Thirty years is a long time when it comes to technology, and even longer for the internet. And today .org celebrates its 30th birthday. It was the year the domain name system came into being while some of the other notable events in 1985 were the UK’s first mobile/cellular network was launched by Vodafone, Ronald Reagan was sworn in for his second term as US president and Neighbours began its long run on television. It was also the year in which the very first .org domain – mitre.org – was born.The .org gTLD is even older than the World Wide Web and the domain’s non-profit operator, Public Interest Registry is celebrating with www.happy30th.org, an interactive timeline that takes you back through 30 years of storytelling, advocacy and philanthropy online discovering how these websites and organisations have changed throughout the past 30 years.In the last three decades, the .org domain has been used to help people tell their stories online (wordpress.org setup in 2003), raise funds after a devastating natural disaster (clintonbushhaitifund.org setup in 2010), support the health and well-being of children around the world (unicef.org setup in 1993) and more.”Thirty years and more than 10.5 million registrants later, the .org domain continues to give a voice to organisations and individuals working on behalf of the greater good,” said Brian Cute, CEO of Public Interest Registry. “From encouraging philanthropy and volunteerism to preserving natural and cultural heritage, fostering economic growth and much more, causes that live on .org bring incalculable benefits to our communities, our society and our shared planet. We look forward to many more years of giving organisations of all kinds a trusted online home for building communities and working towards a common cause.”The .org domain is almost as old as the Internet itself, which has forever changed the way people communicate, congregate, and find and share information. With approximately three billion people globally online today, the Internet has radically improved access to information for individuals and increased audience reach for millions of organisations. For .org users in particular, the growth of the internet has allowed non-profits to thrive through online giving, cultural institutions to spread word of their traditions, and global communities to breakdown boundaries and come together online.”MITRE played a pivotal role in managing the systems of domains in the early stages of the Internet’s development, but as a private, not-for-profit organisation, our brand didn’t align with other emerging domains,” said Joel Jacobs, MITRE vice president and chief information officer. “The .org domain seemed to be the best fit and we were fortunate to be the first registrant. We believe that being part of the .org domain has done much to reinforce MITRE’s identity as an organisation that works in the public interest. It’s amazing to see how large, global and diverse this community has become and the impact .org has had for so many causes.””Since January 15, 2001, our website, CreativeCommons.org, has been integral to our daily work, allowing millions of creators to license their works to build a global Commons of creativity and knowledge – nearly one billion works to date,” said Ryan Merkley, CEO, Creative Commons. “Like the .org domain itself, Creative Commons aims to serve the public good. We’re committed to keeping the Internet creative, free and open, and to making it easy for people to collaborate and share their creative works.”For more information about Public Interest Registry, please visit www.pir.org. To learn more about .org’s growth and composition, download the latest bi-annual “Dashboard” report at www.pir.org/dashboard. For 30 interesting facts about .org and the Internet from the past 30 years, visit www.pir.org/30-org-and-internet-facts.