The following is a guest post written by Morgan Linton. Morgan is the President of Linton Investments, a Los Angeles-based Domain Investment Firm. Morgan runs a ccTLD Brokerage Newsletter and is the publisher of ccTLD Investors magazine. Morgan writes about his adventures in Domain Investing on his blog – MorganLinton.com.
With the .CO launch getting closer and closer I thought now would be a good time to review some important information about the TLD so you can make smart moves from the beginning! I am quite confident that the .CO launch this year should be one of the most impactful TLD launches in the history of the industry. While there are people lined-up on both sides of the table – when it comes to .CO there is a buzz going-on that you just can’t ignore!
So here are five things you should know about .CO – feel free to comment and add #6, #7, etc.
1) The Global Sunrise started April 26th and goes until June 10th. This is for people who have a trademark and the corresponding exact-match domain that would like to get the .CO. One important note here is that the trademark holder needs to have registered the exact-match domain before 7/30/2008.
2) Landrush runs from June 21st through July 13th and allows anyone with an interest in commercially valuable domains to apply for registration before general availability. Any domains that have two or more interested parties will go to auction and be sold to the highest bidder.
3) General Availability is July 20th and at that point .CO will be available to anyone in the world. This question comes-up a lot so it’s important to be clear here – anyone in the world can register a .CO – it is not limited to residents of Colombia in any way.
4) .CO is NOT a TLD for Typo-Squatters! The people at .CO are working very hard to create a globally-recognized and respected TLD. While many Domainers might think that .CO opens the door for new typo-domains be warned that the .CO folks will be working hard to prevent this.
5) When people in a focus-group were asked what .CO means to them the top answers were, “Company” and “Corporation” – having YourBrand.CO is a great way to represent your brand or product-category online.
Landrush starts in a little over a month and I am officially excited! .CO is coming and I think it’s going to change the Domaining world forever.
What do you think?
I’d love to see examples of how #4 is working out. How much are they spending on branding and in what places (if any) other then domain trade shows.
It will be interesting to see how this company plans to chance the common internet users thinking that .co is simple .com missing the “m”.
This TLD, is going the way of .tel and .mobi but at warp speed.
I do like .CO better than .CM, but still I agree with Bill above that I think “normal” people will think that it´s just a .com missing the “m”.
.CO is a scammer’s dream.
Lost credibility when you said ‘change domaining forver’
Clueless hype article.
If anyone wants to seriously develop a .co domain, I recomend they apply for the .co Founder’s program. This allows you to pre-empt the landrush period if you promise to quickly develop the domain.
Tom Barrett
EnCirca
I would think the only real value to a .co would be misstype traffic.
Am I wrong?
Would you really want to spend money branding a .co
It would be so easy for someone to type .com
People are basically programmed to type in .com
I would rather own a good .net over a .co any day
If you’re seriously considering developing a .co, you seriously need to have your head examined before you hand over any traffic you build to the .com version of your site.
If not the guys holding the .com will certainly thank you and the typo traffic circle of life will be complete.
Thanks for the all the great comments everyone!
Excellent points made and yes I do think the cyber-squatting issue will be a challenge but one they are prepared to deal with.
@Rob – not a hype-article by any means. I’m not being paid by .co and they didn’t even know I was writing the article.
I’m an excited guy with high hopes for the future of Domaining and I believe .CO is going to be game-changer!
.CO is a scammer’s dream.
i agree .co gonna be a scammer dream, it also depend on google adsense. let hope .co doesn’t become .info