As covered earlier, WordPress.com owner Automattic made .BLOG domain names available to general public, on November 21, 2016. It was also reported that a few hours later, the total number of registered .BLOG domains was about 16,430.
Reports say that the number of registrations revealed includes the domains registered by the Registry itself, approximately 1,000 domains registered in the Sunrise phase by trademark owners and the domains registered in the .BLOG landrush. .BLOG had 1,744 registered domains before General Availability.
According to reports, .BLOG did not make it to the top 100 of new extensions. They said that the domain needs to get to 18,770 domains to enter the top 100.
It has also been reported that .BLOG Registry had a controversial launch, with claims about the Registry having registered the best keywords for themselves and also reserved many names including all one, two and three character domains.