It’s our birthday month and there is no better time than now to take a small stroll down memory lane. It’s been a wild and surprising ride so far, so grab a cup of tea and keep reading!
New kid on the block
.CO is the country code Top-Level Domain for the country of Colombia – for those around the world you might be familiar with Germany’s .de, the United Kingdom’s .uk or the United States’ .US; well that’s where .CO started out too. Nine years ago, there were only 28,000 .CO domain names registered in the entire world – all inside of Colombia — because at the time, the only way to take up residence within the .CO namespace, was by being a resident of Colombia.
Thanks to the great vision and forward-thinking of Colombia’s Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications (MINTIC), and a liberalized set of registration policies, on July 20th 2010, the registration restrictions were lifted on second-level .CO domains, effectively opening up the namespace to the entire world. This happened to coincide with Colombia’s Independence Day, so celebration was in the air among the .CO team.
If you’re not too familiar with domain technicalities, the difference between a second-level domain and a third-level domain is the difference between e.com.co and e.co; which, incidentally was the first ever single letter domain name to be made available to the global public in a charity auction all those years ago. The part ‘after the dot’ (.CO in this example) is the Top-Level Domain; the part ‘left of the dot’ (.com) is the second-level. In a ‘sub domain’ like the e.com.co example, the “e” is the third-level…and so on. Okay – that’s it on the technical stuff, we promise!
A domain you can call your home
Short and catchy, simple and meaningful… in one word: effective. Finding the right name for your brand usually takes a while. Not due to lack of creativity, but rather, availability.
With the launch of .CO, innovators, entrepreneurs, startup founders, big dreamers, makers and more had the opportunity to register their perfect domain names on .CO – no longer having to settle for the leftovers of legacy domain extensions. Within one year, a million big ideas had already been registered on .CO domain names by individuals, businesses and brands in nearly every corner of the world!
Every idea and budding brand deserves a place to call its own and over these nine years our mission has not wavered in the slightest: to let every brand tell its tale from the comfort of its own digital home, where it can grow and see its dreams fulfilled.
From local homestay to global neighborhood
As .CO turns nine, our community has grown to more than 2.3 million .CO domains across nearly 200 countries and territories worldwide. And over the years, a lot of the seeds that started out with us have grown into mighty oaks, including Angel List (angel.co), 500 Startups (500.co), Twitter (t.co), Common Bond (commonbond.co), WeWork (we.co), Rebel Girls (rebelgirls.co), Mirror (mirror.co), Fitpal (fitpal.co), and, well, millions more!
Getting to the cake
To end things on a sweet note, .CO is all grown up! And that’s a good thing, because with age also comes experience, finesse and a keener understanding of our community needs. That said, we like to think we’re still young at heart!
We’ve grown quite a bit in these nine years and we’re more than proud to have every one of you playing your part in .CO. GO.CO!
