iWantMyName Domain Blog: ccTLD Archives

Happy Birthday dotFM

By Paul Spence on April 30, 2012 6:00 PM | No TrackBacks

A raft of new top level domains may be on the way soon, but the dotFM registry was amongst the first to promote a country code domain (ccTLD) for wider commercial use. Fifteen years along the track, our domain DJ charts the progress of this ground-breaking registry.

The .FM domain originated as a ccTLD allocated to the tiny Pacific Island chain of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), a self-governing state formerly under United States stewardship until independence in 1986. Being small and highly dispersed and with a population of just over 100,000 there was quite limited local demand for the domain, so a plan was devised whereby San Francisco based BRS Media would market .FM to the global online media industry.

The domain obviously offers the perfect home for anyone involved with Internet radio; but .FM has also been adopted widely by businesses and individuals from across the broader media, entertainment and music industry. Included amongst the more notable users are music recommendation sites Last FM, BlipFM and Turntable FM as well as popular regional radio channels such as Jazz FM. Newly launched Official FM is the latest aspirant with its attractive offering being featured in TechCrunch recently. With hundreds of millions of Internet radio listeners tuning in globally, BRS are now also pitching to deliver .RADIO, one of the first new TLDs off the block.

iWantMyName is promoting .FM domains at a special price of $85.00 this month.

.CO Domain - What Will You Build?

By Paul Spence on February 29, 2012 11:00 AM | No TrackBacks

The .CO domain launched at the end of 2009 and after only 18 months had already built a customer base of over 1 million registrations. That's astounding growth by any standard. But it's not all one way traffic for the perky upstart. The .CO registry is firmly focused on reaching out to and supporting entrepreneurs because it wants to be the new .COM domain for business.

.CO is in fact the country code top level domain (ccTLD) for the Republic of Colombia. But the government of the South American nation handed over management of the domain to a joint venture company based in the United States. The company has backing from Neustar, one of the most experienced global registry technology providers ensuring that customers can have confidence in the security of their domain.

There is currently a great campaign underway showcasing young entrepreneurs that picked up .CO for their business domain and it tells the unique stories of how they dreamed up their .COOL idea. Those young business people are in good company. Some of the hottest technology companies in America are already using the .CO domain, including Twitter, 500 Startups and Google.

We couldn't resist joining the party too. So if you have a brilliant business idea and want to find your own fantastic .CO domain, simply hop over to our domain search page at iWantMyName.co.

Free .CO.UK, .CO.NZ & .IO Domain Transfers + Newly Transferable Extensions

By Timo Reitnauer on May 19, 2011 4:40 PM | No TrackBacks

We're happy to announce that you can now transfer a whole bunch of new country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) to iWantMyName. Most importantly, .UK transfers — often requested by our friends in the United Kingdom — and other European suffixes.

These domains are newly transferable:

But it doesn't stop here! You can move some popular domains such as .IO, .IM or .AT and all local .NZ suffixes completely free from now on:

For a complete list of transferable extensions see our domain transfer price list and make the switch to iWantMyName today.

.GL Domain Name Registration Enabled (Greenland)

By Timo Reitnauer on August 5, 2010 10:30 AM | No TrackBacks

.GL Domains (Greenland) are the latest addition to the ever growing list of TLDs (Top-Level Domains) available for registration at iWantMyName.

There are no restrictions or special requirements so anyone worldwide is allowed to register the .GL country domain. Internationally, the domain name goo.gl is probably the most famous .GL web address. Google is using it as URL shortener for some of their services.

The internet extension of Greenland can be registered at $89.00 USD. Buy your .GL domain now.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mape_s/350700095/

New: .CO Domain Name Registration (Colombia)

By Timo Reitnauer on July 21, 2010 5:58 AM | No TrackBacks

You can now register .CO domains (Colombia) at iWantMyName. The .CO extension is not only the official Colombian country code top-level domain (ccTLD) but also a shorter alternative to .COM or other ccTLDs such as .CO.UK (United Kingdom) or .CO.NZ (New Zealand). New domain name registrations are available at an affordable price of $34.90 USD.

So what can .CO stand for? Here are some examples:

Company
Corporation
Community
Cooperation

You could also follow Twitter's example which registered the t.co domain name for their own URL shortener or have a look at the following lists with domains to get an idea of what's still available after the initial Sunrise and Landrush registration phase:

Maybe there's one or the other neat domain hack that's interesting for you too: words ending with 'co'

As you can see, many opportunities are still out there, so don't wait too long (the best ones are going fast) and register your own .CO domain today.

New: Register .LT Domain Names (Lithuania)

By Timo Reitnauer on March 6, 2010 8:53 AM | No TrackBacks

The Lithuanian country domain .LT is the latest addition to the growing list of international domains offered at iWantMyName. Lithuania is a member state of the European Union and situated in Northern Europe. Domain names from Lithuania can be registered worldwide without any restrictions or local requirements.

