Dot Kiwi Celebrates First Anniversary

Dot Kiwi Celebrates First Anniversary

Sales of .kiwi domains put the company in the top 25% of new domains world-wide

1 May 2015 – After a year of significant changes to New Zealand’s domain landscape, Dot Kiwi has announced that it has sold more than 12,000 .kiwi domain names during its first year of operation.

Since 1 May 2014, individuals, bloggers, non-profit organisations and companies have bought .kiwi domain names as a new way to represent themselves online via personalised website and email addresses.

.kiwi is the only New Zealand-based generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) approved by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) as part of its new domain programme. The programme will usher in more than 1,400 new domains such as .cafe, .organic and .london.

Angus Richardson, Managing Director of Dot Kiwi, says in the last year the New Zealand Internet community has gone through a lot of change with the launch of its own gTLD, .kiwi, and changes to .co.nz.

“The new generation of domain names is still in its infancy, but is undergoing rapid growth. Gone are the days where Kiwis have to use .com or .net, now they can choose from a plethora of new domain names to better describe themselves or their organisation.

“.kiwi sales put it ahead of most of the new domains around the world. We’re in the top 25 per cent of the new gTLDs globally for sales volumes, showing New Zealanders have definitely come on board to try new domain name options,” says Richardson.

Some of the organisations using .kiwi domain names include Kiwibank (www.inner.kiwi), the Vodafone Warriors (www.warriors.kiwi) and the New Zealand Winter Games (wintergamesnz.kiwi). New Zealand comedian, Dai Henwood, and Kiwi triathlon legend, Bevan Docherty have also registered .kiwi domain names – using dai.kiwi and docherty.kiwi, respectively.

“One thing that’s great to see is there’s been a healthy proportion of people using their .kiwi domains for new websites or email.

“It was also positive to see registrations of the new .nz start to emerge since .kiwi launched last year. Australia is now considering allowing people to purchase .au rather than .com.au. It shows that New Zealand is leading the way internationally,” says Richardson.

.kiwi was one of the first domain names created to connect people’s online identity with both their geographical and cultural identity. Since .kiwi’s launch, ICANN has also approved domains specifically for Londoners, New Yorkers, Parisians and Berliners.

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