Posted by admin on February 6, 2011 at 1:38 pm
Happy Birthday, Search Engine for Domain Offers.
Domain name marketplace and parking company Sedo turns 10 this month.
Sedo wasn’t the first online marketplace for domain names but it quickly grew into a powerhouse. In addition to brokering lots of six and seven figure transactions the company also has a dominate position in ccTLDs.
Here are some of the company’s milestones over the past decade:
2001- Sedo officially becomes entity in Cologne, Germany
2002- Sedo introduces parking
2005- Sedo opens office in Boston, MA, USA
2006- Sedo introduces auctions
2007- Sedo acquires GreatDomains
2007- Sedo acquires DomainsBot
2008- Sedo opens office in London, UK
2009- Sedo acquires Revenue Direct
2009- Sedo acquires Parking Panel
2010- Sale of Sex.com
2011- The Sedo global marketplace offers over 17 million domains
Original Article courtesy of Domain Name Wire
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Posted by admin on February 6, 2011 at 1:38 pm
Three days of domaining in Santa Monica.
The biggest ever DOMAINfest conference has come to a close.
Almost 700 domain investors, service providers, and attorneys attended this year’s three day event in Santa Monica. Here are a few of my thoughts:
- It’s kind of funny showing up to the airport the day after DOMAINfest. There are a lot of hungover domainers.
- A lot of the hallway talk at the conference was about how it was unlikely ICANN would greenlight the new TLD applicant guidebook in March. It appears we now have confirmation of this.
- The Demand Media party was particularly upbeat given the large crowd of newly minted millionaire’s thanks to the IPO.
- The most entertaining evening was Wednesday night watching TrafficZ‘s Sam Aidun play in his band Foul Play at the Viper Room. It was a must see.
- There was a lot of buzz about success with Go Daddy’s Premium Listings. More on this later.
Original Article courtesy of Domain Name Wire
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Posted by admin on February 6, 2011 at 1:36 pm
Lots of mainstream attention on domain names today.
We’re just hours away from Go Daddy’s Super Bowl commercials and a huge plug for the .co domain.
I really have no idea who the GoDaddy.co girl is. My guess is it’s not someone from Colombia, but that’s about all I have at this point.
I’m thinking that Go Daddy might not actually show who the .co girl is on the TV commercial and instead send viewers to their web site to see the revealing. This would be classic Go Daddy style to drive web traffic.
As for the non-.co Go Daddy commercial, DOMAINfest attendees like myself got to view the entire “web only” version during Bob Parson’s keynote at the event last week.
Competitor Network Solutions is piggybacking on the Go Daddy commercials by releasing a web video called “Go Granny” to spoof the Go Daddy ads. (Network Solutions’ banner ads about the “commercial” have been following me around the web all day).
While this will certainly get them some nice media attention, the video itself falls flat. I stopped watching it after 30 seconds. If you have the patience to watch all four minutes of it then perhaps you’ll get more out of it.
Original Article courtesy of Domain Name Wire
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Posted by admin on February 6, 2011 at 1:35 pm
Article highlights commercialization of two letter country code domains.
The New York Times published an article today about the commercialization of country code top level domain names.
Colombia’s .co will get major attention after a Go Daddy commercial plugs it today, and .co was front and center in the article.
.Co Internet CEO Juan Calle noted that Colombia gets 25% of revenue from sales of .co. This is the first time I’ve seen this number published.
.Co grossed $20 million last year thanks to higher prices for sunrise and premium domain names. Calle thinks the number will be $30 million this year. He hope to hit five million .co domain names within five years, according to the article.
Last month I somewhat humorously suggested that the new “south Sudan” could name itself for domain name profits. I was a bit surprised to get a note from someone working on the renaming the next week asking for my opinion.
Other popular commercialized ccTLDs include .tv (Tuvalu) and .me (Montenegro).
Original Article courtesy of Domain Name Wire
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Posted by admin on February 6, 2011 at 1:32 pm
Court filing shows proposed $13 million domain name sale.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been checking the Escom bankruptcy court docket twice daily for an update to the Sex.com case. Earlier today the court posted a proposed order (pdf) for the sale of Sex.com for $13 million. The buyer is Clover Holdings Limited.
The sale was handled by Sedo, which worked to broker a sale of the domain name on behalf of Sex.com owner Escom, which had been pushed into bankruptcy. If Sedo was unable to find a buyer through negotiations it was going to hold an open auction. Apparently there was significant interest, and entering into an auction could have caused difficulties as the sale and payment terms would have been fixed.
The deal still needs to be approved by the court. If approved, this will be a fairly good resolution to what has been yet another rough patch for the storied Sex.com domain name.
(Update: congrats to Kevin Murphy over at DomainIncite, who appears to be the first person to report on this breaking sale today in an article at The Register.)
Original Article courtesy of Domain Name Wire
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