123Reg company

MySpace Begins Offering .tel Domains (March 25, 2009) - With direct access to 130 million active social network users, MySpace (www.myspace.com) is now offering ".tel" domains to its members, who will be able to better promote their MySpace page in organic search results from any device by registering a .tel domain.

Just a day after the .tel domain became generally available, according to a Wednesday announcement by .tel registry operator Telnic Limited (www.telnic.org), MySpace is offering .tel domains to community members for $19.99 per year. In a well suited match with MySpace user needs, .tel domain names are optimised for mobile devices and supports address book data, such as phone, mobile, fax and VoIP numbers, IM and email addresses. It also stores web links, geo-location data and keywords that could describe an individual, business or group, making .tel domains easy to find.

"We're delighted that MySpace will be offering .tel domains to its community, enabling them to more quickly and easily manage all aspects of their online life," Telnic Limited chief executive officer Khashayar Mahdavi said in a statement. "MySpace is exactly the type of partner that has the foresight to see the .tel as a complementary product, providing choices as social networkers adopt new modes of communication while they continue to enjoy the benefits of MySpace."

MySpace users can also use the .tel domain to securely share their more private contact information with non-MySpace users who wish to contact them.

In a major event for domain registrars, the general availability launch of the .tel domain helped push 123-reg (www.123-reg.co.uk) over the two million domain landmark, affirming the company's dominance of the UK market as the largest domain name registrar. 123-reg sells its .tel domains for £9.99 (or about $14.50) a year.

123-reg Offers Free Google Analytics (March 23, 2009) - UK domain registrar and web hosting provider 123-reg (www.123-reg.co.uk) announced on Monday it has partnered with Google (www.google.com) and Clickstream Technologies (www.clickstream.com) to offer a free Google Analytics service to all its web hosting and InstantSite customers.

The service is designed to help businesses more effectively manage their Google AdWords budget, as well as providing more information on other online marketing activities.

123-reg customers can use Google Analytics to find out which visitors convert into customers and link Analytics with AdWords to see which keywords are generating the best return-on-investment.

Google Analytics offers detailed reporting on how visitors interact with a site, including how they found the site, the length of time spent on each page and, for those that don't become customers, where they dropped out of the purchase process.

123-reg customers can use this information to improve site usability and performance.

The company has also deployed Clickstream's Datasherpa Solutions Platform to automatically add tracking tags to web pages.

This enables users with limited technical resources to benefit from Google Analytics without investing additional time and resources to manually implement tagging on each page.

"This free tool opens up Google Analytics for people who don't necessarily have the technical know-how to do the manual implementation otherwise required," says Thomas Vollrath, managing director at 123-reg. "It is perfect for online businesses who want to analyse their website's visitors and increase conversions without vast time, money or technical investment."

123-reg offers its hosting plan customers, as well as those who spend £25 or more on domain names, with free vouchers to try out AdWords.

Community websites help hosting and domain market grow in difficult trading times (December 23, 2008) - webfusion.co.uk - Consolidation is rife in the UK web hosting industry, but the focus must move away from the secure early adopter market to ensure continued growth, warns industry leader, WebFusion. 2008 has solidified the interest in entire website solutions from consumers that don't have past technical website experience, driven by the user-friendly nature of community sites such as Facebook, and the WebFusion Group has responded to these needs.

Thomas Vollrath, Managing Director of the UK's largest web hosting group, WebFusion, explains, "2008 has proved, more than ever, that our strategy is heading in the right direction as we continue to adapt to the needs of our evolving consumer and business markets. During the first six months of 2008, user numbers of community websites grew by 64 million* - more than the numbers of new internet users! Consumers now crave easy and cost effective total online solutions, while businesses continue to want fantastic hosting services with UK-based support."

With its multi-brand strategy, the WebFusion Group covers all web hosting markets: WebFusion for feature-rich web hosting and innovative services, including the UK's first hosting reseller; 123-reg for great value domains and hosting; Donhost for high-end business hosting; and SupaNames for well-rounded hosting packages.

2008 has seen continual investment in infrastructure to create stability across the group's platforms and support the product portfolio refresh, such as the revamped WebFusion shared and dedicated hosting packages. Other significant milestones for the group this year include: full PCI compliance for WebFusion and Donhost dedicated servers; the launch of a new Donhost website; a US launch of WebFusion; the consolidation of Manchester and London-based servers into the brand new, L2.5 million data centre facility in Leeds, set to open fully for business use in January.

123-reg continues to reign as the UK's largest domain registrar and in 2008, introduced many new top level domains (TLDs), expanding its product range across Europe and Asia. 123-reg.co.uk now includes .cn (China), .dk (Denmark), .it (Italy), .at (Austria) and .ch (Switzerland) domains. July saw the launch of .me and other popular offers including .eu and .info domains.

"2008 has been a year of growth and improved efficiency at WebFusion," continues Vollrath. "With extensive hosting industry experience, our management team is taking the group to a wider audience and the plan for 2009 looks strong and exciting for us and our customers."

WebFusion in a nutshell

- 1.84m domains, 117k hosting contracts (Shared, Dedicated and VPS and Reseller) and 1.4 million hostnames
- Largest domain name registrar in UK (17.2% of all .uk domains)
- Overall .uk growth since Jan 06 is 50%. WebFusion grew by 79% in the same period
- WebFusion market share on total new registrations grew from 17% in 2006 to 21.4% in August 2008
- Efficient, scalable subscription-based model, supported by in-house technology


About WebFusion

WebFusion Group Ltd is the largest web hosting organisation in the UK with 1.84 million hosted websites and almost 2 million registered domains. WebFusion offers cost-effective, feature-rich hosting packages for a diverse customer-base - from web developers, designers and hobbyists to businesses with complex e-commerce operations. WebFusion's customers benefit from market-leading security and service, including 24x7 technical support and state-of-the-art data centres.

For more information, please visit www.webfusion.co.uk

*Statistics from comScore survey http://www.insidefacebook.com/2008/07/27/intriguing-trends-in-social-networking-growth-during-1h-2008/

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