L.A. Sort Of Gets a ‘Dot’ Designation of Its Own

Surf globally, act locally.

That’s the idea behind DotLA, a start-up company that today will announce its plans to market Internet and e-mail addresses ending in “.la” instead of “.com” or other familiar Net suffixes. Although that particular pair of letters is best known for designating Los Angeles, on the Internet it is actually the country code for Laos in Southeast Asia.

Sterling Holdings of Hong Kong negotiated an agreement with the government of Laos to let DotLA offer .la addresses. The Los Angeles-based company has already begun marketing the addresses to corporations and other trademark holders, and it will make them available to the general public beginning Jan. 2, the company said. The 1-month-old company is charging $200 for the first year and $100 for subsequent years.

Los Angeles is home to 3.5 million people and 328,000 businesses, but DotLA thinks its target market is even bigger. In addition to Angelenos, the company is also reaching out to companies with operations in the state of Louisiana--whose two-letter postal abbreviation is LA--and in Latin America.