.CO is the first truly global, recognizable domain to come along in years. Understood around the world as an abbreviation for “Company,” “Corporation” and “Commerce”, .CO is easy to recognize, simple to remember and flexible to use. It offers international recognition in a fresh landscape where you can still choose the name you want, not just settle for what’s available.

Whether or not this translates into wide-scale adoption remains to be seen. Other alternative top level domains such as .biz and .me haven’t exactly gone on to dominate the web. However .co could potentially be looked at as a shorter version of .com (and we all know how hard it is to find a good .com name these days). ‘.co’ is already is used as a second level domain for a number of countries, e.g. New Zealand (.co.nz), United Kingdom (.co.uk), India (.co.in), Indonesia (.co.id), Israel (.co.il),  Japan (.co.jp), South Korea (.co.kr) and Cook Islands (.co.ck). I can see the potential appeal for owners of these domains as an international version of their domain.

I have already registered sww.co as alternative version of sww.co.nz. I just like the brevity of it – so next time you are coming to this site you can leave out the .nz and save yourself 3 keystrokes!