(www.WebHosting.Info)    The Public Interest Registry, the registry for .org domain names, today announced that it now has 7 million domain names. The company claims that this makes it the third largest generic domain — after “.com” and “.net”.

When the Reston, Va.-based Public Interest Registry took over the domain registry in January 2003, “.org” registrations totaled 2.6 million names. The company claims that it has consistently grown 20 percent percent year over year since then. It attributes growth to growth in social networking, issue awareness, online collaboration and advocacy groups. It avers that this includes an increased number of wikis for collaborative content, made popular by wikipedia.org, online political organizing, blogging and the green movement.

“All kinds of organization use .org, not just the nonprofits of yesterday,” said Alexa Raad, chief executive of the nonprofit registry, which was founded by The Internet Society. “The most progressive individuals on the internet are trying to brand ideas on the internet under .org.”