Ken Hansen Leaves Neustar to Become CEO of co.com Registry

Ken HansenFor the past four years, Ken Hansen has been Senior Director of Business Development, GM, ,nyc at Neustar. In that role, he has been working to promote the .NYC registry, which has the backing of New York City.  I just learned that Ken is leaving Neustar to become CEO of the co.com Registry, a recently formed venture that will offer .co.com domain names.

The new co.com registry will sell subdomain names from the primary co.com domain name. The registry is being led by three people with extensive domain industry experience and connections – Ken Hansen, Gregg McNair (Chairman), and Paul Goldstone (President).

Paul Goldstone was the original owner of the co.com domain name and opted to sell domain names because of the popularity of the .co.cctld country extensions (I am told 61 countries use .co. in their ccTLD).  co.com believes “demand for domains ending in .com will not be going away“, and aims to meet the demand with short recognizable co.com domain names. The company’s tagline, is “Get the .com you’ve always wanted”.

The company plans to begin selling domain names in the first quarter of 2014. co.com will have a traditional Sunrise Period for trademark holders, and that will be followed by a Landrush Period and General Availability. The company also plans to privately sell some of its premium domain name assets. Those interested can sign up for launch updates at co.com.

The Registry scored a major coup in hiring Ken Hansen as its CEO. Ken has a ton of knowledge in this space, both on the marketing and policy side. As Gregg McNair said in the press release, “today our CEO is among the most respected and savvy operators in the registry space. Ken’s appointment along with his knowledge and understanding of the co.com opportunity is turning heads in a sea of confusion.”

The press release with the news is below:

Buenos Aires, Argentina, November, 15 2013 – Three well known domain industry leaders have teamed up to launch the co.com registry that will allow users to register the .com domain names they’ve always wanted!   Ken Hansen,(formerly Neustar) will lead the new venture as CEO, joining Paul Goldstone (President), and Gregg McNair (Chairman).

“When Paul asked me to work with him to build a ‘dream team’ for co.com, I immediately thought of Ken Hansen as our leader. Today our CEO is among the most respected and savvy operators in the registry space. Ken’s appointment along with his knowledge and understanding of the co.com opportunity is turning heads in a sea of confusion. To him the co.com solution was so simple and obvious” McNair said.

Sixty-one countries currently offer domain names ending in “co.countrycode” such as co.uk and co.jp, with registrations for those extensions totaling over 11 million.   Additionally, each year over ten million new .com domains are registered.   co.com Registry intends to capitalize on this strong demand, and the current lack of available domains, by opening up a new tract of land in .com.

“The demand for .com names is not going away”, says Hansen.     “We intend to meet that demand by offering short memorable domain names ending in .com”.

The co.com registry will have an open registration policy, meaning that any company, organization or individual will be eligible to register domain names like companyname.co.com, organization.co.com, or anything.co.com.     “I couldn’t be more excited with the team and the future of co.com domains, where users will be able to pick the perfect .com domain to fit their online and branding needs,” said Goldstone.

co.com domain names are expected to become available in the first quarter of 2014. Plans call for a “Sunrise Period” for trademark holders, followed by a first-come-first-serve “Landrush Period”.   Premium domain names like travel.co.com, tickets.co.com, wine.co.com, insurance.co.com and spa.co.com, are also available.

Those who wish to receive launch updates and additional details, as they become available, can subscribe to the email list at www.registry.co.com.   The co.com team is attending ICANN Buenos Aires and is also available to meet with registrars interested in becoming distributors of co.com domains.

About co.com LLC – The co.com domain registry offers businesses, organizations and individuals, short, memorable and recognizable .com domain names, through a worldwide distribution network of domain name registrars and resellers.   co.com LLC is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

5 COMMENTS

  1. Ken is extremely knowledgeable as well as a very pleasant person. He will do very well in his new position.

    Hopefully, he will not need to move to Cincinnati.

    I wish him much success.

  2. I wonder how easy it is to change consumer perception that there’s only one dot between a name and the com extension. Unlike many ccTLDs that started with two dots in a domain name, .com is different from the start more than 20 years ago. Can you easily change a perception built up over a long time?

  3. This is why the term “Ass Backwards” was created. The goal of the advancement of the internet is to make it more simple not more complex. Adding an extra dot is going backwards 20 years in time. Why they think this is some grand idea is beyond me Unless its to cause confusion with the .CO registry and ride the coattails of their success and make money by confusing registrants. This is the only logical conclusion I can come up with and if this is the case then its actually genius!

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