The .boston gTLD has changed hands, with Minds + Machines, which currently operates 24 gTLDs that have gone live including .work, .london and .beer, taking a 99 percent interest in Boston TLD Management LLC, the owner of rights to the .boston gTLD, and the agreement of its subsidiary, Minds + Machines Limited, to act as the Registry Service Provider.
Minds + Machines provides backend registry services for an additional four gTLDs including .bayern.
âOver the last five years MMX has worked hard to establish itself as the owner/operator of choice for cities and municipalities on geo TLDs. We intend to continue growing this part of our portfolio as relevant opportunities emerge,â said Antony Van Couvering, CEO of Minds + Machines.
âWe look forward to working with BTM, Boston Globe Media, the City of Boston and our distribution partners to ensure the successful launch of .boston later this year, which we believe will become a major digital asset to the City of Boston, its businesses and communities.â
The Nigerian ccTLD is growing, albeit more slowly than most. During 2015 the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NIRA) said a total of 22,113 new .ng domains were registered, an increase of 3,240 on 2014 with 14,462 renewed.
Verisign have released the top ten trending keywords in .com and .net for December 2015. For .com the top ten keywords had a heavy Chinese influence. They were clinic, fund, wang, lice, cai, fang, dai, lian, jin and traffic. For .net there was also a Chinese influence, but not as strong. The top ten .net keywords were porn, pure, perfect, parts, stem, zhai, edit, fang, dairy and tshirts.