I was working at WordPress.com when Automattic, the parent company behind WordPress.com, launched the .blog TLD. (For the non-technical, that means that they were the owners and operators of whatever.blog, seths.blog, tim.blog, etc.)
One thing I often wished was true (but isn’t), is that Automattic would also own blog.com, and then automatically create whatever.blog.com and redirect it to whatever.blog for the owner of whatever.blog.
Doing this would substantially decrease my fear of using a new TLD like .blog. If I knew that potential site visitors could also go to whatever.blog.com and get to my website, I would feel better – especially if my audience was non-technical. If I gave my business card to someone, and they weren’t sure what to do with whatever.blog and added .com to the end, I’d want it to still work.
Now, I’m not Google or another search engine, who can see the amount of searches for specific new TLD domains, so I don’t have data to back this idea up. I don’t know how much this would actually be used.
But, if I were a registry, I would definitely want to provide this service to ease the fear of potential domain buyers. If you did it right, it wouldn’t cost much (in most cases), and would make everything more seamless for your new TLD.
Opinions? Has anyone done this before?
Michael Henry's blog 