The Internet domain for the 'me' generation

Stuart Corner
Sunday, 20 January 2008 01:37

Your IT - Home IT

You can now register domain names such as about.me, love.me, lookat.me, watch.me, support.me, thisis.me and anything else ending in .me you can dream up - providing someone else does not get in first. And, no, ICANN has not authorised a new top level domain. It's the world's newest nation, Montenegro, seeking to cash in on its country domain with the help of GoDaddy, the world's largest domain registrar.

Montenegro, once part of Yugoslavia declared independence on June 3, 2006 making it the newest fully recognised country in the world. On June 28, 2006, it became the 192nd member state] of the United Nations, and on May 11, 2007, the 47th member state of the Council of Europe.

GoDaddy says it is "one of three members of a power-packed joint venture [along with Afilias Global Registry Services and Me-Net] chosen by the government of Montenegro to operate the new domain extension." The three have created a new organisation called doMEn (the word for 'domain' in Montenegrin) which will act as the operational body with strategic oversight for the domain extension. Go Daddy says it will "use its renowned marketing muscle to globally promote .ME, while Afilias will provide world-class registry technology, similar to what it uses to support other domains such as .INFO and .ORG."

The alliance plans to invite all registrars, country code (CC) and top level domain (TLD) resellers to add .ME to their own list of offerings, but says that the new .ME can be used by anyone – an affiliation with the country of Montenegro is not required.

Go Daddy CEO and founder, Bob Parsons, said: "To take full advantage of .ME, it needs to be properly promoted and properly managed. We have an unparalleled track record in promoting domain names and keeping customers happy...Afilias has an impeccable record when it comes to managing domain extensions. We offer the complete package to catapult .ME into the International mainstream."

However GoDaddy is clearly not geared up for any early rush of interest. Its press release announcing the offering contained no information as to how you might obtain one, and you won't find me in the list of domain names searchable on the GoDaddy website . But if you like the idea, you might want try .me.uk

.me certainly isn't big yet: a Google search looking for the numeral '1' on any site in any language with a domain name ending in .me drew just 13 hits (exclusive of duplicates) all of which appeared to be Montenegran Government pages.