On March 15 1985, the first .com domain name symbolics.com was registered, kick-starting the journey of a revolutionary advancement in technology, business and entertainment. After it’s registration, just five other domains were registered same year namely; 24-Apr-1985 BBN.COM, 24-May-1985 THINK.COM, 11-Jul-1985    MCC.COM, 30-Sep-1985 DEC.COM, 07-Nov-1985 NORTHROP.COM. I’ll call them the ’85 set! Apparently, none of them are top site now! Things have changed!

The domain has now been acquired by xf.com a US based real estate and internet investment company. The company also own various precious domains.

Since then, well over 192 million domains have been registered and more than 600,000 are been registered per month.

To mark this historic event XF.com and Verisign have launched 25yearsof.com to look back and see  how things have changed, those who shaped it and honour the change agents.

Some honorees include:
Amazon – Jeff Bezos
Apple -  Steve Jobs
Craigslist
Digg
eBay – Pierre Omidyar
Facebook – Mark Zuckerberg
Google – Larry Page / Sergey Brin
Microsoft – Bill Gates
MySpace
Napster
PayPal
Skype
Twitter
Yahoo
YouTube

A gala will also be organized (in May 2010) to showcase “who is who” on the internet.

“… VeriSign will unveil at the gala details of four $75,000 research grants designed to assist those with the promise to shape the next 25 years of .com. These grants will be awarded later in the year by geography, one for each North America, Europe, Asia and India.”

It is certain that all the top sites today will not be the top in the next 25 years, the question now is… who can see the future? Who will lead the movement? Who will make the change that we long for and break new ground?

To my African friends and Nigerians, how can we put Africa on the map?