According to post earlier today on Jothan Frakes‘ blog the .me registry is going to be managed by Aflilias in partnership with GoDaddy.
Francesco posted about the tendering process back in November and while his post does cover most of the issues with the tender he obviously hadn’t considered the possibility of a registry operator teaming up with a registrar – but who could have?
What will be interesting to see is how they manage the registry moving forward. Is it likely to end up being converted into something that it wasn’t intended to be originally? (think .tv or .ws) Or will it manage to strike the balance between catering for the region’s residents while also serving the global market? (Unlikely, but you never know!)
Only time will tell! (And yes – I have used that phrase before)
registration. Every time a new domain extension becomes available, the opportunity exists for cybersquatters to grab domains protected by trademarks in order to divert traffic. GoDaddy hasn’t said whether or not it will be providing a sunrise registration period for trademark holders as has occurred when the .mobi and other extensions have become available. We think the sunrise period is important to at least give trademark holders an opportunity to protect their intellectual property. Of course, precautions have to be put in place to ensure otherwise generic domains are left available for domainers and anyone else wanting a fair shot at registration.