Simone Catania from InternetX conducted an interview with Shannon O’Donald from Identity Digital. It’s a rather lengthy interview as Shannon really took the time to answer Simone’s questions with a lot of info.
From the interview:
It hit the headlines in June 2022: Donuts Inc. and Afilias, two big players in the domain industry who happened to be located under the same organizational roof, rebranded under the new brand Identity Digital. Why this new brand name?
Identity Digital™ better reflects the commitment to helping customers find, grow and protect their authentic digital identities. This rebrand coincides with helping our customers understand that they no longer have to compromise when they choose their domain name. As the heart of their digital identity, they can select a domain that leverages both sides of the dot to express what their company is and why it matters. United under one brand, Identity Digital cements its status as a leader in connecting the online world with domain names and related technologies that allow people to build, market, and own their authentic digital identities.
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Identity Digital manages one of the largest new gTLD portfolios in the domain industry. How was it established, and how do you manage all these different extensions?
We operate nearly 300 new gTLDs like .live, .news, or .business, just to name three examples. A “new gTLD” is a domain ending other than “.com”, “.org”, or other such well-known endings. They are run through our own registry service provider business. Our technical expertise also allows us to manage TLDs for other registries. We do this with a solid and stable cloud-based platform that supports us effectively in all DNS-related operations.
Identity Digital (formerly Donuts and Afilias) was founded in 2010, at a time when there was a finite amount of digital real estate, although the internet was expanding. Identity Digital seized this expansion opportunity when ICANN broadened the internet to include more generic top-level domains (gTLDs) in 2012. At the time, a very limited number of TLDs existed, and many companies and investors were buying up the domain names.
The company was created to expand and connect the online world with domain names and related technologies. Its descriptive domain names, such as .live, .technology, and .social, let people build, market, and own their digital identities using both sides of the dot.
In 2020, Donuts acquired Afilias, a leading TLD registry operator and service provider, to deliver new technologies and best practices to registry clients, registrars, and the entire domain community. Since then, the company has continued its impressive growth, developing a large ecosystem of employees, customers, and partners.
While it’s exciting to have such an extensive portfolio of descriptive domain extensions, it also poses a key challenge. Many people simply do not know about them, so we need to grow awareness. We have addressed this mainly through two approaches:
1) Consumer Campaign: The campaign aims to help people learn about the value of owning their most authentic digital identity. Part of what makes it most authentic is that they can choose from nearly 300 of our domain extensions. This means business owners can use both the left and right sides of the dot to include the most meaningful words such as edit.video.
2) Specific verticals or domain extensions: We did this, for example, with .bio. Once we realized this extension was used extensively by content creators, we looked at how they used it. Members of the creative ecosystem often have an Instagram or TikTok social presence they use to build their audience but they need to direct their users to where they can generate revenue. This is where “link in bio” tools come into play. Large and small brands use these tools to help capitalize on any traffic generated on social media platforms. We ran a specific go-to-market strategy to position .bio to our channel partners. We raised awareness around the extension to the relevant target audience, helping users grow their business by leveraging the power of .bio to create memorable “link in bio” domains.
Another excellent example is our campaign for .photography, a more community-centric approach to marketing a single domain name. We worked with online photography communities and influencers, such as well-known professional photographers. We showed them how to leverage their digital identity with a .photography domain name—noting that it was the most relevant and secure way to create their authentic digital identity. Immediately everyone knows who they are and what they do.
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You can read the full interview on the InternetX.com blog.
