Member Spotlight: Knock Knock WHOIS There

The following is a guest post from new i2Coalition member, Knock Knock WHOIS There.

With less than a year under our belt since the launch of .blog for general availability, Knock Knock WHOIS There (KKWT) is ready to tackle broader issues facing our community and join i2Coalition as one of their newest members.

Founded in 2015 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and the popular Jetpack plugin, KKWT is the registry behind the .blog gTLD. We are a data-driven organization committed to taking a “big picture” approach. From how we chose to launch .blog, our pricing model, and our marketing programs, such as the dotblogger Program, in which we make premium and reserved domains available to influential applicants at no cost, we’ve been dedicated to taking a different approach.

As a subsidiary of Automattic, our company’s philosophies and culture are interwoven with the mission to “democratize publishing” and promote open source software. Automattic has taken an active role in promoting an open Internet through actions such as regular transparency reports and publicly taking a stand in support of Net Neutrality. These values are equally critical to KKWT and we appreciate i2Coalition’s efforts in these areas. As a registry provider, we’re looking forward to lending our resources and enthusiasm to i2Coalition’s efforts around education, advocacy, and diversity.

Don Ruiz, our Head of Business Development, has been involved in the domain name industry for a number of years. During his work at KKWT, and in his previous role at Tucows, he has accumulated extensive industry outreach experience. He participated in many i2Coalition community events as part of this work and subsequently looped KKWT into the i2Coalition’s efforts.

Building open, engaging, and accessible online communities is a foundational value for KKWT. KKWT provides bloggers with access to a great new namespace. We encourage the adoption of new gTLDs to give new and veteran internet users alike a space to build their communities.

We are passionate about keeping the internet transparent and free for end users around the world. As a result, issues around data protection and diversity in technology are high priorities for the .blog registry. As a company that is fully distributed, with employees located all around the world, we’re equally dedicated to fostering diversity and inclusion in the technology and domain industry to better reflect the various backgrounds, needs, and perspectives of all end users. We are also uniquely aware of the challenges and victories in various regions and we hope to continue building upon those victories not just where we’re based as a company, but where all internet users reside.

We do things our own way. We’re data-informed and driven by a desire to provide everyone, from registrars to end users, with an easy, educated experience. There are many factors that influence our success in this endeavor, including the aforementioned industry issue efforts that the i2Coalition champions. We’re excited to continue building on our own, as well as the i2Coalition’s, successes together as partners.