Quartz recently reported that more than 1.6 million users have registered their web properties with Colombia’s domain name: .co

It does seem like a wise idea for those trying to beat the clutter in .com world, where 111 million users means most of the good names are taken. Getting to a point where the domain was marketable wasn’t easy though.

From Quartz…

…it’s a country domain that was assigned in 1991 to Colombia. Juan Diego Calle, a Colombian-American entrepreneur, won the contract to run it in 2009, after years of effort and a 1,165-page bid. In exchange for exclusive rights to market .co, Calle pays a fee to the Colombian government that goes towards improving the country’s internet infrastructure.

Many registrations come from the country where the domain was born. But not all of them. Companies like Vine, in New York, Up Global out of Seattle, and Recommend out of Paris have snatched up short, sexy, twitter-friendly domain names with the .co brand.

photo credit: .co