This year has been a big one for the team at Identity Digital Australia. With the launch of .au direct, a global company rebrand and sponsoring and participating in NetThing, Australia's leading Internet governance forum, we sure were busy! There was a lot of work behind the scenes to ensure these events were a success and we would like to thank everyone involved in making them happen. 

.au Direct

Officially kicking off in March, the launch of .au direct was a huge milestone for our team and we are pleased to report that there have now been over 700,000 .au direct registrations. This brings the total number of .au domain names under management to over 4 million. The team at .au Domain Administration (auDA) have played a huge role in the evolution of .au and continue to keep users informed by sharing regular insights and helpful articles relating to .au on their website. If you haven’t read it yet, we also shared a blog post on the benefits of .au earlier this year, including that it is open to everyone with an Australian presence, that it showcases your offer and delivers greater choice to you as an individual or organisation.

Identity Digital Australia

In June our company rebranded to Identity Digital (formerly Donuts and Afilias) on a global level. Now as a combined entity, Identity Digital Inc works with hundreds of registrars to bring domain names and related technologies to people wanting to build, market and own their online presence. You can read about the overall company rebrand here or find out more about what this means for Identity Digital Australia and .au in this blog post we shared in September, including that there have been no major changes to our work here in Australia. Our Australian office remains open and we are committed to our work in providing registry services for .au.

NetThing 2022

Identity Digital was proud to sponsor NetThing, Australia’s annual Internet Governance Forum, held as an online event from the 27-28 October 2022. This was the fourth year of NetThing and we were excited to see a wide range of speakers from different backgrounds representing the event. As a technology and policy focused discussion, the event featured industry leaders including keynote presenters Vint Cerf and Ed Husic, Kate Pounder, Johanna Weaver, Andrew Sullivan, Jordan Carter and so many more, including Chris Disspain from Identity Digital. Chis led a panel on Internet Fragmentation and the “Splinternet”, a particularly relevant topic that focused on the benefits of cooperation and collaboration to the internet on a global scale. Read more about what went on during the event in our recent blog post.

Our team has accomplished so much this year and look forward to what 2023 may bring. We hope that everyone has a great holiday season and we look forward to seeing and hearing from you again soon! For any questions and comments, you can reach us at marketing@identitydigital.au.