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Looks like ‘Daily Deals’ site for college students just bought uscoop.com for $7,000

uscoop

It looks like the privately held marketing business “U Scoop”, which offers students up to 70% off cool new brands and the best things to do, eat, and see in their college towns, has purchased the domain name uscoop.com for $7,000 USD at Sedo’s GreatDomains. 

Obviously, it’s just a guess since the domain name is still in Sedo’s transfer service, but if you visit U Scoop’s web site (theuscoop.com), the company which was founded in 2010 and has 6 employees (according to its LinkedIn profile), is planning to unveil its web site soon.

Maybe all the company was waiting for was the right domain name to launch their web site?

PokerStars

Of course, I could be wrong.  PokerStars.com owns the domain name uscoop.net, but the domain name doesn’t resolve.  Last week, PokerStars kicked off its USCOOP event (as in The United States Championship of Online Poker). 

However, PokerStars refers to the event officially as USA COOP, so my bet is still on U Scoop as the new owner of the name.

With the momentum of group buying in their favor, and college students always looking for bargains, targeting the niche college market seems like a really good idea.

I signed up for the U Scoop newsletter and just received an email.  Here’s what it said:

Each day our team scours campuses nationwide and surfs hundreds of websites to find the coolest products, fads, and services to keep you entertained.
 
But rather than just write about the daily finds, we give you a reason to try them by offering a 24 hour deal at up to 50% off.
 
And if that doesn’t do it for you, hopefully campus fads, pimped out dorm rooms, and pre-game playlists will do the trick.
 
In the mean time, we’ll keep lining up the deals while you start lining up your friends. Sound good?
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Tablets.com to provide reviews, buying advice, news and more for tablet enthusiasts

ipad games

It’s been only a month since Aron Meystedt of XF.com acquired the category-killer domain name Tablets.com

So what’s in store for one of the hottest gadgets and domain names on the market?

Bill Kara of Hallpass Media whose casual game network receives over 3.5 million visitors monthly, suggested back in early November on Fusible that Tablets.com: “should make a comparison engine and do some peer rankings to really get the SEO juice going.   I don’t think a blog is the best use of this type of domain IMO…”, he commented.

Aron responded that the blog is just temporary, and plans were underway for a comparsion engine and more. 

If you’ve visited Tablets.com recently, you’ll know the search is on for writers to write reviews, articles, news, buying advice, information and more.  Literally, anything about tablets.

Whatever site is ultimately launched, right now tablets.com continues to show up on page 1 of Google for the search phrase ‘tablets’, and ranks above Apple, Amazon, RadioShack, Best Buy and other popular sites that sell tablets.

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DesignContest.com sells for $40,000 at GreatDomains

design contest

The domain name DesignContest.com has sold at Sedo’s GreatDomains for $40,000 USD. 

The DesignContest web site, which is already online but has unfinished business in terms of development and content, plans to run logo, web and other graphic design contests.  The site has a feel of 99designs.com, a popular ‘design contest’ web site that has nearly 60,000 projects completed to date and last month alone paid out almost $1 million to designers ($742,096, to be exact).

In April, 99designs, had nearly half a million people visit its site, according to Compete.

Interestingly enough, DesignContest.net, runs a similar web site and currently owns the #1 spot in Google for the search term: design contest.  In 2010 DesignContest claims to have awarded $42,238 in prizes.

DesignContest.com, which still appears to be in Beta, has a number of test contests online.  But based on the track record of 99designs and other clone sites, the $40,000 investment for the domain name seems like a smart investment.

Last year, Contests.com was acquired by National A-1 from Yahoo! for $380,000.  The Contests site is online, but still under construction.  While not much is known about the plans for Contests.com other than the WordPress site that is online, launching a ‘design contest’ web site might not be such a bad idea.

UPDATE:  DesignContest.net purchased the domain DesignContest.com.  DesignContest.net left a comment on this story: “DesignContest.com has been acquired by DesignContest.net. The new version (V2) of DesignContest.net will be launched on .com in early 2011 to bring new unique functionality and services to it’s customers that look for top results in graphic design.”

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Will the sale of Gambling.com even come close to $20MM (its previous sale price)?

online gambling

Fusible.com was the first blog in the Domain industry to report about the auction of Gambling.com, shortly after reading a tweet sent through Calvin Ayre’s web site announcing Media Corp had retained Sedo to sell Gambling.com

Hours earlier, Media Corp had issued a press release through BusinessWire: ‘Whilst the Group has received a number of very significant indicative offers for www.gambling.com, the Board believes that a formal auction process with the World’s leading domain name broker will achieve the best possible outcome and valuation as Sedo is uniquely positioned to present the domain to global gambling brands and other qualified buyers.’

Purely a Domain Sale?

Gambling.com, if you recall, sold for nearly $20 million in 2005.  However, the sale wasn’t purely a domain sale. 

According to Sedo back in 2005: ‘The sale of Gambling.com turned heads when it hit the multi-million dollar mark and sold for 20 million dollars.  Also included in the sale were benefits of a direct mail database and affiliate program connections.’

In 2010, will Gambling.com even close to its multi-million dollar sales price from 2005? 

Back in 2005, Casinomeister wrote about the sale.

“Gambling.com is the number 1 listing on google.com for “Gambling” search and has over 500 other internet and affiliate sites linking to Gambling.com globally. It also has extensive expertise in direct mailing and has built a double opt-in database of over 200,000 members.”

Times have changed.  Gambling.com is no longer the number 1 listing.  Though type in traffic is always a nice perk, long term businesses want to own the search engines.

What are people saying?

Over at Gambling Portal Webmasters Association, the site that was originally tapped to auction Slots.com, members are a bit skeptical that Gambling.com will get anywhere near that $20 million price tag.  Here’s a look at some of the comments:

Christoff says, “Superb domain but will never get $20m for it”
 
Brean78 says, “For what its worth, I think Gambling.com has suffered from a bit of an identity crisis for a while now. It appears to be heavily focused on sport (for traffic I presume), but I don’t know too many people that associate gambling with sports betting.”
 
Graham says, “20 million?? I just don’t see this as good of a domain as something like onlinecasinos.com, sportsbetting.com, casinos.com, etc. where the people are coming to the site knowing exactly what they want to do. Gambling is too broad and I don’t think would convert that great, nor have the player value that some other terms might carry.”
 
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Owners of domain names seized by ICE, using Twitter to communicate with users

Domain names seized by ICE - Homeland Security investigations

TechCrunch is reporting that many of the owners of the domain names seized by Homeland Security earlier this week because of copyright infringement are now moving their web sites to alternate domain names. 

And the owners are using Twitter to get the word out about the “move”.

Some have already started to migrate to other domains, though it’s likely choices like .net won’t be any safer. Torrent-Finder owner Waleed Gad El Kareem said he switched his site over to Torrent-Finder.info the moment he saw the ICE message on Torrent-Finder.com, posting the new site’s address on Twitter.

As TechCrunch points out, some web sites have switched from .com to .net, as well as .com to .info.   Jamie Zoch, of DotWeekly, has a full rundown of all the domain names seized.

RapGodfathers.info, one of the sites that had its .com seized, registered the .info on Nov. 25th (see Whois Record below).  The .net and .org were already registered.

rapgodfathers.info whois record

Read more about Sites With Government Seized Domains Are Moving On, On Twitter.

What do you think? Should the owners have gone with .info, a different extension, a .com with hyphens, or something entirely different?