Where does an amazing legacy of innovation lead? To a .brand, where the tradition continues.

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has gone live with the website www.home.cern. Founded in 1954 to probe the structure of the universe—think particle colliders, dark matter, and other rarefied topics—CERN also invented the World Wide Web in 1989 to enable information-sharing between global scientists.

Using Its .brand to Educate and Inspire

Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist at CERN, created the first website which was hosted on his NeXT computer. The website described the basic features of the web, how to access other people’s documents, and how to set up your own server. Go to www.home.cern to learn how CERN is restoring some of the original site, info.cern.ch.

As it evolves in the future, CERN’s .brand domain will help to educate and inspire people across the globe—and take the organization’s elite reputation to even greater heights.

CERN Disrupts Once Again

Tony Kirsch, Head of Professional Services at Neustar, reported on Circle ID, “It’s incredibly fitting to see the birthplace of the World Wide Web join the latest evolution of Internet innovation.” He added that a .brand “is a perfect match” for an organization whose reputation is steeped in historic change.

Kirsch also noted the significance of using the ‘home.brand’ naming structure. He said that at the time of writing, 36 .brands to date had created their ‘home.brand’ domain, “indicating a strong movement towards using the ‘home’ label as the global standard for the home page. We’ve even seen the creation of ‘maison.brand’ (home in French) by a largely French-speaking organization.”

In its work, CERN helps to illuminate the fundamental laws of nature. Now these scientists are teaching marketers about the laws of disruption, too.