We're Fusible

With spring right around the corner, big gun National A-1 Advertising has launched their category-killer domain name Camps.com into a full fledged website. 

National A-1 has been making headlines lately in quick succession, most notably after relaunching Pizza.com, then with the sale of Poker.org for $1 million. 

While we haven’t seen any press releases on the launch of Camps.com, its one of many great names listed on National A-1’s Catnip.com landing page.  National A-1 has also launched other resource/directory sites this year including Antiques.com. 

Camps.com allows you to find camps, add your own camp for free, read camp-related articles, and even submit your own stories.  Simply parking domains isn’t cutting it for some of the largest domain companies, and National A-1 has long been increasing their web presence.

From the Camps.com About Us Section

Welcome to Camps.com – you’re one stop reference for anything and everything camp related. Searching for the best in education, arts, games, or sports camps? Camps.com has you covered! Use our search engine to find specific camps in your area or get a listing of all the camps in your neck of the woods. Why spend the summer months twiddling your thumbs when you could be honing skills for your favorite activities? Interested in trying something new and don’t know where to start? Camps.com has the answer! Whether it’s spelunking caves in the Appalachian Mountains or nature hikes in the California’s Redwood forests, you’ll find a camp for it at Camps.com.

Earlier we reported on the unrecorded sale of the popular social networking term Tweetup.com.

We got an email from the previous owner who confirmed the sale, but couldn’t provide any more details. Technology news site like TechCrunch and Mashable, who we’ve tipped off in the past, we’ll likely be covering this story soon now that Idealab already has a Coming Soon page online.

Idealab isn’t your ordinary Internet Development company

Idealab which has had their hands in launching and operating dozens of successful internet companies like eToys.com, Shopping.com, and Compete.com, is now looking to profit off the social networking craze of Twitter.

You can see a full list of their companies here.

You heard it here first: the domain name Tweetup.com has been sold to a major company.  Idealab who help create and operate technology companies including Cooking.com, Blogged.com, InternetBrands and many more legacy companies like eToys, recently acquired the domain name Tweetup.com from Jonathan Kossmann.

While many domain name sales are made public each week, for every single one, there are many many more that go unreported on sites like DNJournal and NameBio.

The sale of Tweetup.com did not go unnoticed for us.

The domain name’s registration record was last updated on March 3, 2010, and the previous owner confirmed the sale of Tweetup.com via email last night with us, but wasn’t able to disclose anything further about the transaction or the price.

Domain sales, many of which go unreported, are happening all the time.

How did we find out about the sale?

We were lucky enough to receive substantial offers suddenly on our internet property Tweetups.com which we had acquired on the aftermarket in 2009. The influx of offers made us curious to see what other Tweetup-related domain owners were up to, and when we typed in Tweetup.com, the URL redirected us to Perfect Market, a company of Idealab that helps publishers create value from their online content.

HomeRun plans to be an exciting, fun website.  The concept of the website is Group Buying, which apparently many have tried and failed since the nineties.  But the owners of HomeRun have invested in their web site and in their brand, shelling out $131,200 for the domain nameHomeRun.com

at Moniker.  While most won’t associate the idea of “group buying” with scoring a home run, the site is branding itself HomeRun.  The name actually ties in nicely with “scoring”.  In this case, when enough people buy, everyone gets the deal and they score by getting an unbeatable price.

The site is also tied in with social networking and allows you to connect through Facebook.  It also has a hip look-and-feel.

For businesses, HomeRun uses the domain HomeRunDelivers.com where businesses can apply to market their offers.  HomeRun offers a guarantee to businesses since a minimum number of people must buy for the offer to be given at the unbeatable price.  

Group Buying Power is Back 
 
Other startups have gotten back into group-buying online. Another site called GroupOn which launched in 2009 has been getting a lot of press, and it appears the concept group buying power is back.  

The site’s traffic has gone from about 1,000 visitors per month in June 2009 to over 2 MILLION unique visitors in December 2009, according to Compete. This looks to be one helluva business model.