Who owns the best Twitter domain names? It’s not Twitter

On July 11, Mike Berkens ran a story about who owns the best 3D domain names, in which Mike refers to 3D being the “Next BIG Thing”.  The article got us thinking: who owns the best Twitter domain names? 

Twitter has done extensive work towards making phrases popular such as “Tweet” and “Unfollow”. 

And while many of the phrases are generic terms, one thing seems certain:  Twitter doesn’t own them.

For fun, I decided to look at some the key terms on Twitter’s Learn the lingo page which can be found by clicking the Twitter 101 link on the company’s home page – then I added .com to the keyword.  You might not be surprised to see who owns the names.

Following.com

Following.com re-directs to VeryBest.com, an invitation only website that provides information on the “very best” in luxury products, services, and people – the site says.  In this case, the owners of Following.com, own one of the “very best” domain names when it comes to Social Media.

Tweet.com

Tweet.com is owned by prolific Domain Investor Mrs Jello, LLC of ExoticDomains.net.  There is a website online about birds, and while birds are somewhat popular, the 10,000 visitors per month on average that visit the website, can’t be explained by the simple minisite design that talks about binoculars and birdhouses – it most likely has to do with the popularity of the phrase tweet.  Tweets.com by the way, is owned by Frank Schilling.

DirectMessage.com

DirectMessage.com re-directs to RoaldMarth.com – the IdeaEvangelist, who apparently is an internationally recognized venture capitalist, speaker, technologist, CEO, fundraiser, author, strategist, television personality, and marketing guru.

DirectMessages.com is owned by Mobile Media Technologies LLC. who run TextCaster, a mass notification service.  The domain name however, doesn’t resolve.

Retweet.com

Retweet.com has been in the spotlight repeatedly in the last year.  In June 2009, the Popular Twitter Term Retweet.com accidentally went up for Auction at NameJet.com.   Mesiab Labs the owners of the domain name at the time, launched a website in the summer of 2009 which quickly rose in popularity as a competitor to Tweetmeme.  Mesiab Labs finally sold the domain name and website on Flippa for $250,000 USD.

Tweetup.com

Idealab purchased Tweetup.com in April 2010 for an undisclosed amount before launching their Twitter advertising service that garnered lots of media coverage.   Idealab also acquired (or acquired through a consulting gig) the @tweetup username from the operators of tweetups.org. 

We happen to own the phrase Tweetups.com, a name we acquired on the aftermarket after the name expired.  If you’re not familiar with the term:

A tweetup is simply an in-person gathering organized via Twitter, often spontaneous. Companies use them for things like hosting launch parties, connecting with customers and introducing like-minded followers to each other.

There will always be opportunities with domain names, as new trends appear online.  The key is, who will strike first at buying the name? In this case, it wasn’t Twitter. 

ShortenedURLs.com

Strangely enough, Twitter even mentions the keywords “Shortnened URLs” at the bottom of the Learn the Lingo  page (referring to URL shorteners—that take regular links and shrink them down to a manageable length for tweets), and guess what?

At the time this story appeared online, ShortenedURLs.com is still available for hand registration.

UPDATE:  ShortenedURLs.com is no longer avaialable.  @MarketTaker acquired the domain name after reading this post.