We're Fusible

For Kevin Ham, owning hundreds of thousands of category-killer domain names, is not enough. Kevin Ham and his team at Reinvent have launched a number of websites in the past year to the public: BlackFriday.com (1.3 million visitors in November 2009), Vancouver.com (almost 50,000 visitors in February 2010) – and now, GoodNews.com, the group buying website that is drawing in visitors by using Reinvent’s killer type-in traffic portfolio of domains like Mother.com.

Type in Mother.com and a splash page will appear prompting you to sign up and learn more about GoodNews.com. Reinvent used a similar approach when marketing BlackFriday.com in 2009, only the technique was less in-your-face to web surfers.

Kevin Ham doesn’t settle for just Parking

Up until a couple years ago, Kevin Ham hadn’t done much in terms of development, but now he appears to be carefully selecting domains from his portfolio for development. Kevin Ham is not about settling for just good enough parking revenue, it’s about creating a viable, growing business on each name.

At this pace of domain development, it’s looking like Reinvent will be launching two to three domains per year – and it’s anyone’s guess as to which names it’ll be.

The mystery buyer of Russia.com who purchased the domain name for $1.5 million in November 2009, still hasn’t done much of anything with the domain name except park it on Godaddy.  New Media Holdings Co who run a GeoDomain Network sold the name.  It seems like a waste to spend that much money, only to park it at Godaddy.  Unless of course, the buyer is an investor looking to sell the name for a much higher price – or, the buyer has big plans that just aren’t ready to unveil. 

In March 2010, traffic to Russia.com was a measely 1,350 unique visitors.  So despite the great domain, type in traffic is very low.  Search engine traffic on the other hand is huge.  Last month the global montly search volume for russia was 1,000,000.

Russia.net by the way, displays a mysql error page.  Russia.org is a parked page that displays sponsored listings.  Russia.ru, a developed website, gets about 30,000 visitors per month.

A reader suggested the owners of Vodka.com may have been the mystery buyers of Russia.com, but that no longer seems to be the case.

The name fetched a high price on the heels of the Group Buying craze – with companies like LivingSocial and GroupOn outpacing new competitors with millions of dollars in venture capital and the same amount of visitors to match.

Group Buying Puts Interest Back into Related Domain Names
 
Even Domain Guru Kevin Ham who launched BlackFriday.com and Vancouver.com, has thrown his hat into the business with his newest website GoodNews.com. 

Group Buying put the interest back in related “group buying” names that probably never would have been there unless companies like GroupOn and LivingSocial had thrived online as they have over the past year.  While many companies look to use social media to attract consumers, “group buying” could be another strategy used on varying scales — and you can guarantee there are plenty of companies looking to cash in on its popularity.

Buying and selling names isn’t anything new.  Sure, it’s domain names most people want but usernames on social media sites like Twitter can also be the target of companies and individuals.  According to Twitter’s Terms of Service, attempts to sell, buy, or solicit other forms of payment in exchange for usernames are violations and may result in permanent account suspension. 

So how do companies like CNN acquire usernames they don’t own? 

TechCrunch covered that story a year ago. 

According to TechCrunch, “CNN has confirmed that it has taken control of the CNNbrk account, though the company isn’t viewing it as an “acquisition”. Rather, CNN has signed James Cox to a consultant contract agreement, which included the transfer of the account as part of its conditions. Any financial compensation due to Cox is being offered for his services, which happen to include his Twitter account along with teaching social media workshops, among other things (though I suspect he’s getting paid substantially more than the market rate for his consulting).”

It’s not necessarily trademarked names that fall under Twitter’s policy. It’s any exchange of a user name where payment is involved.  But like TechCrunch points out, enforcing the rules might be hard.

@Tweetup and IdeaLab
 
In March the news of the domain name Tweetup.com selling to Idealab was broke on this blog after the owner confirmed the sale via email. 

But in case you didn’t notice, Idealab’s newest company Tweetup.com, also acquired (or acquired through a consulting gig) the @tweetup username from the operators of tweetups.org. 

And can you blame them?  When you run an entire business based off Twitter, you need the brand username, too.  Although, it looks as a backup, Idealab also register @tweetupdotcom (which alot of companies have done, who missed out on the Twitter landrush — adding dotcom to the end of the username).

You may not expect the rules to necessarily be enforced when it comes to generic usernames, but buying, selling and exchanging of usernames will be long running and like the domain aftermarket, the new social media real estate will become in high demand.

Can you really blame companies for spending cash (or paying for consulting) in order to build a presence in the social media world?

Plenty of companies and investors are throwing their hats into the “group buying” ring, including Domain Guru Kevin Ham with GoodNews.com, it seems at the moment, domain names that can help brand a group buying website are attracting lots of interest.

MassBuy.com expired on March 26, 2010, and it heads to private auction today.  At the time of this story, the domain has over 40 bids, with a current high pre-bid of $201.  While that might not sound like a lot, bidding usually gets much more competitive in the private auction phase.

Years ago, Group buying sites never quite had much success, but with millions of people using social media, Group Buying stands to be more than just a temporary craze.