CircleID

I put this out there as a question to readers who may be better informed than I am: What is the value of a .pro domain? It seems very overpriced to me, inasmuch as it is possible to obtain everything .pro offers in the way of security as a fraction of the price elsewhere on a .com domain. As for having a domain that somehow vouches for the fact that the registrant is a professional (lawyer, doctor, etc.), it seems to me that this function is best left to each profession's regulatory body (state bar associations, etc), rather than allowing such an important function to be handled by a for-profit entity. I would think that lawyers would be upset at the idea of having .pro put to them by a commercial entity. But I could be wrong, and I would certainly like to read opposing views on this.

The value is quite different than just a $6.00 generic domain name.  From their website, it states the .pro name is only given after a two-step verification process of the individual.  In addition, the registrant gets a security certificate which would otherwise cost anywhere from $50 to $500 on the web.

To Mr. O'Toole's point on leaving the function to each profession's regulatory body, I would tend to agree, if they were uniform and consistant.  Instead, RegistryPro is providing a data-aggregation service by tying all these national, state, and local chapters together with one interface.

I suspect RegistryPro is going to serve as a template for future TLDs by linking the registrant to a particular demographic.  We've also seen this trend (in a small way) with kids.us which restricts registrations to those providing appropraite content for kids.