Why I bought http://www.georgemoen.tel and why you will get yours!

by George Moen on September 9, 2009

My Success is all because of the network I built. So what do I do about it? Or, Dot Tel (.tel): Why I bought www.georgemoen.tel and why you will get yours!

I can remember the first time I was asked if I had an EMail address on the Internet. I was at a Christmas party hosted by a Fortune 500 company and the biggity-wiggities were all going to a training session in Europe (BTW: It was Nestlé). I grasped the concept fairly quickly and wondered if this thing called EMail over the Internet was going to catch on. It was about 6 months later I got my first email address, and within a few months I was involved in my first Internet-related business. I have seen a lot since then: the Dot Boom & Crash, Web 2.0, mission-critical net-based applications that my companies and I could not survive without.

Just when you think nothing new could come along to grab your interest, .tel comes along. I have to admit I did not quite get it at first, but within a few days of my first introduction, I had one of the rare A-Hah moments.

The domain .tel is unlike any other domain on the market for a number of reasons. First, it is optimized for the cell platforms (Blackberry, iPhone, etc.) Second, it comes already hosted with an Admin.

It may not be too much of a stretch that we may have seen the end of the traditional business card. In fact, I think I will be printing my last business card, and all it will say is “www.georgemoen.tel”. At this domain, I maintain all my contact information, and as I make changes, the updated contact information becomes instantly available to anyone who knows my .tel domain. So, if you want to contact me, all you will need to do to go to that site to connect with me the way you want. Connect with me at Blenz, High Output, Twitter, Facebook … the list of ways to connect with anyone is constantly growing.

There are a lot of very cool aspects to the .tel concept, but the one that got my particular attention is the Sync feature. No matter where you keep your contacts (I use Outlook and Blackberry), .tel will keep your record of me current. So when I update an E Mail or phone number, for example, the information in your Blackberry or iPhone is automatically updated. Further, it is a way to organize all your online and offline information in one area. You are in control of who sees what. There is also a “social media” aspects called “Telfriends”.

I have to thank the folks over at WebNames.ca (Cybele Negris, Matt Lane and Lisa Wills) for reaching out to us at High Output and being great teachers about this emerging technology. We at HOBN think this will be a great tool for our network but also for anyone who can use the internet for their business or career. It did not take long for us to set up a “re-seller” agreement with them. If connecting with quality folks is a benefit to you, this program will be a great fit, and the cost is a mere US$19.95 per year.

There are a lot of other aspects to this program, and I know everyone probably has Dot/Net/App fatigue, but I recommend that you at least protect your name or brand and be positioned for the time when .tel gains “killer app” status.

Here are a couple of .tel’s that will give you a flavour:
George Moen: http://www.georgemoen.tel
Blenz Coffee: http://www.blenzcoffee.tel (note that, with unlimited pages, this is a big site)
HighOutput: http://www.highoutputnetworking.tel
Webnames: http://www.webnames.tel

Check out your name. Many great names are available

For a better overview of .tel (with videos, demos etc): http://hobn.registertel.com
Most URL registration organizations do provide .tel registration. We have gone with WebNames for a bunch of reasons, including new developments coming shortly to help promote .tel’s and build traffic to all your internet-based properties.

To wrap up, I have a growing sense that .tel is one application with huge leverage potential for my brands and business interests. The one thing I am running out of is time and this has the potential to be a huge time saving tool. For anyone like me that has spent a good part of their business career building a contact database this one is “out of the park!” Bring it on… It’s the world’s largest Rolodex and I get to slip my card into it – how cool is that?!

George Moen…. Gone .tel!

{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }

Andy Chantrill September 9, 2009 at 7:56 pm

Great post George. I didn’t fully grok .tel at first either, but the next day eureka! A platform for communication services.

A lot of people are still catching up, but when they get here it’s going to be exciting.

Matt September 9, 2009 at 11:08 pm

Great article. Your reference to email is spot on – .TEL is to contact information what email was to memos 20 years ago. It took a while to catch on, but truly revolutionized the way we work. We’ll see the same thing with .TEL. It seems that Nestle are clearly ahead of the curve when it comes to spotting trends. They were also one of the first major corporations to start using their .TEL name effectively. Check out http://nestle.tel

François September 10, 2009 at 8:38 am

I could not agree more George!

One tip though: you don’t need “www” in a .tel URL which makes it shorter (i.e. http://georgemoen.tel instead of http://www.georgemoen.tel).

Warm regards,
François

TELcp April 21, 2012 at 12:21 am

You have missed out one important feature that comes with your .tel. That maintaining Private Data on your tel pages. With this feature you can publish private contact details and allow only selected group(s) to view them.

Cheers!

.tel MailBox August 12, 2012 at 4:27 am

Now you don’t have to expose your personal email address on your .tel pages (of .tel domain) anymore. You can use our email masking service at http://www.telmailbox.com to protect it from spammers.

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