.XYZ Celebrates 10th Anniversary After Explosive Growth Takes Registry From One TLD to Nearly 3 Dozen

The .XYZ Registry will reach a major landmark Sunday, June 2, when the new TLD administrator turns 10 years old. The company, founded by Daniel Negari, has blazed an extraordinary trail  since its launch, one that came amid a high level of skepticism about .xyz's chances of breaking through the new gTLD clutter in a .com world. We wrote about that in a June 3, 2014 Lowdown post the day after the new extension launched. We noted then that the outcome would hinge on how well the TLD was financially backed and  marketed. The few new TLDs that were succeeding were doing it through major monetary investments and non-stop work to promote a new brand while starting from scratch in a seriously over-crowded field. 

Negari and his team clearly understood that as they hit the ground running, ignored the doubters (which we were among) and never looked back.  If anyone looks at where the .XYZ Registry is today (and are being honest with themselves), I think they would have to admit they never saw this coming - 3.4 million .xyz domains registered (among the top 5 gTLDs worldwide) with registrants including global brands like Google parent, Alphabet.xyz and Block.xyz (best known for their wildly popular Square payment processing business). 

Negari and company's canny networking and marketing efforts also helped them turn their TLD into a popular option in the startup world, as well as crypto and other new tech categories.  It's not just .xyz either. Along the way the registry has steadily been acquiring other TLDs, most from operators who had failed to gain traction with their extensions. The .XYZ Registry has 35 TLDs now. Negari believed his company could turn them into winners and no doubt a lot fewer people would bet against that now than they would have a decade ago.  

The current TLDs in the .XYZ portfolio

I know I've mentioned marketing several times already, but as another example of how thoroughly .XYZ does that, you need only look at how they are celebrating their 10th anniversary. It started with a press release on May 24 but that first one was just the first of ten press releases! They are coming out one a day with each telling the detailed .xyz story in a series of chapters that will culminate June 2. There is a ton of interesting information in those chapters and fortunately they have all been assembled on the .XYZ blog so you can see them all in one place. .XYZ's main office is in Santa Monica, California but in January 2014, six months before .xyz launched, we snapped the photo of Daniel Negari at right while he was giving us a tour of additional office space he had just leased in Las Vegas. When I look at it

now it makes me think of the theme song from that old TV Show, The Jeffersons, "We're Movin' on Up!" When we climbed those office stairs in 2014 I don't think anyone, other than Daniel of course, could have envisioned just how far up his new enterprise was headed!

(Posted May 31, 2024)  

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