.me

On 21 May, 2006 a majority of Montenegrins supported independence in a national referendum. On 3 June, 2006, Montenegro declared its independence from Serbia and Montenegro. As a constituent part of that country, the Republic of Montenegro had been unofficially been using the cg.yu SLD whilst the .cs TLD had been assigned to Serbia and Montenegro in 2003 following the breakup of Yugoslavia, but remained unused by that country. The .cg (Crna Gora) TLD could not be assigned to Montenegro on the basis of the new country's Montenegrin name, because it had been the TLD of the Republic of the Congo since 1997. This left the newly independent state without an obvious TLD based on its Montenegrin name.

On 23 May, 2006, Ilan Shavit, a Tel Aviv lawyer active in the field of internet domains, made a written application to ICANN requesting that the .me TLD be assigned to Montenegro, stating that "The country is known worldwide as Montenegro and calls itself by that name internationally. The only appropriate free TLD commencing with .m is .me (.mo, .mn, .mt, .mg and .mr are all taken). It would appear to be fair and logical for this TLD to be granted to Montenegro - which would be a wonderful gift to the country by ICANN on the occasion of its historical declaration of independence, and allow it a clean start". In September 2007, this position was accepted and ICANN resolved that .me be delegated to the Government of Montenegro,^[2] with the former .yu domain to be operated temporarily by the .rs domain registry, Serbian National Register of Internet Domain Names, until its eventual abolition on or before 30 September 2009.

On 11 September 2007, delegation of root name servers was approved by IANA,^[3] establishing .me. The .me domain became active on 24 September 2007 and a "Public Invitation for selection of the Agent for domain registration under the national Internet domain of Montenegro" was posted on 14 November. doMEn d.o.o. was selected as the new registry operator.

doMEn, d.o.o. is a Montenegro based joint venture (doing business as .ME Registry) whose partners are Afilias Limited, GoDaddy.com, Inc., and ME-net d.o.o.

May 6th, 2008 - .me Registry - General Sunrise began for all eligible Trademark holders anywhere in the world.

On July 16, 2008, registration was made available for all .me domains at various registrars.

The .me extension was assigned to Montenegro as a country code after it became an independent nation in June 2006. However, the Montenegro government decided .ME would be operated as a generic name after considering the potential worldwide appeal for the extension. ^[4]

Third-level registrations are available to Montenegrin citizens and companies in the following zones:

• .co.me - unlimited registration, but appropriate for corporations
• .net.me - unlimited registration, but appropriate for providers of Internet services
• .org.me - unlimited registration, but appropriate for civil organizations and associations
• .edu.me - Educational institutions, such as primary and high schools
• .ac.me - Academic and post-secondary organizations such as universities; University of Montenegro has ucg.ac.me as its primary domain
• .gov.me - State and Government authorities
• .its.me or .priv.me - unlimited registration, but appropriate for personal use

On 6 May 2008 .me Registry opened Sunrise period for all eligible Trademark holders anywhere in the world. Five domain names had multiple applications and were sold through the auctions. During the .ME Landrush auction period, more than two-million dollars was generated with names like Insure.Me and Sync.Me going to the highest bidder.

On July 16, 2008 registration was made available for all .me domains at various registrars.

Throughout June and July 2008 multiple Landrush applications were received, which resulted in more than 2500 Landrush auctions that were held during July and August 2008 after Go Live was opened on 17 July 2008.

At the beginning of August 2008 100,000 .me domain names were registered^[5]. Sources say part of the worldwide appeal for the .me domain extension is the marketing aspect.

In 2008 in terms of the number of web pages indexed by Google among all TLDs, .me sites have enjoyed the fastest growth with more than 50% a month^[6]. In the same year, .me topped its potential rivals .mobi and .asia in Alexa Internet top one million websites with 341 .me sites versus 233 .mobi sites and 86 .asia sites. Extra potential of .me is revealed considering the fact that .mobi was launched two years before .me and .asia four months before .me.

By the middle of February 2009 200,000 .me domain names were registered^[7][8].

On 15 May 2009 number of registered .me domain names rose to 250,000^[9].

In less than a year .ME became more popular than .asia, .jobs, .coop, .aero, .int, .mil, .museum, .name, .pro, .tel, .travel, and other 200 country code top-level domains^[10].

Most .me domain names were purchased as domain hacks in English, and few in Dutch languages. .me has seen its greatest interest among English speaking countries including the United States (71%), the United Kingdom (6%), Canada (4%), and Australia (2%)^[11].

One of the most expensive domain sold during the Land Rush period was insure.me that went for $68,005. Shortly, it was followed by date.me, which was sold on the premium auction for $70,000 and love.me for $32,500.

In Dutch, only verb combinations were popular, as they made grammatical sense. E.g., reserveer.me, which can be translated as book.me, and repareer.me - repair.me. Most of the Dutch domains were sold outside the auction during the Go Live phase.

.me domains are also used by some companies and individuals to acronym Middle East and the U.S. State of Maine^[12][13].

In 2008 Illumination Entertainment together with Universal Animation Studios reserved Despicable.Me domain for their upcoming Despicable Me movie. The site was launched in summer 2009. This an unorthodox yet very catchy marketing step in pre-release promotion was highly regarded by .me community as the studio preferred .me domain name to .com^[14].

In 2008 three trademark cases were filed with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Centre. All three domain names, namely: creditmutuel.me, porsche.me, and exxonmobil.me were transferred to the complainants^[15][16].

Prior to introduction of .me, most used domain in Montenegro was second-level domain .cg.yu, Internet domain name of Montenegrin ISP T-Crnogorski Telekom. CG was made as an abbreviation of the name of Montenegro, Crna Gora^[17]. The domain was created as a top-level .yu subdomain, under nic.yu rules which allowed such domains only to Internet providers.

• Montenegro Domain Registry (Montenegrin) Template:En icon