The first city-based domain extension for websites, .la, was released Monday with the aim of attracting Los Angeles and the entertainment industry.
GoDaddy, the world’s largest domain registrar, will launch .la — the domain address for the country of Laos — with several entertainment-based URLs offered, including Moviestars.la, Studio.la, Filmfestival.la and Glamour.la.
GoDaddy added .la to its catalog June 20, and expects the domain extension, which is distributed by CentralNic Group, to blow up upon its Monday reveal, as many of the desired entertainment URLs are already taken with top-level domains such as .com, .net and .org.
Many URLs already have vague location association with country-specific top-level domains such as .us and .uk, but the company hopes to set the stage for other city-specific URLs, with .nyc .paris and .miami set to be released in 2014. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced plans for the .nyc top-level domain two years ago with the 2011 “Roadmap for a Digital City,” and the Internet Cooperation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) recently approved the request.
