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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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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.”