In celebration of our 10th Anniversary, .biz is all about recognizing small business success. We have highlighted 10 that are competing for the first quarter – Best of .biz Award. As we decided on the first top sites to feature and started crafting their stories, we realized some similarities across all of them. Although industry-diverse, each of these sites has a unique mission to set themselves apart from other businesses and needed a domain name that would help them accomplish success.

Below are some excerpts from each of their stories featured on my.biz and awaiting your vote and support!

1. One most notable quote came from Tammy Fink, owner of Blue Water Designs – “.biz has helped me grow Blue Water’s client base. I not only got the name I wanted—but the business to match.”
2. For Sta.rtUp.biz, securing a .biz domain was the perfect fit for their business-minded audience.
3. Minimus.biz realized a potential market for everything in travel sizes and took this “business” online at minimus .biz.
4. Though the Recharge Sports Injury Center already had the ingredients for a successful business model, this .biz success story really took off when they went online. The clinic was better able to spread the about its professional services and educate the public on salient issues in the world of spinal health.
5. A Bajillion Hits became a .biz success story by providing clients with complete marketing and technical support across a comprehensive cross-section of online and digital platforms.
6. Naked Pizza is a unique .biz success story. It’s not just another pizza restaurant. It’s an eco-friendly, socially conscious business with revolutionary ideas about the fast food and take-out industry.
7. British designer Adrian Morley realized his dream in early 2003 and launched an agency that combines creative logic, eye-catching design and commercial awareness to create exciting ideas that engage the target market and workforce.
8. Fitch, an award-winning global agency with 12 international studios, is featured as a .biz success story for being bold.
9. Just like .biz, business-opportunities.biz exists to help self-starters, small businesses and entrepreneurs fulfill their dreams of launching successful businesses.
10. An award-winning world leader in SEO as recognized by TopSEOs.com, ArteWorks is known for delivering innovation and long-term results by keeping an eye on what’s next.

Are you a .biz owner with a success story and interested in sharing? We are waiting to hear from you!

Since .biz debuted in late 2001, it’s grown and changed rapidly like the Internet itself. As part of our 10th anniversary celebration, here’s a look at Web milestones over the past decade, courtesy of www.tamingthebeast.net. Was there really ever a world without Social Media?

2001

• The Internet has 500 million users.

2002

• Mozilla 1.0, which will eventually evolve into Firefox, is released. Internet Explorer has a 95 percent share of the browser market.

2003

• MySpace is launched.

2004

• The first version of Firefox is released and soon becomes a serious contender to Internet Explorer’s stranglehold.
• Google undergoes IPO via Dutch Auction format.
• Facebook is launched.

2005

• Jesse James Garrett coins the term AJAX and YouTube.com launches.
• Google launches blog search, but Technorati is still entrenched as the blog search leader.

2006

• Social networking sites and services sprout up like adolescent acne and the term “Web 2.0″ becomes a mantra .
• Twitter is founded as a research and development project.
• According to MessageLabs, spam is now 64.8% of all global email.

2007

• The term “bacn” comes into usage. Bacn refers to the many email alerts received by subscribers and members of social networking services that threaten to inundate their inboxes.

2008

• Google celebrates its 10th birthday.
• 1.1 billion people are using the Internet and women now outnumber men online.
• 120,000 new blogs are being created globally every day.

2008

• China now has the largest online population in the world.
• Over 162 million Top Level Domain Names (TLDs) were registered up until the end of the first quarter of 2008.
• Google’s launches new entry into the Web browser sphere, Google Chrome.
• According to Nielsen Online, 79% of US consumers have made an online purchase in the last 6 months.
• Over 100.1 million web sites were in operation as of March 2008.

2009

• The Internet now has 1.5 billion users and there are over 100 billion live web pages.

2010

• Internet stocks explode with triple-digit gains, leaving investors awestruck. Thanks to its streaming video offerings, movie-rental site Netflix (NFLX) soared 237% to $180.27 a share.
• Google leaves China after the search giant and the Chinese government butted heads over censorship issues.

2011

• World IPv6 Day is celebrated in June to highlight the depletion of IPv4 addresses, along with the corresponding growth of the IPv6.

What’s ahead in 2012? It’s predicted that over 154 million buyers will be online this year. Plus, 88% of Internet users will browse or research products. If your business has a website, congrats—you’re in position to cash in. If you’re not online, it’s time your business built a Web presence. Start with the right domain name. Start here with my.biz today!

This week we shine the spotlight on teknovation.biz.  This web-based service was originally launched to celebrate “all things” related to technology, innovation and entrepreneurship in East Tennessee. Sponsored by Pershing Yoakley & Associates, P.C., it serves as a service to those that are pursuing to advance the region’s economy through technology, innovation and entrepreneurship.

Teknovation.biz was designed for East Tennesseans to share their successes and strategies and learn from others. It is intended to help create more awareness of the region’s assets and help drive technology, innovation and entrepreneurial job growth.

East Tenneseans are encouraged to visit Teknovation.biz today and share developments in the technology, innovation and entrepreneurial areas!

We’re Celebrating YOU with the Best of .Biz Awards

Where did the time go? Launched in late 2001,.biz is already 10 years old. That calls for a celebration. Of you, though, not us.

We created .biz to give you better domain name choices and stronger branding options. And you’ve responded.  Today, there are more than 2.2 million .biz domain registrations in over 190 countries. .biz is available in 15 languages including German, Portugese, and Chinese.

