Hansen will join team offering third level domain registrations under co.com.
Ken Hansen has resigned his position at Neustar to join the new venture as CEO. Paul Goldstone (who owned the second level domain co.com) will be President and Gregg McNair (Igloo.com) will be Chairman.
This is rather shocking news about Hansen, who has led many of Neustar’s new top level domain name efforts. He is resigning just before they come to fruition.
Domain registrations under .co.com will be third level domain names, similar to many of those offered by CentralNic. The idea of a third level registration with “co” is nothing new; sixty-one countries currently offer domain names ending in “co.countrycode” such as co.uk and co.jp, with registrations for those extensions totaling over 11 million, according to co.com.
As a result, many subdomains of co.com already receive traffic.
The domain name is sure to cause some confusion with .co, and perhaps even the “legacy” com.co addresses. .Co uses Neustar for its registry.
Co.com has not finalized its backend registry provider yet. It hopes to launch in Q1 2014.
Congrats. Sounds like a good domain.
Colin.club
When I got the press release last night I felt the same Andrew, why would Hansen leave for a project like this, I wish Paul Goldstone success with his co.com but I could not understand Hansen leaving.
There are many ways to convince someone to change companies 🙂
“Domain registrations under .co.com will be third level domain names, similar to many of those offered by CentralNic.”
AKA subdomains – not a real domain extension.
.COM.CO – Colombia original ccTLD.
.CO – Colombia ccTLD rebranded as generic.
.CO.COM – Subdomain of a LL.com being sold as an extension.
Good luck with the confusion there.
Brad
Surprising that three experienced, well-respected industry veterans who should know better would actually belief that such a business could be profitable.
And just in time to join 100+ new extensions …
Profitable? It should be. There aren’t really any costs. Just backed registry, but I imagine that’s mostly variable.
I wonder how easy it is to change consumer perception that there’s only one dot between a name and the com extension. Unlike many ccTLDs that started with two dots in a domain name, .com is different from the start more than 20 years ago. Can you easily change a perception built up over a long time?
I suspect the target market are the cctld users who are used to it.
Things change quickly in the technology space
http://domainincite.com/8073-paul-goldstone-puts-co-com-up-for-sale
what an odd timing, when the market will be flooded with new gTLDs, and so much more attractive than co.com.