Stampede for .me domain names

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 22 July 2008 02:12

IT Industry - Strategy

Go Daddy is claiming "the most successful new domain name launch in history" saying it received 20,000 applications in the first 24 hours of .me domain name registrations going live.

.me is not a new top level domain, it is the country domain of the world's newest nation, Montenegro which on June 28, 2006 became the 192nd member state of the United Nations, and on May 11 2007 the 47th member state of the Council of Europe. It will also be used by the Government of Montenegro for government web sites. GoDaddy is one of three members of a joint venture, along with Afilias Global Registry Services and Me-Net, chosen by the government of Montenegro to operate and commercialise its TLD.

GoDaddy is promoting the .me domain name as "a great domain for individuals or businesses looking to uniquely express themselves online with a podcast, blog, online photo album, or Web site dedicated to their interests." Go Daddy CEO and founder, Bob Parsons, said: "To the best of our knowledge, there have never been more registrations handled in one day during the ordinary course of business by any registrar in history."

The demand caused GoDaddy a few problems. It has admitted that "During the start of registration - requests for .me came in at such a rapid pace that it caused slowness to the GoDaddy.com Web site...As a result of the slowness, some GoDaddy customers registered domain names that were already taken or reserved by the .me registry before launch - for government use or to be released at a later date. Once the site stabilised, Go Daddy began notifying customers of the invalid registrations and started processing refunds."

Anyone who wants to register a .me domain can do so at GoDaddy.com. The full list of reserved .me names is available here.