The .gay Launch Explained

.gay is currently available, while also not yet available to the whole world. Confusing, right? We know, but this is standard procedure for any new domain extension. Right now, .gay is in its “Sunrise II” phase.

What is sunrise?

The .gay Sunrise II phase, which is now open, is a special registration window open to any verifiable trademark holder. If you have a registered trademark anywhere in the world via a reputable body (e.g., WIPO, USPTO, UKIPO, OHIM -EUIPO), you can apply for a sunrise registration in .gay. If you are a trademark holder and you wish to register your domain, you’ll find more information on our .gay Sunrise page.

Photo by Rui Magalhães on Unsplash

What’s next?

Due to the global pandemic, we made the decision to postpone the General Availability launch of .gay. The current Sunrise II phase closes on September 4.

RIGHT NOW, we are helping community groups, organizations, small businesses, and individuals that want to create digital Pride and connection during the global pandemic. Many organizations have had to shut their doors, many community locales are closed, and Pride events are being cancelled. We have a limited number of .gay names that we can activate early and we cannot imagine a better use for them. Our team will work with you to secure a .gay name and will waive all associated fees and help to get you online free of charge. If you would like to activate a .gay site to foster digital Pride, please submit a request via our online form.

September 8 – 15 “Early Access Period,” where anyone can pay an extra fee to register a .gay domain. The extra fee lessens each day over the course of this one week. Ever heard of a Dutch auction? No?! Well, this is an example of one. The fees start rather high and get more affordable fast. The high fees reflect the fact that there are some very valuable .gay names coming out (I’m looking at you, travel.gay!). 

September 16 “General Availability,” aka LAUNCH DAY, is the day anyone, anywhere can register a .gay domain on a first-come, first-served basis. Prices for standard names will begin under $30; variability you see in retail is due to registrar markup or a possible premium name (still looking at you, travel.gay). Continue to check back with us, follow our socials, or consider a pre-order at registrars offering such services.

Waiting for Launch day? Join us at OHhey.gay!

Feel good about your support of a historic internet launch: 20% of .gay registration revenue (not just profit!) is donated to GLAAD and CenterLink.

Agoda.design, making the switch from .com

Every new name brand using .design is exciting news for us at .design HQ, but we were particularly thrilled to learn about agoda.design launching. This is because it was actually moving from agodadesign.com to agoda.design! Cheers for a more succinct, interesting, readable, and designful URL like agoda.design! 

The site moved from agodadesign.com to agoda.design and was already full of content and engaging from the start.

Of course, our community of designers and businesses using .design is now over 100,000 strong, and only a small percentage of them are name brands like Agoda. We track our name brand usage because it shows the credibility that we have all built together. The only reason that Agoda feels comfortable using agoda.design, or Airbnb continues to grow airbnb.design into a vibrant destination, is because of the wider community of .design’ers. Like any company that has mastered content marketing, they are speaking to their target audience of designers and design-minded creators where they are already at: on .design domains. 

Agoda.design clearly fits into the pattern of large companies using a .design site to recruit for their design departments. However, they do not just fall into the pattern set by such notable companies as Facebook and Uber, but they lead (see facebook.design, uber.design). This is because they go beyond the pattern set by others, which tends to showcase a company’s goals, how the design department contributes, and introduces actual designers. Agoda.design speaks to the practical sides of employment too! They mention their benefits, their corporate focus on health and wellbeing, and how a position at Agoda will help you develop your career. They sell you not only on the big picture idea of working at Agoda but help you imagine how it will impact you on a daily, practical level.

Parts of the site link out to a legacy recruiting site for the rest of the country. It is clear from that site that the agoda.design site was necessary to speak to designers in a language and mode that they appreciated. While the legacy site is built out and functions for all Agoda departments, the agoda.design site bolsters the design department’s ability to claim design excellence. The agoda.design site is functional, thoughtful, and beautiful in a way that the legacy site simply is not. 

