I see that ICANN has approved new top-level domains .travel and .jobs. A quote from the registrar who will operate the .travel TLD :

I would say there is a great deal of pent up demand for this domain name now.

Really? Where is the demand coming from? Aside from the registrar’s pent up demand to make money, of course. Copyright law pretty much ensures that Orbitz, Travelocity, Expedia et al are still going to exist, no matter what their top-level domain names are (or how many they have). Is www.yahoo.travel any easier to remember than travel.yahoo.com ?

I’m not suggesting we do away with topic-specific TLDs. We should create zillions of ’em – why not? These days, when search engines are actually useful, I wonder if top-level domain names have a future. I mean, as an important branding instrument.

(obligatory analytics comment: update your list of TLDs!)