Top-level domain .TK has passed a record mark of 25 million registrations last week. As of yesterday, there were 25068128 domain names registered. Thus, national domain of a tiny island of Tokelau administered by New Zealand is the second in the net to pass this milestone (the first one, of course, is .COM). Growth rates of the domain zone are impressive as well: 837703 names were registered in .TK the last month only.
One more record is that there are a little less than 18 thousand domain names per every citizen of Tokelau Islands. However, the latest achievement is rather relative. Domain .TK is a ccTLD only nominally and the secret of the fantastic success is extremely simple: it offers free registration to absolutely everyone, charging fees for additional services only. Many experts feared that this marketing strategy would attract cybercriminals to .TK, willing to create and use domains for the improper purposes. However, statistics does not confirm these fears. According to the report of Anti-Phishing Working Group, .TK does not show up in the Top 10 most dangerous TLDs. Architelos statistics puts .TK on 47th from a total of 72, it is safer than .com, .net, .co domain zones.
“Domain .TK is unique in its own way”, says Marina Nikerova, senior deputy director of Technical Center of Internet. “Tokelau government together with Dot TK Registry created this project to raise awareness about this country in the world, that is, it was originally a purely image project. However, later on they have started to advertise on free domain webpages and all the revenue goes to Tokelau government. Currently, advertising is one of the significant income items in the budget of this small island state.”
