The conflicting yet co-existing anxiety and enthusiasm in support of expanded Internet territory – those new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) we have heard so much about – may be misplaced. If the economic reports commissioned by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or ICANN are to be believed (nod, nod, wink, wink), top level domains fall flat because they are either too tightly defined (.museum?) or lightly marketed (.aero?).

Building a business plan to give a new gTLD the market and marketing reach it will need to succeed is a heavy lift. The technical requirements, ICANN participation and accelerating marketing from a standing start are pre-market and persistent costs. Why not take advantage of the momentum of a pre-built platform?

You can build a community or a customer base on a new gTLD but why not build it where the future is moving – in an app on the mobile and smart phone platform.

Just a few data points:

• Mobile analytics firm, Zokem, reported last week that smart phone users were using apps at a rate a third-more often than their browser.

• Gartner, the U.S.-based industry analyst firm, estimates there will be more than 200 million tablet computers up-and-running in the next two years.

• A report from Nielson notes that that one-third of mobile phones in the U.S. are already smart phones.

• The cost of development and deployment of the wildly successful iPhone app, “Angry Birds,” has been reported to be about 45 percent less than the gTLD application fee.

Any business case in support of a new gTLD will naturally include a clear objective: to support, to build, to promote, to create. In light of the way we are untethering and adopting broadband devices, rather than a gTLD, there ought to be an app for that.

— This first appeared at www.circleid.com