Few in online medical community choose ".md"

Registrations for this Internet domain extension remain low, but some still see opportunity in what is being pitched as a medical-specific Web presence.

By Pamela Lewis Dolan, AMNews staff. Dec. 10, 2007.

Despite a 2004 settlement that opened the doors for American physicians and other medical-related entities to create ".md" Web sites, that domain extension has experienced a quiet existence for the past three years.

MaxMD, a Jersey City, N.J.-based company took over ".md" registration rights through an agreement with the Republic of Moldova in 2004 and is now the exclusive ".md" registrar for the United States and 90 other countries. But in the past three years, only about 6,000 organizations have registered an ".md" domain, the company said. When compared with the 138 million ".com" domains that are registered, ".md" is barely a blip.

Scott Finlay, CEO of MaxMD, said ".md" hasn't become a well-known specialty domain extension in part because of the company's efforts to keep the domain part of a niche market aimed specifically at the medical community. Instead of creating an outside marketing campaign for ".md" sites, the company is instead relying on word of mouth.

While ".com" and ".net" domains can be registered at one of more than 840 registrars, less than 20 organizations are contracted with MaxMD to offer ".md" domains, and most are private organizations, such as medical societies, that offer registration only to members. Registrants must also sign an agreement stating the ".md" Web site will be used only for medical-related content.

The Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers assigned each country throughout the world a domain extension in 1994. The extensions assigned to some countries -- such as Moldova's ".md" and the Tuvalu Island's ".tv" -- were seen by some Internet entrepreneurs as having huge marketing potential.