We’re excited to see Agoda make the switch to .design. They are already leading the growing trend of using .design to recruit. Assuming the Agoda.design is successful at recruiting, they may have the opportunity to make some fundamental changes to how the rest of the company recruits and those legacy systems involved! 

Cisco Webex redesigns teamwork at webex.design

As the registry powering the .design domain extension, it is humbling to see uses for .design that you never would have imagined. Not only are these .design sites more beautiful, creative, and user-friendly than your average website -- they are also very innovative. Recently, we see several major brands creating their own .design presence. One of the most recent sites we’ve discovered is webex.design from the Silicon-Valley powerhouse, Cisco.

We recently met Cisco Webex’s Design Group at the Interaction19 conference, hosted by the Interaction Design Association (IxDA). Cisco was there with the main goal of identifying potential talent and recruiting new hires on to their team. They launched their website, www.webex.design, just before the start of this event with the goal of using it to inform and attract talent at the conference.

We began corresponding with Cisco’s Danielle Epstein, and learned that webex.design is helping to showcase their design team and the work they do against challenging design problems related to teamwork and communication.

“Cisco Webex has not historically been known as an organization that employs a lot of designers, but that just isn’t the case. We have more than 100 designers here doing incredible work in both product and industrial design, and we think it deserves to be showcased to the world!”

Not only does this site provide them with tools like capturing job interest from the event’s attendees, but it also provides the public with insight into the products this team works on as well as their team culture, values, and structure.

Over the next few months, The Design Group will begin using this site for internal purposes as well. The dream is to make webex.design the home for all design operations content so that designers can access all important information and resources from a single source as opposed to from a variety of tools. “What's really cool is that someone looking at our site from the outside will go to the same place as a new hire once they join. It's a continuous experience from pre-hired to hired and ramping up all the way to being a pro on the team”, Danielle notes.

The work is already paying off, even though the site is still under development. The team is proud to have an official presence and they can't wait to see how the site will continue to evolve.

“We are trying to reach out to many different people with Webex.Design. From the partners who sell our systems, to the customers who deploy and manage them, and end users who use them. The .design domain allows us to very overtly say -- this is what drives what we build. This is why we build things the way we do, and these are the brilliant people who do it. We are happy that the .design domain gives us a place to have this design-centric conversation.”

Cisco is building this site so they can be seen as design leaders alongside some of their competitors and other successful companies, many of which have their own .design sites. The Design Group also cited many other .design sites, such as slack.design, airbnb.design, and uber.design, as further inspiration when building webex.design.

adobe.design In Their Own Words

While we’ve been celebrating the launches of many amazing .design sites by household brands (NBD, just facebook.design, airbnb.design, amazon.design, and over a dozen others), this one is really special: adobe.design!

That’s because Adobe is the preeminent design company, perhaps they are not as well-known (yet) for their actual design work like Airbnb is, but they are the creators of the software that designers use and live with. In fact, the adobe.design site is clearly an attempt to make them more relevant for their internal design and their customer-facing design rather than just their software. The launch of adobe.design is a fantastic sign that .design is reaching all types of people and companies, and it will be a means to bring together the design community for a long time.

Rather than put my own spin on it, I’d rather highlight the words of Adobe’s VP of Design, Jamie Myrold, on her her inaugural post to adobe.design:

“In all of [our] efforts, it’s designers who are illuminating the path forward. That’s because more than ever, all of us at Adobe know that we’re creating software for a world where design is valued at every level, in every detail. This conviction about the essential nature of design is what makes this the most exciting time to work at Adobe in my many years here.

This is why, for the first time ever, the design team has put forward a public presence in the form of this website, adobe.design. I hope you’ll take a moment to look and around to see for yourself some of what we’re doing and also what we’re thinking as we undertake the challenges facing the design profession in the coming years.

And if you’re excited by what you see, about the possibilities inherent in creating tools that amplify the world’s ability to create and communicate, then let’s talk! Adobe Design is growing and we have a wide range of open roles for designers like yourself who want to take part in a truly amazing, design-led transformation.”