Free Domain Names?
Tokelau an island nation 500 miles north of Western Samoa accessible only via a 42 hour boat ride, is giving away .tk domains for free.
Seriously.
Tokelau’s culture centers on a system for dividing goods, called Inati, where all the goods are divided equally amongst the people, so everyone has the same chances, opportunities and the same amount of food. Now, I’m as capitalistic as most, but if I were going to be poor, I’d take communal resource living on a tropical paradise over double shifts at the Whataburger any day of the week.
What makes Tokelau different, is their decision to open up this philosophy to the rest of the world. By setting aside a small subset of commercially valuable domains and some corporate trademark names, they’ve identified a way to finance this project, and perhaps actually bring in a little income while offering the majority of the domains for free. That’s brilliant. Heck, it may be the best dotcom business model I’ve seen so far.
The free domains (which require you to have a site up and running before you register) include email forwarding for up to 5 addresses and website statistics. That’s pretty darn good. It means that with a little ingenuity, a person could set up his own domain, aliased to a free hosting site, and with email routed through a free mail account. Add free internet access at the local library, and you have a pretty amazing opportunity for anyone, no matter what their financial situation, to have an internet presence.
Now, utsler.tk has already been snapped up, but your domain choice may still be available. Go check it out!
I almost forgot – Faka fetai, Tokelau.