Hotly contested top level domain name goes to Portland company.
The .design top level domain name will be run, fittingly, by Top Level Design.
Top Level Design beat out six other applicants in a private auction to win the domain. Given the number of applicants, I suspect the final price for the domain was near a high water mark.
Top Level Design CEO Ray King told Domain Name Wire that winning .design was very important for the company, as you might guess from the company’s name.
Beyond .wiki, .design was one of its top priorities.
“Think of all the things that require design,” King said. “Design permeates all aspects of culture.”
There are the types of design most people think about — interior, graphics, web. But most things require design, even furniture.
King thinks web designers are key constituent. As early adopters, he hopes they’ll help bring awareness to the domain.
Top Level Design has launched .wiki and .ink so far. It’s still in contention sets for .art, .llc, .style, .gay and .blog.
Congratulations Ray!
When these smaller guys win such contentions, they tend to hold back a lot of names, have insane premiums, and have many bugs during the launch week.
We’ve already proven this wrong with .wiki and .ink, Robbie, and we’ll do it again with .design. We have withheld a very low number of premiums as we want folks using great names, we have been giving good deals on those reserved for the same reason, and our technical team couldn’t be more capable. Our small team brings tons of passion so I’d recommend you reassess this generalization.
Cheers, -A
thats what frank said too. there was no competition for wiki or ink. you paid no where near what you did for .design. we’ll see what you do.
Congrats to the Top Level Design team! Ray and his team will do very well.