GoDaddy.com spent the weekend testing out the .CO extension as the first choice when looking up names that are available to register, the default has since been changed back to .COM. Perhaps this was a strategically planned move by the .CO registry and GoDaddy? Whatever the case it sure created a lot of buzz. It seems like every week .CO is in domain blog and even world news headlines for something. Last week it was the O.CO story – Will Overstock rebrand it’s entire online presence to the new shorter O.CO which they acquired from the registry earlier this year? Recently, even the BBC talked about .CO in an article “Colombian Domain Challenges .COM.”
Ever since the .CO extension was re-branded for public use earlier this year it has stayed a regular topic of discussion by domainers, speculators and outside observers. Registration numbers, development and support around the extension has been very positive. The .CO registry is doing a fantastic job of promoting its product, and from what I can tell that means reaching out to real world companies for help. They must be spending a mint to do so but it just may stick. Domainers/developers are starting to embrace the extension as a good alternative for domains they want that are not available or are too expensive to acquire in the com/net/org extension. It seems like every day I see heated discussions somewhere on different blogs, forums and even domain radio and tv shows about .co naturally being a better option that .net and .org since it’s shorter “CO” could stand for company or corporation.
While speaking with Lori Anne Wardi, Director of .CO during DNCruise, she made her position clear that .CO is looking for people to embrace the extension for development more so than for buying to invest or resell. The higher registration/renewal price for .CO domains may provide that barrier of entry but there are plenty of people investing in the extension for reselling purposes. Unless there is a really good renewal special next year, I think that there will be a large drop in numbers next year when renewal fees hit and people start dropping .CO domains they don’t intend to develop.
Hi,
I like their price structure. It is prohibitive. People will think twice about registering one and if they choose to do so, more likely they will have a plan for it in mind. As it now stands, so many .coms are registered for 8 bucks with no quality plans to go along with them. And they end up as lingering garbage on the world wide web.
IMO, it’s better to have 1 mill quality, working or developed, .co domains then 40 mil .coms that just sit uselessly. Kudos to .co for implementing a “quality first” business model.
I have both .coms and .cos.
Em, thanks for the comment and I agree that it’s a better strategy to promote the extension for development as opposed to using it’s promotions to only pump registration numbers. Look how that worked our for the .IN extension – a couple years ago they made it super cheap to register .IN domains in which time the LLL .in domains were quickly all snapped up. Now, you will find lists of thousands of LLL.in domains that are available to register as investors just could not handle the renewal fees of all of these domains they bought for a fraction of the price.
Yesterday & today’s big story: i.co going to auction http://www.thedomains.com/2010/11/15/quick-poll-how-much-will-i-co-sell-for/
They are good at timing these things to keep the .co buzz alive. By the way.. I just launched my first .CO website: http://rmdc.co 🙂