Monday, 30 July 2012 12:29 Domain News
SIDN,the company behind .NL domain names ,announced today that the .NL registry has hit a key milestone in reaching 5 million domains registrations.SIDN hit the four million mark two years ago, in August,2010.
You can read the press release after the jump :
"SIDN, the company behind .nl, today registered the five-millionth .nl domain name. Marion Gerritsen became the happy registrant of mariongerritsen.nl. The domain name was registered through Registrar.eu, a label of Openprovider. Marion Gerritsen and Registrar.eu will both shortly be receiving a visit from a SIDN representative, who will present the new name’s user with an iPad and hand out celebratory cake to everyone working for the registrar. In the Netherlands, 21% of households now have a domain name.
Proud
Roelof Meijer, SIDN’s CEO said, “We are very pleased to have passed this significant milestone. The Netherlands can be proud of the .nl internet domain. As well as being one of the most secure domains in the world, it is the third largest country-code domain that there is: only Germany’s .de and the UK’s .uk have more names. Last year, we celebrated our domain’s silver jubilee, .nl having also been one of the first active domains on the internet. The success of .nl is partly down to the 1800 registrars who register domain names for their clients.”
Prospects
SIDN recently published the results of a unique study into trends in internet use and the Dutch domain name market. One of the findings was that the rise of social media is set to boost the use of domain names over the next two years. A total of 21% of Dutch households already have a domain name, and in 2012 that figure is set to increase by 3 percentage points.
In the Netherlands’ business sector, the level of penetration is much higher. Almost every business has one or more domain names, and Statistics Netherlands reports that 83% of businesses have websites. In the years ahead, the nation’s commercial organisations expect to increase the size of their domain name portfolios, mainly to support product and campaign-specific websites. By contrast, enthusiasm is waning for ‘defensive’ registrations (registering a domain name to stop anyone else from having it, rather than with the intention of using it). Overall, SIDN expects the number of business registrations to continue growing, but not as fast as private registrations.
Benefits
Having your own domain name has many benefits. Meijer: “A domain name enables a business to create its own unique – and nowadays almost indispensable – place on the internet. In the Netherlands, .nl is the top-level domain for business. A .nl domain announces you to the world as a company that is from the Netherlands or active in the Netherlands. That in turn influences the confidence that consumers have in your business. But it isn’t just businesses that benefit from having a domain name. As an individual, a domain name gives you your own personal on-line identity, an e-mail address that you never have to chance (even if you switch providers) and, importantly, the ability to control your own internet content in a way that you can’t easily do through social media.”
