As of 3pm on 21 November 2016, .blog entered a General Availability phase and is now on offer to all. It is expected to appeal to those wanting to personalise their online blog.
The gTLD is being offered by Knock Knock WHOIS There, a subsidiary of WordPress.com, with Nominet serving as the chosen registry service provider following a partnership formed earlier this year with parent company Automattic.
.blog had previously been on limited availability in a Sunrise period during which trademark holders were offered the chance to register a .blog site. Over 1,000 applications were received during this time, with the domain attracting the interest of industry leaders such as Apple and YouTube who have registered .blog sites for future development.
Following a landrush period, .blog has now moved into a General Availability phase, with Automattic anticipating a large interest in the new domain.
“We’re delighted to be able to explore the potential of this new platform with the support of a reputable company such as Nominet,” Paolo Belcastro, Spectrum Division Lead at Automattic/WordPress.com, said. “Their expertise has allowed us to launch .blog smoothly to the blogging community.”
Russell Haworth, Nominet CEO, acknowledged the work of the company’s technical team in engineering a smooth launch. “Thanks to comprehensive technical planning and support from our experienced teams, the .blog domain General Availability launch was achieved without issue.”