Archive for November, 2010
Looks like ‘Daily Deals’ site for college students just bought uscoop.com for $7,000
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?
Tablets.com to provide reviews, buying advice, news and more for tablet enthusiasts
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.
DesignContest.com sells for $40,000 at GreatDomains
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.”
Will the sale of Gambling.com even come close to $20MM (its previous sale price)?
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:
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.”
Owners of domain names seized by ICE, using Twitter to communicate with users
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.
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?
Kentucky internet gambling case: Court date scheduled for December 6
For those interested in the Kentucky internet gambling case that began in September 2008, in which the state of Kentucky tried seizing 141 domain names of gambling sites, a new court date has been scheduled for December 6, 2010.
As CasinoAdvisor reports: ‘The case is back in the court of Judge Thomas Wingate, who was the original judge that ruled that Kentucky was legally able to exert jurisdiction over the specified domain names, even though all the domains are owned and operated outside of the Commonwealth.’
While there are 141 domain names involved in the case, the state’s attorneys in an attempt to identify the owners of the domains, wants to divide up the domain names into groups.
According to CasinoAdvisor, the state’s attorney’s submitted the following before the court: ‘In order to effectively manage the large number of sites, the Commonwealth suggests that the determination of identification and ownership of sites occur in groups. The Commonwealth requests that the initial group consist of playersonly.com, sportsbook.com, sportsinteraction.com, mysportsbook.com, and linesmaker.com.’
Who knows whether this case will ever end.
What do you think of this latest submission by the state’s attorneys?
See the original list of the defendants’ 141 domain names, which includes Fulltiltpoker.com, Goldenpalace.com, Bodoglife.com and Pokerstars.com (just to name a few).
More group buying web sites, still more strange group buying domain names
Group buying sites are launching everywhere. Tuango, Montreal’s first group-buying site founded by Eduardo Mandri, is one of the latest entrants into the group buying market with a not-so-familiar name, but it’s not the only one using a catchy domain to brand its business – there are plenty.
As more individuals and companies enter the group-buying business, there is a stronger likelihood the web sites will be using a catchy name over a premium generic name more relevant to its business model such as - daily bargains, or deal a day, or any number of the terms used to describe the group buying trend where people group together in order to get the best deals online.
I know I’ve covered this before, but not much has changed.
Take for example an article published today in The Gazette entitled Group-buying making waves. The story lists a number of new group buying startups in Canada, that at first glance seem sort of odd names for companies. But it’s not really that odd, considering the group buying market is crowded with all sorts of strange names.
Just take a look at some of the latest group buying startups mentioned in the news:
Coucoupon.com
Creation date: 19 Oct 2010
Grooster.com
Created on: 19 January 2010
Campusbargains.ca
Creation date: 5 November 2010
Suchthedeal.com
Creation date: 1 July 2010
Gaggleofchicks.com
Creation date: 8 April 2010
So why the change?
Are startups less worried about premium domain names and more focused on investing in different parts of their business?
Are they cash-strapped? Do they even “get” domain names?
Or did Groupon change the domain market, at least for group buying sites with its use of “Groupon”?
Whatever the reason, Groupon has done remarkably well since launching in 2008.
According to Wikipedia: ‘ Groupon is experiencing phenomenal growth with a projected revenue of $500 million for 2010. No tech company (including Amazon, Ebay, Yahoo, or even Google) has experienced this kind of growth. At just under 2-years old in April of 2010, the company was valued at $1.35 billion.’
Activision knows a thing or two about ‘Call of Duty’ domain names (or do they?)
You might remember when news broke that Activision had registered a number of domains such as callofdutyfuturewarfare.com and codfuturewarfare.com. The website superannuation had announced a fresh new batch of names registered by Activision shortly after the company purchased the names in May.
Mary Tuck, one of the company’s attorneys, is not only responsible for registering the names, but she also files trademarks on behalf of the company according to the United States Patent and Trademark Office web site at uspto.gov. The same day the company registered the names on May 11, it also filed for the trademarks.
The superannuation article linked to the Whois records on the popular domain company site - DomainTools and it sparked a flurry of stories across gaming and technology sites.
Out of those dozen or so names though, nothing yet has been developed. In fact, none of the names resolve to any kind of website at the time of this story.
While rumors swirl about Activision’s next Call of Duty game, the company seems to be improving its understanding of domain names.
Call of Duty Domains
Call of Duty Black Ops, its latest title released earlier this month, is being considered a game-changer with sales shattering records all over the world. Activision does own callofdutyblackops.com, but it failed to register other variations.
If you notice the domains registered in May, the company picked up a number of variations of possible titles. For example, instead of just registering futurewarfare2.com – the company also registered codfuturewarfare2.com and callofdutyfuturewarfare2.com for a possible Call of Duty Future Warfare game.
