Five years ago today, .CO domain names became available for people around the world to register. Neustar, the parent company of the .CO Registry, is celebrating the 5th birthday of the .CO Registry today. In honor of this occasion, the company published a detailed press release along with three infographics that share some great information about .CO domain names.
To me, one of the most interesting aspects of the celebration is that Neustar and the .CO Registry aren’t simply touting the accomplishments of the Registry in the press release. The focus of the news is more geared towards the accolades of companies using .CO domain names. The .CO Registry has worked very hard to create a community amongst its registrants, and celebrating its registrants rather than itself on this anniversary is not surprising to me.
Some interesting facts shared in the press release and three accompanying infographics include:
- Over 1.8 million .CO domain names under management.
- Companies using .CO domain names have received over $1,000,000,000 in funding.
- Domain registrants in over 200 countries.
- GoDaddy is the largest distribution partner.
In the press release, Neustar detailed some exclusive offers for .CO domain registrants. Here’s what was said about that:
In celebration of .CO’s fifth birthday, Neustar is providing a set of exclusive offers to its community of innovators and entrepreneurs through its Membership Program, which include free public relations consulting, memberships to co-working space, and access to high value software to help startup founders run their business.
From the beginning, the .CO Registry embraced domain investors and the domain investment community. They worked very hard to generate awareness of the extension, and that helped drive registrations. They also worked closely with the startup community and received tremendous exposure visa vis the companies that used .CO domain names. I think this was very good for the domain space, especially since the registry continued to promote its domain names around the world.
I appreciate the support the .CO Registry has given the domain investment business as well as my blog. The .CO Registry has sponsored events and conferences and it has also brought greater awareness to domain names via its marketing to startups, and of course, its Super Bowl television commercials. The .CO Registry has been an advertiser since before their domain names became available, and their support of this blog is greatly appreciated.
Congratulations to the .CO Registry on its 5th anniversary. It looks like they are going to have many more years to come. I shared the infographics below:
Another awesome stat about .CO – even though there are so many great names being used there are a number of fantastic short, meaningful names that drop every day. I love seeing them get re-registered and put to great use.
Here’s a sample of the some still available that have dropped over the last month:
abridger.co
aided.co
aquarian.co
autocorrect.co
badgers.co
bares.co
bitchain.co
bobber.co
BulkCandy.co
bundlers.co
CardApp.co
cargos.co
cinched.co
claimant.co
clubbed.co
comped.co
concerning.co
conciertos.co
confined.co
confusing.co
consistently.co
constraint.co
Countless.co
coverings.co
cresent.co
cribnotes.co
Croakers.co
crumpet.co
culminate.co
declining.co
docked.co
doctora.co
dodging.co
DogPark.co
drifted.co
drifts.co
dutifully.co
eFlip.co
favored.co
fetched.co
flushed.co
forger.co
forwarded.co
godly.co
greaser.co
helpfully.co
initiated.co
installed.co
irregulars.co
legumes.co
liberally.co
licenser.co
longings.co
matting.co
metered.co
minimizers.co
mixtures.co
mounting.co
nagger.co
nudged.co
papered.co
passing.co
pecks.co
picadilly.co
pinched.co
polled.co
ProblemSolver.co
rapping.co
reclining.co
reducer.co
rewarded.co
sappling.co
satiate.co
scavenged.co
settler.co
settlers.co
soothing.co
spruced.co
spumante.co
strider.co
stumbled.co
swagga.co
swelling.co
taker.co
tapout.co
tattler.co
templater.co
toastie.co
traitors.co
verifymy.co
vexed.co
vieques.co
wedded.co
welcoming.co
wince.co
winking.co
The higher renewal prices I think have helped with end user adoption because the $24 renewal price is 3x a .com and keeps good/decent names continuously being dropped and available to end users. It’s nothing to a business but you really have to evaluate your portfolio as a domain investor and only keep those you think are premium at that price.
At this time of celebration let’s also not forget the .CO Registry’s support of .com domain holders, with those people who used .co later realising how much traffic they were losing from a confusing web address.