are going: 'Hang on a minute, this is a tumble in the sea compared with the investment you make in the brand. We really do must be accurately evaluate the business case.'
"[Some] large brands are going to skip the window - elementary as that. You can't pierce large organisations at this speed."
Cost might cut out all but the megabrands.
Applying will set you back $185,000, and it doesn't end there, says Melbourne IT DBS's Tim Callan: "Your dilemma mom-and-pop shop, this is not right for them.
"A great guess is it will cost between $150,000 - $200,000 a year to run [a gTLD]. So dear yes, compared to your and my wallets, but is to companies we're conversing about - trivial.
"I've nonetheless to run in to any person who I would ponder a awaiting for this who has a cost objection."
Rebecca Moody, head of formulation at promotion group Euro RSCG, agrees: "It's a no-brainer for John Lewis or for Coca-Cola, for example, both successful large brands who can probably means dot brand."
Bloggs Bogs might have to choose induction for a dot category domain - if anyone relates for .toilet that is.
When the focus time closes, Icann will confirm who has a viable bid.
"They're receiving the open confronting internet, they're rupturing chunks off and they're giving them to people to operate," says Mr Callan. "So they wish to be assured people can run it correctly."
Where there are multi-part subordinate bids, Icann has a set of criteria to confirm who wins - in the box of compendium difference for example, open communities trump in isolation ones.
If this routine doesn't finish the situation, then it goes to auction, with the highest bidder winning. The initial gTLDs could be live by early 2013.
So what is pulling companies to purchase their own dot brand?
Mr Callan says safeguarding your heading is a motive, not usually to frustrate cybersquatters, but to beat other companies using the same name to it.
"Trademark law allows non-colliding trademarks to exist. If I'm working in North America and you're working in Europe and you do not cranky over, then you can both have a trademark. But usually a of us can have the TLD."
Then, he says, there's the selling benefit.
"[Companies] regard they can have a improved connection between offline selling and online traffic by having names that are shorter, more memorable, simpler to cocktail out in a selling campaign."
"For example, laptop.hitachi. Very crisp. Very easy to remember, really easy to communicate."
This includes the benefits a installed url brings in conditions of looking engine optimisation (SEO) strategy, a routine where sites are built to make them more popular to looking engines.
Security is other draw.
"There are a lot of people who won't do internet shopping since the security, I regard dot brand has a lot of future there," says Field Fisher Waterhouse's Simon Briskman.
"[It] is going to really help as a sign of authenticity."
Perception is a large deal, according to Dr Jonathan Freeman, comparison techer in psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London and handling director of i2 media research.
"A lot of this is consumer perception. Reassuring consumers is going to complement the online behaviours and transactions. They'll feel a lot more cheerful traffic [with] it."
Despite this, he anticipates consumers will not immediately take to the new fixing conventions.
"What people are used to carrying out is going to be a large decding factor in how consumers adopt and use dot brand as it rolls out.
"I'd design it to take a whilst to hide in consumer behaviour, mainly given the border to which consumers rest on looking engines today."
So where does this leave the brands that cannot means to be segment of the new world order?
"There will fundamentally be a new brand ranking system, which in a way I find type of concerning." says Euro RSCG's Rebecca Moody.
"Do you danger looking similar to a second rate brand?"
Understandably, not as big brands are uneasy.
"What the tiny businesses and not-for-profits have been angry about is there's a poignant blockade to entry," says Field Fisher Waterhouses's Simon Briskman.
"People are selling off slices of the internet actual estate, and they feel they're going to obtain closed out."
He says successive rounds might infer a little cheaper.
"I regard people will beginning to total the running of these day-to-day, which ought to bring down a few cost. I still do not regard that it will be available to Martha with her boutique in Marylebone."
And the widespread dot com? It's probably protected for a few time to come.
"I do not believe anyone is going to be shutting their dot coms in the next 5 years," says Tim Callan of Melbourne IT DBS.
"But does any of us regard we're going to be typing dot com in a hundred years? No."
Simon Briskman is rather more tempered.
"The reason dot com will tarry is [for example] the Times - there's the Financial Times, the New York Times. It's just not probable for everybody to obtain the names that they wish in the new dot com space."
"If you wish a great presence, but may be not the most appropriate presence, if you wish someone else to run the infrastructure, you'll probably use dot coms.
"They'll happily co-exist I just do not regard they'll have the same power that the dot brand does."
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