.CO Internet S.A.S.
 | |
| Type: | Private |
| Industry: | Domain Administration |
| Founded: | 2009 |
| Ownership: | Arcelandia S.A, and Neustar Inc. |
| Headquarters: | 701 Brickell Ave. Suite 860 |
| Website: | .cointernet |
| Key People | |
| Lori Anne Wardi, Director | |
.CO Internet S.A.S. is a company formed by Arcelandia S.A., a Colombian company, and the U.S. company Neustar Inc., for the purpose of developing and operating the .co Internet registry; it is responsible for the promotion, administration, and technical operation of the .co TLD.[1]
While .co was originally the ccTLD of Colombia, .CO Internet was created to facilitate .co becoming gTLD; since July, 2010 it has been available to the general public outside of Colombia.[2]
.Co Internet has decided to work with only a dozen registrars in its first year.[3] In its first 6 months (July-January 2010), some 600,000 .co domain names were registered;[4] GoDaddy has registered about 250,000 of those.[5].
.co's History
In 1991 .co was recognized as Colombia's ccTLD by IANA. Around a decade later the Universidad de los Andes, the official registrar of .co, began to research the benefits of broadening the availability of .co for commercial purposes. This began a long back-and-forth between the University, the Colombian Ministry of Telecommunication, and ICANN. Finally, in August of 2009, the Ministry announced that it had been awarded oversight of .co as an expanded gTLD.[6]
Hype
.co is expected by many to be one of the most successful new gTLDs. Its similarity to .com is referenced as one reason, while its association with the words "company", "corporation", and "commerce" in many languages is another.
The excitement surrounding the general availability of .co has been demonstrated in a number of ways. GoDaddy was reported to be preparing to specifically push its .co domains through its advertisements, with particular hype surrounding its role in GoDaddy's notorious Super Bowl ads.[7] Indeed, GoDaddy's 2011 Super Bowl ad was billed to be the unvieling of the new ".co girl"; the ad later surprised audiences by featuring the not-so-girly, Joan Rivers, as the .co spokeswoman.[8]
It was widely reported when a one-letter .co domain name, www.e.co, was sold for $81,000 by Sedo. The domain auction benefited charity and was won by Lonnie Borck of B52 Media, and Uri Kerbel from Bookmarks.com.[9]
Twitter has also made news for using a one-word domain, t.co, to provide additional services to its customers.[10]