May 21, 2009 – (HOSTSEARCH.COM) – The
.ME Registry announced today its popular ccTLD extension has hit 250,000 domains registered. Montenegro's .ME Registry has seen significant growth since it launched the domain extension worldwide just over one year ago. In fact, .ME is the fastest growing new ccTLD.
JamesCrocker.Me, registered through GoDaddy.com, was the name which pushed the Registry's portfolio to the quarter-million milestone.
The .ME domain extension has proven to be incredibly popular worldwide. More than 48,000 applications were received to participate in the current online auction of .ME domains which ends in just a few days. The next online auction, hosted by NameJet.com, is scheduled to begin June 5.
Many in the online marketing community believe .ME's popularity directly correlates to the domain's branding power. "Dot-ME is extremely suitable for consumer brands," notes Mark Kychma of Brands-and-Jingles, a marketing firm based in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Ukraine. His company owns hundreds of .ME domains. "Try to forget brands like Hotels4.Me, Pizza4.Me and Tickets4.Me... there is a 99 percent chance you will not," adds Kychma. "Tell your friends about Love.Me, Fancy.Me, Unlock.Me and they will remember them for ages."
The power of the right domain name combined with a .ME extension is astounding. YouAnd.Me, an explosively popular online dating service, launched just three months ago. According to the site's founder, Steve Sikes, YouAnd.Me already has close to 50,000 members and is currently ranked among the top 90,000 Web sites in the world. Sikes is a big proponent of .ME domains. "Dot-ME domain extensions just seem to mesh with the direction of the Web," stated Sikes recently. "They are more personalized and provide more user-generated content."
"This is the kind of reaction we always knew we would elicit with dot-ME," states Predrag Lesic, executive director of the .ME Registry. "Dot-ME has become an Internet phenomenon."
.ME Registry (the d.b.a. of doMEn, d.o.o.) was chosen by the government of Montenegro to operate the new .ME domain name extension.ME Registry partners include ME-net, GoDaddy.com and Afilias Limited. Me-Net is located in Montenegro and its principals have been leaders in the ICT sector in Montenegro, including the privatization of its largest ISP. GoDaddy.com is located in the USA and is the world's largest domain name registrar and the largest paid hostname provider in the world, according to Netcraft Ltd. Afilias Limited is headquartered in Ireland and is a leading registry services provider, supporting more than 13 million domains worldwide.
