Want A Jump On A .CO Domain? The .Co Registry Is Giving Away Domains Under The “Founders Program”

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The .Co registry announced today what it is calling the .CO Founders Program

Starting today, the registry is starting to accept applications, for “the .CO Founders Program, an initiative designed to help qualified “first movers” to proactively develop and maintain domains with the .CO extension prior to the public launch in July. The .CO Founders Program is open to all interested applicants from individuals to businesses and big brands.””

“The .CO Founders Program provides an excellent opportunity for early adopters to secure short and memorable domain names and truly help shape the .CO name space,” said Juan Diego Calle, CEO of .CO Internet. “Participants in the program will benefit by potentially being featured in an aggressive .CO advertising and marketing program; likewise they will be expected to actively promote their domain to benefit the broader .COmmunity,” added Calle.””

“””How to Apply for The .CO Founders Program

“”Applicants can submit an application to the registry, explaining the .CO domain they’d like to develop, as well as additional details about themselves and their launch proposal. .CO Internet will then review the applications and approve those that will best contribute to the .CO community. .CO Internet will award domains, at their discretion, subject to certain terms and conditions.””

.CO in addition to being the country code for Columbia, is also being marketed to be used as a mainstream extension to represent the words “COmpany,” “COrporation” and “COmmerce” and social networking sites to represent the terms COmmunicate and COllaborate”.

As for all other .CO domains the registry also announced the time scheduled for rollout:

Sunrise will take place from April 26 through June 10, allowing eligible trademark holders the right to apply for the .CO domain names corresponding to their marks before registration is open to the general public.

Landrush will occur from June 21 through July 13, and will be open to anyone interested in registering certain high priority domain names.

General availability will begin on July 20, opening the .CO domain for registrations on a first-come, first-served basis around the world.

About Michael Berkens

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 8K domain names . Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest.

Comments

  1. GhettoCaveMan says

    Thanks for the heads-up!

    What is your professional opinion regarding .CO?

    I picked up a few .com.co on 2/19 and question my continued speculation in this space.

    Best Regards

  2. MHB says

    Ghetto

    I will be doing a post on this when the launch gets closers, but since you ask I think there are several ways of playing this.

    First like .Me there is an opportunity here for certain natural domains that can use .co as “company” or one of the other words the registry suggests. Certainly car.co (car company) internet.co and those type of domains would be worth owing.

    A lot of domainers are going to play this for the typo aspect of it, which as long as your not talking about global brands I think is fine.

    Finally don’t forget this is a country code and Columbia has a population of 45 Million people, pretty substantial:

    https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/co.html

  4. Ms Domainer says

    *

    And a typo for .com.

    Lest we forget this.

    Remember .cc?

    How is that working out for everyone who was looking for the credit card acronym?

    Let’s be completely honest here; we understand the business model here.

    Founders’ Program = hand out domains to your good buddies.

    *

  7. iPad Accessories says

    Thanks for this useful share. I am going to apply for few domains with this new extension. Would Google give these domains the same preference in ranking as it does for .com, .net or .org domains?

  9. bus pictures says

    I think it is very difficult to guess about what would happen. As you know .mobi didn’t become sucsess story as many people predicted in the past. But .co could be different story. Who knows.? The time will show that us.