This year, the Runet Awards ceremony coincided with another landmark event on the Russian Internet. A few days ago, on November 5, the 5-millionth domain name was registered on .RU domain. Andrey Vorobyev, director of the Coordination Centre for TLD RU/РФ, gave a special certificate and present to the domain administrator, Liliya Agrafonova, on the stage of the Oktyabr cinema as part of the For the Development of Regional Projects nomination. Vorobyev said the Russian internet was expanding into the regions as the 5-millionth domain roominstyle.ru had been registered in Ryazan.
Agrafonova is a designer from Ryazan. Commenting on the award, she said: “I am very happy that I was so lucky to become the 5-millionth domain administrator. I am working to make people’s lives more beautiful. Opening my own online shop was a big, serious decision for me. I hope that the special status of this domain name will help me and bring me success.” Representatives of the Coordination Centre founders also spoke at the Runet Awards ceremony, including Leonid Levin, chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technology and Communications, and Alexei Soldatov, chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Internet Development Foundation. They both thanked guests and experts at the ceremony for their active participation in the voting and wished luck to the contenders.
The .ru domain was delegated to Russia by the ICANN corporation on April 7, 1994. The first million domain names were registered by 2007. Eighteen months later the Internet zone doubled, and by September 2010 tripled. In September 2012, it had 4 million names.
Photos from the Runet Awards ceremony are available on the Coordination Centre’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/cctldru/
