.LA, Am I In Los Angeles or Laos?
.TV is not the only ccTLD that has diverged from its original designation.
LA Names is marketing the .LA ccTLD as the best address in LA - Los Angeles that is. LA Names also states that Los Angeles is the first city in the world to have its own domain, which is a bit of a stretch given that Los Angeles is effectively borrowing Laos’ TLD.
Does a city, even a large one, merit a TLD? Is LA Names a trendsetter or a company overestimating the public’s desire to have “local” domain names like .LA, .NYC, .Berlin, .London and .Paris?
L.A. is not necessarily the first city. Up until recently, I lived in Toronto Canada, a city everyone who lives there has nicknamed "T.O." - so needless to say, many Toronto related domains are found under the Tonga Islands TLD, ".to"
I think that in terms of widespread adoption for that purpose, T.O. beat L.A. to the punch!
"Does a city, even a large one, merit a TLD?" What about a company –yes, a fairly large one? I recently noticed that Microsoft was using a .ms domain. What's next, Goldman Sachs using .gs?
BTW, the site I meant was http://www.popfly.ms/ (had to search for it).
What's interesting is that Google has Google.LA which is advertised for the country of Laos rather than the City of Los Angeles.