One small company, Blue Water Designs, saw business boom after securing the perfect .biz domain name in 2004 (www.bluewaterdesigns.biz). “.biz has helped me grow Blue Water’s client base,” said Fink. “I not only got the name I wanted but the business to match.”

To recognize your successes, we’ve created the Best of .Biz Awards. Here’s how they work. Go to www.my.biz/10year/  and tell us how you’ve used .biz to boost your business and marketing. You and your peers will vote on the winners, who in addition to receiving awards will get a Best of .Biz seal to give their websites added luster.

If you’re not using .biz yet and are looking to register a domain, welcome! Getting a .biz name is a very smart move. Studies show that half of all businesses with fewer than 10 employees and annual revenues under $1 million don’t have websites. In this day and age, that’s a barrier to growth.

We’re ready to help you get exactly the name you need, build your brand and accelerate your business online. Want proof? Go to www.my.biz/10Year/  and see the successes we’re recognizing with the Best of .Biz Awards and get your .biz domain today.

Read our Press Release.

This week, we shine the spotlight on benchmarkonline.biz, Delaware’s original Transmission Shops since 1967.  Benchmark Transmission is the transmission specialist with locations in Middletown, Newark, Wilmington, and Claymont.  They are highly qualified and ready to deliver the technical knowledge & skills for your every automatic transmission repair need.  Don’t take our word for it, read more about their clients testimonials and visit them  for your transmission needs.

This is a guest post by Wil Anderson. Wil helps small organizations build community outreach through free and low-cost tools. He can be found on Twitter (@wiljr) and on his website.

I was visiting with my sister a few weeks ago. She was taking me through all the new and exciting things happening with her business, and introducing me to new partners and friends.

We talked a lot about her operations and marketing, and how I could help her with different projects. While we were chatting, I asked how she did a few things:

• Accept payments (at the Tasting Room and at events)
• Record visitors (at the Tasting Room and at events)

She was doing both the old-fashioned way: credit cards, pen and paper. So we got to talking about how much time / money / resources these were consuming for each transaction. Turns out, it’s a lot. We talked about some solutions and I offered two: Square (for anywhere payments) and Google Docs (for form submissions). I’m sure there are others but these were two I thought she could get up and running quickly.

What I soon realized is that as a small business owner, it’s tough to stay on top of the latest technology trends that will likely have an impact on your business / industry. Since you are wearing more than one hat, the days are filled with activities that don’t allow you to focus on keeping up with the latest news.

When your business isn’t focused on technology, it’s even more of a challenge.

The great thing about being a small business is it’s easy to make change. While you might not have the same resources as the bigger players, there are tools available that can help you keep pace with them. And since you are wearing many hats, it will be easier to implement a new solution (ie, no need to go through IT, Marketing, Sales, Web, etc.).

Here are 3 (free!) tools you can use to help stay on top of today’s trends in your industry.

TWITTER
Twitter goes far beyond learning what everyone is having for lunch. Once you set up an account, simply head over to the search feature and start poking around. If you are a local business, you can narrow your search include all results located in a specific zip code or city.

So, if I’m in the winery business in San Diego, I might add that criteria into my search. Of course, I can add a handful of other searches related to wine – upcoming events, specific users / competitors / partners, etc.

Once you’ve found a handful of search criteria, save them. That way, you can quickly reference / review them as needed.

And just because your news feed / Twitter stream is coming in at a blistering pace doesn’t mean you have to keep up – just check in on it once a day until you get familiar with the setup. If you spend 30 minutes a day, you’ll be a pro after a week.

GOOGLE READER
Easily my favorite reading site. Coupled with Spool (below), it becomes a powerful research tool. Google Reader takes news ‘feeds’ from sites you choose and combines them into a format that allows you to read them quickly.

As an example, I follow soccer. Instead of visiting a handful of sites everyday, I subscribe to their feeds. Once these sites are updated (normally via blog posts), they are updated in my Google Reader. This makes it super easy to quickly review al the latest news. Naturally, the more sites you follow, the more time you’ll spend reviewing these feeds.

Let’s go back to the winery in San Diego. I have a number of wineries that I like to visit regularly. If they post news regularly, it might be a good idea to subscribe to their news feed. Then, before I head out to see them, I can review their news. When I meet up with them, I’m all caught up on what they’ve been up to.

(You can also do this with Twitter, assuming they have a Twitter account.)

It doesn’t have to be isolated to the winery industry. If you find something on Twitter, you can find a related website and follow their news through Google Reader.

I have about 100 feeds I actively follow, focused on everything I’m interested in, from soccer to marketing to gargoyles in New York.

SPOOL
Ok, so we have two great ways of finding and reading news related to our industry. Terrific. What happens if we don’t have enough time to read / watch / listen to them right now? That’s where Spool comes in. Spool allows you to save an article for later, with the added benefit of allowing you to review the saved article offline.

I use this service a lot. Let’s say I’m heading downtown on the subway – I’ll load up Spool on my phone and read those articles I saved, even when I don’t have an internet connection.

While there isn’t a direct integration with Twitter and Spool, it’s easy to copy the link into Spool and it saves it for later. Google Reader allows you to Spool articles directly from it’s service with a single click.

The great thing about each of these tools is they can be used on your computer and on your mobile device. It’s likely you don’t have much downtime but when you do, check in on the latest technology trends and see how they might help your small business.