No I'd never heard of it before domain names either! Dot TK is the Internet suffix for Tokelau, a 3-island territory off New Zealand, where life looks like being pretty good.
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif]The .TK registry claims to have notched up its 15th million domain name yesterday! Now that's quite an achievement. If true, it means .TK is second only to .COM but ahead of .CN (China) our .DE (Germany).
To be honest, I find that very hard to believe. This despite the fact that .TK offers its domains in a way which could see it register large quantities. The registry works two services. There's the standard "buy your domain name from accredited registrars" such as INDOM. If you do, you simply get a .TK domain and do what you want with it.
But there's also an innovative free domain name service which is used as a "URL shortener" along the same principle as something like TinyURL. How does it work? Say I have a long URL which I'd like shortened to email to a friend or colleague. I go to the .TK registry's site and enter my URL. The registry responds with a suggested .TK domain. That domain is then pointed to my URL. It's all free as long as I put up with the registry's ads on my web page or my domain gets at least 25 hits every 90 days.
So a very different way for a registry to market its domain names and one which could in theory generate large volumes. But 15 million? As Ali G would say… "for real?"[/FONT]
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