.LT also supports Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) with the special Lithuanian characters (ą, č, ę, ė, į, š, ų, ū, ž). There are currently 111,767 registered domains in total (Statistics).

Search for your desired domain name now.

2010 Launch of Internationalized Country Code Domain Extensions Announced

By Timo Reitnauer on October 31, 2009 6:57 PM | No TrackBacks

ICANN, the internet's governing body, yesterday officially announced the introduction of Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) extensions for nations and territories. This means that a full web address including the domain suffix can contain non-Latin characters such as Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew or Greek in the future.

"The coming introduction of non-Latin characters represents the biggest technical change to the Internet since it was created four decades ago," said ICANN chairman Peter Dengate Thrush. "Right now Internet address endings are limited to Latin characters - A to Z. But the Fast Track Process is the first step in bringing the 100,000 characters of the languages of the world online for domain names."

Watch the video with people from around the world explaining how localized domain names will help them using the internet in their native language:

The introduction of internationalized country domains is an important step towards a global internet and we would like to congratulate ICANN and everybody involved in achieving this long-awaited milestone.

What Is The Ranking of My Country Code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD)? Statistics & Numbers, Part V

By Timo Reitnauer on October 26, 2009 8:47 AM

The last part of our Domain Statistics & Numbers article series shows the ranking of country code top-level domains:

How many top-level domain name extensions exist in total?
How many domains are registered worldwide?
What are the Top 10 global domain extensions?
How big are the generic top-level domain (gTLD) namespaces?
What is the ranking of my country code top-level domain (ccTLD)?

.DE Takes Lead Again in ccTLD Race

Ever wondered where your country domain extension sits in the global marketplace? It's a little bit like Formula One, with nations jockeying constantly for supremacy. Recently German suffix .DE pipped China's .CN domain to a pole position with slightly more registrations. That's good news for iWantMyName because we are about to launch a German language version of our highly successful domain management platform.

Below is a handy reference list showing which ccTLDs are most popular:

.DE (Germany) - 13.05 million
.CN (China) - 12.54 million
.UK (United Kingdom) - 7.83 million
.NL (Netherlands) - 3.51 million
.EU (European Union) - 2.98 million
.RU (Russia) - 2.31 million
.TK (Tokelau) - 1.97 million
.AR (Argentina) - 1.85 million
.BR (Brazil) - 1.81 million
.IT (Italy) - 1.72 million
.US (USA) - 1.63 million
.PL (Poland) - 1.53 million
.FR (France) - 1.5 million
.AU (Australia) - 1.47 million
.CH (Switzerland) - 1.31 million
.CA (Canada) - 1.26 million
.ES (Spain) - 1.22 million
.JP (Japan) - 1.11 million
.KR (Korea) - 1.04 million
.DK (Denmark) - 1 million
.BE (Belgium) - 942,000
.SE (Sweden) - 895,000
.AT (Austria) - 876,000
.CZ (Czech Republic) - 591,000
.IN (India) - 510,000
.HU (Hungary) - 450,000
.NO (Norway) - 439,000
.TW (Taiwan) - 425,000
.NZ (New Zealand) - 366,000
.MX (Mexico) - 353,000
.PT (Portugal) - 314,000
.CL (Chile) - 257,000
.FI (Finland) - 200,000
.HK (Hongkong) - 178,000
.TR (Turkey) - 133,000

Source: DomainesInfo Statistiques

.PE Domain Name Registration for Peru Enabled

By Timo Reitnauer on October 14, 2009 12:22 PM

During the last two weeks we added the .MX internet suffix of Mexico and the Dutch .NL web address. Today, the expansion of country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) at iWantMyName continues with the Peruvian .PE domain extension.

According to a recent announcement (spanish only), the Peruvian telecommunications company, Red Cientifica Peruana (RCP), is aiming to help one million people to establish an online identity with .PE domain names in the next 3 years. The South-American Republic of Peru has a population of 28.8 million people with approx. 8-9 million internet users.

As .PE domains can be registered by anybody worldwide, you can also use them in domain hacks such as overhy.pe, stereoty.pe or giusep.pe. And even better, the registration of short domain names for your personal URL shortener is possible as well.

We have included some available domain hack ideas using the .PE domain name extension below:

.NL Domain Name Search & Registration Now Available

By Timo Reitnauer on October 8, 2009 9:03 AM

After the recent addition of .MX (Mexico) domains, we are introducing another country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for you at iWantMyName.

The Dutch .NL domain extension can now be registered at only $19.00 USD / year. With 3.5 million total registrations, the web address of the Netherlands is one of the top 10 domain extensions worldwide and the second biggest country code domain in Europe after Germany's .DE suffix. More information can be found at the official .NL registry website.

Of course, the .NL domain search and registration is also available through our iPhone DomainApp.

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