Month: November 2010

Categories
News

3D.com delivers an amazing pitch for its domain name

3d

Back in July, Mike Berkens of The Domains wrote a story entitled The Next BIG Thing Is 3D: Who Owns Best Domains? The story examined who owned some of the best 3D domain names (which suprisingly isn’t any of the heavyhitters you might expect like Kevin Ham or Rick Schwartz).  In his article, Mike Berkens says the 5 Star domain in the 3D space is 3D.com, which at the time of the story was parked at Network Solutions.

That has changed.  

3D.com is no longer parked and now delivers an amazing presentation as to why companies should combine 3D.com with their marketing programs. 

The presentation is about a minute long and goes into statistics and details about 3D tvs, 3D displays, 3D movies, 3D video games, 3D gaming, and even the 3D CAD market.

3D Trend

The popularity and possibilities that films like Avatar have brought to the 3D Market, particularly with domain names has created significant opportunities for investors. 

Stephen Douglas of Success Click was not a late-adopter to 3D domains and has opened up his blog site to discuss this powerful medium.

While I have cut back on hand registering domain names in the past year, after reading these stories, it’s been difficult to not register at least one domain name.  The challenge was finding one – they’re going fast, but I did register 3Dmilitarygames.com.  I tried for 3Dwargames.com, but that name has been registered since 2005.

Categories
News Trademarks

Recent sales of Facebook, iPhone, and Twitter domain names

twitter facebook

Since its launch Flippa has been a goldmine for domain and web site owners who quickly flip for cash. 

Although there are a large number of people selling legit properties, there are others who sell questionable sites and domain names.  And while not every listing is necessarily a violation, either way, the demand continues to grow on the Flippa marketplace for all things Google, Apple and of course social networking: particularly Twitter and Facebook.

While most might call it risky behavior to flirt with trademark violations, the latest sales data over at Flippa indicates not much is going to change anytime soon.

Deals are getting done despite potential problems down the road for new owners. 

In case you’re wondering what’s been selling, here’s a look at some of the recent sales of Facebook, iPhone and Twitter domain names/web sites sold through Flippa. 

Facebookfanstore.com sold for $1,400 today
Twitterfollowerswidget.com sold for $41 yesterday
Trafficfacebook.com sold for $610 yesterday
iPhoneinsanity.com sold for $350 yesterday
Topfacebookmarketing.com sold for $225 on Nov. 19
Facebookfansnow.com sold for $1,010 on Nov. 19
Twittermarketingblog.org sold for $77 on Nov. 18
Twitterfollowerservice.com sold for $100 on Nov. 17

Categories
News Video Games

Tiny Speck continues private alpha testing of Glitch.com (for at least four more months)

glitch

I broke the story this past February about the domain name Glitch.com being purchased by the co-founders of Flickr.  Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake had resigned from the company to launch Tiny Speck.   If you’re not familiar with Tiny Speck, the company was founded in early 2009 by four of the original members of the Flickr team.  

At that time of my story, the Glitch.com web site had nothing more than a picture of an animated pig on the home page. 

 The domain had sold for $19,000 on Sedo giving the seller a nice profit.  According to DomainTools sales records, the seller paid only $3,000 in 2007 on Afternic.

Working on a hunch that something big was going to be unveiled, I contacted TechCrunch and other news sites – and a day later TechCrunch announced the news.   Though TechCrunch didn’t give us a mention, it was not all for naught: The Guardian backlinked to our story about the sales price.

Private Alpha Testing

I haven’t been following the story of Glitch since earlier in the year, until yesterday when I received an email about alpha testing from the Tiny Speck team.  Alpha testing has been taking place for several weeks already.

I tried it out with my kids and was amazed at how much they liked the game.  It runs in the browser and the quality is something I would expect to see on an Xbox 360 or Playstation.

Because of the terms of the alpha testing, I can’t post details about the game (from screen captures and movies to details about game mechanics and styles) until Tiny Speck is further along in development.  The screen shot above is from the Glitch.com public site.

According to the email I received from Tiny Speck: ‘We are still very early in development and have only recently switched our focus from the underlying technology platform and tools to the actual game design and play. Much will be changing in each testing
cycle. Testing will last for at least the next four months.’

One thing I have noticed about the game as I have played – is the amount of new terms throughout the game that I could see becoming popular with users once the game goes public.  Terms such as ‘glitchling’ – which isn’t registered at the time of this story.

You can follow @isglitchopen on Twitter to be notified when the game opens and closes for testing.

Glitch’s main Twitter account is here: http://twitter.com/playglitch

Stewart Butterfield also has a YouTube channel, where he occassionally shares videos demonstrating some of the ins and outs of the game and development.  The latest video is about the game’s avatars:
 

Categories
News Video Games

Zynga ready to break ground with its biggest social game yet: Cityville (domain purchased for $38K in June ’10)

cityville

On June 23, 2010, the domain name Cityville.com sold for $38,225 at Moniker. 

I recently came across the domain when I wrote about Zynga last week and how the game company has been buying up and developing ville-domains like Farmville.com and Petville.com – but at the time of the story, Cityville.com was parked and the name registered to Rob Holmes – founder & CEO of IPCybercrime whose company slogan is: ‘Your guys for undercover buys.”

TechCrunch broke the news Wednesday after Zynga issued a press release that Cityville would be launching soon and it would be the company’s most social game yet.  TechCrunch took a first look at the game and even provided some screen shots.

Here’s what Zynga had to say in their press release:

Zynga today announced the global launch of CityVille, a new social game allowing anyone anywhere to build their dream city from the ground up. Available in beta in the coming weeks, CityVille is debuting in five languages – marking the first international game launch for Zynga. CityVille is Zynga’s most social game to date with new features that allow players to build a city, interact with friends’ cities, and build franchises with the help of their friends. The game follows on the heels of the widely-successful launch of FrontierVille, which currently has 28 million monthly users. CityVille will be available in English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish on Facebook at CityVille.com.

Now that Cityville is about to launch, what could be next for Zynga’s lineup of ‘ville’ games?

Not much is known about Zynga’s domain names other than the ones that have been developed.  Cityville.com was the biggest sale of a ville domain in 2010.  In 2008, Sportville.com was the biggest ville domain sale for $5,000.

Currently, Sportville.com is parked and the registrant’s information is private.

Categories
News

Flippa breaks its previous auction sales record – s9.com sells for $400K

s9 biographical dictionary

Flippa has announced that s9.com, a biographical dictionary that has been online since 1997, set a new sales record by selling for over $400,000 on Flippa. 

According to Flippa: ‘s9.com was one of over 1,600 sites sold on Flippa during October’.

If you’re interested in learning more about Flippa, Mike Sullivan of Sully’s Blog published an online interview he conducted with Dave Slutzkin, General Manager at Flippa.

There are a number of high-end web sites up for sale at Flippa, several with bids such as the thehiphopchronicle.com which has received a high bid of $16,300.  Even a .co web site has a bid.  mybux.co is currently bidding at $5,000.