Australian communities online: Using geographic names as community domain names
Australia has over 27,000 communities living in cities, towns and villages spread across a land mass similar in size to Europe. Many of these communities are geographically isolated far from major centers and services. One of the simplest uniting factors for any community is their geographic name or place name. The World Wide Webs offers an unprecedented means of global communication and an opportunity for communities to interact in a cohesive manner.
In a world first, the Australian Domain Name Administrator (auDA) which is the Australian regulator of the World Wide Web, has created eight (8) new Geographic 2nd Level Domains (2LDs) which will serve the needs of a community of users that are not currently well served by the existing 2LDs. The aim is to provide an intuitive, standardised naming system to enable better access to local community, tourism and business information and to facilitate social and economic benefits to Australian Communities.