No surprise, futurewarfare.com had been registered for years before, so Activision didn’t get its hands on the simplest version of the name. The name is owned by BuyDomains. And if shorter and memorable names are any indicator of value, Activision should probably buy the name now while its listed for a reasonable price of $3,788 (before someone else does).
Blackops.com, another name it doesn’t own, has seen a huge spike in traffic to its web site over the last several months, which is likely to grow with the game’s popularity.
Trademark infringing domains
When it came to registering domain names for its most successful title to date, Activision missed registering names like codblackops.com - a habit it’s now getting into by registering domain names with ‘cod’ (as in, Call of Duty) in the front.
With codblackops.com, the owner Stephen Girvan currently has a web site online that has seen a surge in traffic.
Visit the site, and click on the home page, and you’ll be taken to an article entitled: ‘Video Game Giants are Bullying Me’.
The article discusses Stephen’s dispute with Activision over domain names, which started after: ‘he created a “clan” website in January to allow him and his friends to post scores online of their favourite game, Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. At the beginning of March, Stephen, of Maryhill, says he renamed the website to codblackops.com after asking members to come up with a name.’
At this point what comes of the dispute isn’t known, but one thing is for sure: Activision is starting to get better at registering domain names.
My only advice is that the company should purchase FutureWarfare.com while it can.
The phrase ‘Future Warfare’ is generic, and used among military and military scholars. But that hasn’t stopped Activision from filing for a trademark – which it did on May 11, 2010 (along with Call of Duty Futurewarfare).
A brief history of 3D domain name sales
Ever since Stephen Douglas posted an article about 3D Domains as the next big trend for domain buyers and sellers, I’ve been more interested in learning about the space. Domain investors have also been having a number of online discussions about 3D domains over at DN Forum, Namepros and other forums.
I decided to take a quick look at the sales history of 3D domain names using one of the best resources for domain investors: DomainTools.com – Sales History.
Some of the top publicly reported sales took place in 2010, with the sale of 3Dtv.co.uk leading the charts, selling for $22,650 in March 2010. A web site is online and blog, run by a small team headed by the founder, Chris Conwell, who has been active on the web since 1995. Chris Conwell is a big-time domain investor and developer. According to the web site: ‘Chris also owns the popular gift ideas site Gadgets.co.uk and the domain name site Zycon.co.uk which has a portfolio of almost 8000 domains. He also owned one of the UK’s leading mobile phone sites, Mobiles.co.uk, until its recent sale to The Carphone Warehouse.’
3Dscience.com sold for $4,637 via Afternic in 2005. 3DScience.com is a website operated by Zygote Media Group, Inc. The company’s mission is: ‘to be the best scientific visualization content provider to professionals and consumers while leading the industry in innovative creative development, artistic quality and service.’
Web3D.com sold in 2009 on the aftermarket site NameJet. The price: $14,301. 3Dweb.com sold for $8,100 back in September via Sedo. And that was just the tip of the iceberg for Sedo.
In 2010, Sedo closed several four-figure deals:
3Dweb.net €3,000.00
3D-templates.com $2,789.00
3Dwebcam.com $2,500.00
3Dmovie.com €2,499.00
3D-video.com $2,488.00
3Ddvds.com $2,200.00
3D-animation.com €1,888.00
The list of sales goes on and on. At the time of this story, 3DPS3.com is in auction with a bid of $100. As Mike Berkens recently discussed on his blog The Domains, Sedo hasn’t done much to clean up trademark infringing auctions. Clearly, the auction for 3DPS3.com will draw attention – just this week Sony announced more than 50 3D-enabled games are in development for its PS3 platform.
If you have more information on 3D domain sales or tips on 3D domain names, please leave a comment below or use the Contact Us form.
Media Corp retains Sedo to help sell Gambling.com domain
Sedo may have another multi-million dollar sale on its hands, if it can sell the domain name gambling.com on behalf of Media Corp., one of the UK’s leading companies in internet media, focused on website publishing and online advertising.
Why Sedo?
Steven Stradbrooke, a writer for Calvin Ayre.com says: ’Media Corp claims to have received multiple inquiries as to the domain’s availability, including ‘a number of very significant indicative offers’, but the company’s Board thinks public auction is the way to go.’
Sedo has already brokered the sales of several six-figure, seven-figure and even eight-figure domain names in 2010. And the company brokered the deal that led to the biggest domain sale in 2010 (and of all-time) with the sale of Sex.com for $13 million.
Could Gambling.com be a potential acquisition target for Billionaire Calvin Ayre?
In terms of people who understand the power of a great domain name and who are willing to shell out the cash, it would be no surprise to see Calvin Ayre (who said acquiring Slots.com for $5.5MM was one of the best deals he’s ever made) buy it up while he can.
Gambling Domain Names
Gambling domains, are ranked among the top sales of 2010. Here’s a look at the current YTD rankings:
#2 Slots.com $5,500,000
#7 Poker.org $1,000,000
#15 Poker.ca $400,000
#34 Lottery.net $220,000
#36 Slots.ca $206,906
