[LINK] Montenegro's .me and e-commerce

[rfmcdonald]

Montenegro, the world's newest independent state, has gotten a country code: .me. As heise.de reports, this has made Montenegro a prime target for firms hoping to run this potentially lucrative country domain.

Once again, Afilias has won out over its major competitors VeriSign and Canada's eNOM in the battle for backend operation of new registries. Montenegro's governmental council for the top level domain (ccTLD) .me has opted for a consortium of US registrar GoDaddy, Afilias, and the local ME-Net.

The team of three has been entrusted with the task of launching the brand-new country domain quickly. After the disintegration of Yugoslavia (.yu), Montenegro had a claim to its own domain in cyberspace. In September of 2006, ISO therefore took up .me in its list of country endings. At the same time, Serbia received .rs. The .yu is still registered, though it has been removed from the list.

Afilias said it was very happy about Montenegro's decision even though business with country domains falls far short of generic addresses, such as .org, .info, and .asia. Overall, Afilias now operates the technical infrastructure of 11 country address zones, the largest of which is India (.in), and the most exotic of which are probably the Caribbean island states of St. Vincent and the Grenadines (.vc) and Saint Lucia (.lc). The registrar does not go shopping for such address zones, but rather sees itself as a technology provider, explains Philipp Grabensee, chairman of the supervisory board at Afilias.

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According to Aflias, the declared aim of the .me address zone is not just to provide people in Montenegro with domains, but also to attract additional customers with the new domain ending, especially for Web 2.0. Grabensee hopes that help.me, support.me, love.me will be attractive addresses. He therefore got GoDaddy on board as an aggressive marketer. Grabensee estimates that the US registrar has sold some 50 percent of the .mobi addresses currently registered. The most interesting addresses, referred to as premium domains, are to be auctioned in Montenegro. Grabensee adds that revenue from sales of domains is naturally welcome in such a small country as Montenegro.