With the reopening of TAS this is not an extension for more companies, organizations and individuals to apply for new TLDs.

Individuals, organizations and corporations needed to have registered with ICANN by 29 March 2012. Think of this extra time over the next week as an extension on something one needed to have completed anyways.

What we still are waiting to know:

• When the reveal date will be
• How many TLDs will be applied
• Who applied for what
• How many of the TLDs will be positioned

The WHOIS Policy Review Team, constituted under ICANN‘s Affirmation of Commitments (AoC) agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce, submitted its Final Report and Recommendations to the ICANN Board and has been posted for public comments as of May 11th, 2012.

World Research Group is hosting “The Generic Top-Level Domain Name Summit : The Challenges and Opportunities Facing the Financial, Pharmaceutical, Consumer Goods, and Other Branding Companies Since ICANNs Program”, on September 13, 2012 in Los Angeles, California.

• Users who did not have file names or usernames viewed
• Users who had one or more file names and/or user names that may have been viewed by another user
• Users who may have seen the file names and/or usernames of one or more other users
• Users who had one or more file names and/or user names that may have been viewed, and who also may have been able to see file name and/or username information of other users

What we will still be waiting for is the “reveal date.” If ICANN continues with the timeframe set forth in April, an anticipated reveal date would two weeks after the TAS closes, if there are no other unexpected hiccups.

With the step of notifying applicants, ICANN can now work towards a date to reopen the TAS for applications. The anticipated date for reopening is 22 May 2012 with a closing date of 30 May 2012.

ICANN is targeting May 22nd, 2012 to reopen TAS, and anticipate that the system would remain open for five business days and close on 30 May.

Since the application window opened in January, ICANN has received over 2,091 applicants and collected $350 Million.

Take the quick poll and see how others responded: How Many Unique New gTLD’s Will Be Applied For? 52% agree so far.

ICANN has offered refunds to applicants who have been inconvenienced by a shutdown of the application system.

Can You Imagine More Than 1,200 New Top-Level Domains? According to Rod Beckstrom, 1,268 TLD applications is a pretty safe bet and not expected to be lower than that.

“To do that, we are reviewing internal system logs and full packet-level capture of all traffic to and from the application system from 12 January through 12 April.”~ICANN

Once all affected applicants have been notified, it appears the TAS system will be scheduled to be reopened.

The highly anticipated Reveal Day has been postponed. Once the TAS is reopened, it is likely that ICANN will extend the application window by a week or two, pushing the reveal day out even further.

There is a fundamental change to the ecosystem and business of the Internet.  Registries will need to market to the registrant directly with precise marketing and branding message to stimulate sales.

ICANN continues to work to re-open the TLD application system. On April 19th, they released a video interview with Jeff Moss, ICANN’s Vice President and Chief Security Officer, answering questions about the glitch.

On April 21st, ICANN posted some FAQs to supplement the interview with Jeff Moss in hopes of alleviating the concerns.

ICANN announced yesterday, April 16, that they believe they have fixed the glitch with the system and they are testing it to make sure.  They will provide an update on the timing of the reopening no later than Friday, 20 April at 23.59 UTC.

DN Journal Editor & Publisher Ron Jackson provides interesting and thoughtful perspectives on the .US Campaign launched on April 10th, 2012.