This weekend I’ve been looking for someone to reupholster a sofa.  So I searched on Google, scanned the search results (paid and natural), checked out a few web sites and made some calls.

All went well until I asked a business whether I could email some photos of my sofa to them for a quote.  ”Sure just use the email address on the web site”, came the reply.  When I pointed out that there wasn’t an email address listed,  the response was “bloody hell, I’ve been waiting ages for that to get done!” 

So here was a small business that had the wherewithal to advertise itself on Google and yet struggled to keep its basic contact information up to date on its principal web site.   

Which brings me to the new .tel top-level domain and its promise that businesses can “join a global online directory that provides you instant worldwide exposure…” and the ability to “integrate all your means of communication in a single place under your control…”

So will the .Tel TLD make life easier for SMEs?  At first glance it looks pretty useful in that it allows a business or individual to add all their contact data easily, control who has access to it and update it as they need.   

Moreover, .Tel is unlike other TLDs in that it stores a user’s information right in the DNS.

But so what? Going back to my search for a reupholstery service, as I didn’t have a personal recommendation to go on, I needed to find out more than just simple contact info.  That’s one reason why I went to Google and not a directory listings site … I wanted to look at company web sites or customer reviews to get some perspective on the businesses.  

In this regard, .Tel contact data would not have materially helped me at this stage of my search as a consumer looking for a business.  In fact it would have been no better than a standard directory listing, particularly as there is no reason why data accuracy should be any better for a self-administered listing on .Tel than a directory entry.  Looked at in this way, .Tel seems like the Net-savvy younger brother of the BT OSIS database which provides the backbone data for print and online listings in the UK.  Whereas OSIS uses the telephone number as the anchor point for its business and residential listings, .Tel uses the DNS … different technologies, same end point.

Another open issue in my mind is how the .Tel approach sits with the most recent developments in personal data/profile sharing from the likes of Google, Myspace and most of all Facebook which has built some serious momentum with Facebook Connect.   What these forms of data portability offer is not just sharing of singular contact information between networks, but richer contextual data about me and my contacts.  They deliver not just information but context about the information – i.e. the sort of added value I went searching on the Web for when looking for my reupholstery service.

Now .Tel could interface back into the social graph by supporting one or more of these data portability initiatives and this does seem to be on the cards.  Being able to keep a single set of profile information updated that would then feed into all my other online profiles and Web sites would be very handy indeed.  This is the sort of service a business like the one I spoke to Saturday would likely pay for.  However, couldn’t this service equally be provided by a profile/network holder such Plaxo or Linked In for businesses and a Myspace or Facebook for consumers?

It’s early days for .Tel and it’s going to be interesting to watch how it develops as right now it seems to be poised somewhere between a legacy directory model, Web 1.0 TLDs and Web 2.0 data portability.