14.04.2016

.me reaches one million milestone

More than one million addresses have been registered under the .me extension. The registry is celebrating the new milestone – but is also pointing out that it’s not only about registration numbers.

The .me domain extension reached a new milestone: For the first time, more than one million addresses are registered under the top level domain, the registry announced in a blog article on their website.



.me launched in 2008 as the ccTLD for Montenegro, replacing the top level domain .YU (Yugoslavia) when the country gained their independence. In the beginning .me had been managed directly by the Montenegrin government, before doMEN Ltd took over.

Just two weeks after launch more than 100,000 .me domains had already been registered. This number grew to 320,000 by March 2010, making .me the fastest growing top level domain at the time. Another year later, in 2011, this number grew to 530,000 registrations in more than 200 countries around the world. More than half of registrations at the time had been made by US registrants. In the past year .me benefitted from a sudden excitement for the domain business in China. According to a blog post by domain.me, .me was the fourth most popular domain extension in the Middle Kingdom.

Off to a dream start

.me reached the millionth-domain at an interesting time. More than 900 new domain extensions launched since October 2013. More than 16,5 million domains have been registered under a new gTLD in the meantime. While this might have not rocked the balance of power in the domain industry, it has certainly been shifted. The new domain extensions proved that the times in which top level domains are being measured by their registrations numbers are over. And that the new challenge rather is to activate the right target groups to create a lively namespace. In order to achieve this, .me is fighting spam. The registry actively bans domains marked as spam, raccording to the blog article on the one-millionth domain.

Famous customers are another important factor to increase user confidence in a TLD. .me managed a special coup: Facebook has been using the domain fb.me for their URL-shortener since 2009. The registry already knew back then that the Facebook cooperation would be one of their most important partnerships, the registry writes in their blog post. The registry also announced that it would intensify the partnership with the social network: The Facebook messenger is now available at m.me. About a billion messages are being sent through the communication app each month. By using personalized links such as m.me/username, the messenger can now be used in browsers or as a "direct line" to a user.

Find more facts and data on .me in the info graphic

You can download the info graphic in high resolution here.