On Your Mark, Get Set, .CO !!

In February, HEXONET featured a blog posting titled, “.CO, the Hottest TLD in 2010” where we had the opportunity to interview Lori Anne Wardi, Director of Marketing for .CO Internet S.A.S. , the .CO registry operator.  This new TLD officially became available to the general public on June 20, 2010.  We thought this would be a good opportunity to provide readers with some relevant updates, as well as, key reasons why businesses should consider taking advantage of this new extension.

1) The numbers are in…

Here are some of the preliminary numbers, which indicate that the TLD is off to a roaring start.

• in the first minute of opening up for registrations, there were approximately 8,000 names registered
• within the first 5 minutes, approximately 40,000 names and subsequently within 30 minutes, 100,000 names!
• the current tally sits at:  359,177

2) Google and .CO

Google has confirmed that it will allow .CO to be treated as an international domain name.

A Google spokesperson recently told PC Pro magazine, "We will rank .CO domains appropriately if the content is globally targeted. Webmasters will soon have the functionality to be able to specify this by using the geo-targeting options in Google Webmaster Tools,"

3) Major corporations are already taking advantage of this new extension

• Twitter is one of the earliest adopters with t.CO, which the company is using for its URL shortening service similar to Bit.ly.
• Commerce giant Overstock.com recently purchased o.CO for $350,000  Click here to hear an interview of Jonathan Johnson, President of Overstock.com on their purchase of o.CO

4) e.CO auction

In June, e.CO was auctioned off for $81,000! Click here for more details.

5) HEXONET believes that .CO has the potential to become a premier web extension. Here are some reasons why businesses should consider taking advantage of this new TLD:

i)   CO is already understood around the world as the abbreviation for  “company” and “corporation”. In fact, many countries already use third-level domain designations that feature .CO (for example .co.uk, .co.nz, .co.jp). Research carried out on behalf of .CO Internet S.A.S, revealed that 75 percent of web users said they associated .CO with 'company', 'corporation', or other commercial endeavours.

ii)   As we all know, the .COM domain space is very crowded.  .CO can be a viable alternative to .COM. In fact, .CO Internet S.A.S. has indicated that their real sweet spot is “anyone with an idea, anyone with a dream, anyone with a business they are waiting to build or brand that they want to extend or promote and giving them an opportunity to find that perfect name to build out.”  In addition, according to a study done by leading market research company Ad-ology (http://www.ad-ology.com), 46% of small businesses do not have websites! Don’t be part of those statistics. This represents a great opportunity to take advantage of .CO for new entrepreneurs out there.

iii)   For existing .COM owners, it is also a good opportunity to protect your brand with a .CO registration

Finally, HEXONET would like to send kudos to the team at Internet S.A.S for doing an awesome job with the launch of .CO.  We look forward to seeing them garner much success in the years ahead.