A parked domain name is one which is taken, yet it is not connected to another service - web or email hosting. In other words, this type of domain address won't load any actual content if you type it in a browser, but nobody can take it as you've already registered it and you are its owner. The advantage of getting a domain and parking it afterwards is that you can keep it and not worry that someone else could possibly register it meanwhile if, for instance, the website for it is not ready yet. You may create a temporary Under Construction website page for a parked domain while you're working on the site, or direct it to another web address - temporarily or permanently. The latter option can be employed when you have already registered domain.com, for example, and you get domain.net and domain.org, in order to protect a brand name or a trademark. In this case, the .net and .org domains can be parked and directed to the .com since you don't need individual websites for them.