A post today tells the story of 2 country code extensions, .tk and .tr.

One is the official country code for the country of Turkey.

One is for a small island in the pacific that has a population of only 1,200.

Guess which is which?

Yes .TR is the official country code for Turkey,  but Joost Zuurbier licensed the domain name rights of three tropical atolls, collectively known as Tokelau, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and then started marketing this extension,  .TK, to people in Turkey as being a better extension, than the present .TR

“””Dot TK is now partly owned by Tokelau, and the revenues generated are reported by Zuurbier to contribute to about 20 percent of the atoll’s gross domestic product (GDP)”””

So you have a guy, making a deal with a small island to get their country code, (yes like .tv) then marketing it to the people of another country as a “better” alternative.

You got to admire the entrepreneurial spirit in this.

.TK does seem a better match for Turkey than .TR, but isn’t the whole point of a country code to use it because the extension is identified by users as for that country?

Or with the advent of .tv and .me, is the country irrelevant if the extension has a hook?

According to the story, there are presently 20,000 .tk domains registered but Joost is looking at a growth into the 400,000-450,000 range.

Again according to the story there are only about 50,000 .tr domains registered.

So can a country code meant for one country, wind up with more registrations than that country’s official code?

Keep tuned