.TEL is about convenience. It’s like a personal (or business) bookmark. It’s one simple entry in an address book and you’re done. From there on all the data is automatically updated.

I’m not a well connected person by comparison to many, but even I’ve gathered over 1000 contacts in my Outlook address book over the years. I’d guess that 30% of them have some out of date information and I know for a fact that about 80% contain only an e-mail address and/or one phone number – and it’s never the number I want.

I’m happy to pay the $20 to get my mom a .TEL. It will make my life a little easier and if she only knew 19 other people, a buck a year seems a small price to pay. I’ll be getting one too. It will make my friend’s lives easier and stop them having to update every time I move, join a new group or change numbers. Multiply that by 500 or 1000 and I think they’ll be pleased.

I’m also planning to use it as a central secure place to store a whole whack of everyday personal and family information, like the babysitter’s number, emergency contacts, my doctor’s name, which I can never remember. I’ll make this private for either just myself or members of my immediate family and will be able to access it from any device. In fact the only thing I’m making public is my name. Everything else will require friending/authentication.

On the business side, it’s true there are a lot of ways to contact a company. Yes, I can Google it and hope it comes up near the top. Then browse to the site, then find the contact page. And hope you’ve built it for mobile devices. But I’m a customer. And a lazy one that expects the vendor to make my life easier.

All other things being equal, I’m more likely to go to yourCompetitor.tel where I can instantly access their address, find them on a map and call customer support or sales directly. I can find the branch nearest me, find any department and get to the person I need quickly.

It’s pretty easy to bash a new technology, but it’s worth thinking about the potential as well. LinkedIn is great. OpenID is great. The new dot Me is probably great too. But this thing isn’t any of them. And of the other technologies that are trying to address similar problems, this one seems to be way out in front in terms of easy of use and consumption. I think it has the potential to be something pretty extraordinary.

I don’t see it, nor do I see the need for it- but I certainly couldnt have predicted some of the weird ways this thing has evolved (or hasn’t in others- such as the repeated rejection of the .xxx domain, which would be the best way to filter smut to keep it out of the kiddies laptops (pun unintended- but I like it now that I see it!)).

Good luck mate- I hope it works out. Nothing wrong with entrepreneurial spirit.

Does my mom need a .tel site? Nope?

Does my business need a special web page with all of it’s contact info? Nope… you can find all of that contact info on the website my company already maintains. Or you can just google my company and get all the info you need.

Wait… maybe I need a place to publish my professional contact info so that people who know me can find me. That’s a swell idea… it’s called LinkedIn and it works great.

Sorry, but I just don’t see the point of this.