100 oldest .com domains Archives

Symbolics.com: The first .com domain in the world turns 26-years-old Tuesday, March 15

This Tuesday the domain name symbolics.com will be 26-years-old.

While news of the anniversary isn’t frontpage this week, last year at this time, symbolics.com was celebrating its 25th birthday and was the subject of much discussion. News outlets ranging from Wired to BBC covered the story. To commemorate the anniversary, Verisign even set up a website (http://www.25yearsof.com/) and threw a .com gala event in San Francisco in May that celebrated the impact 25 years of Internet innovation had on society.

XF.com Investments

In 2009, XF.com Investments, a domain holding and development company run by Aron Meystedt purchased the domain, making the milestone even more exciting for the domain name community.

Aron has a track record of acquiring some amazing domains.

In late 2010, XF acquired tablets.com for an undisclosed amount. Tablets.com is well positioned to become one of the most valuable domain names in 2011. Over the weekend, Apple reportedly sold nearly one million iPad 2 tablets. “Gartner research reported this week that tablet sales will grow from 15 million in 2010 to 54 million in 2011 and that laptop sales will slow down dramatically”, reported CNET.

More Birthdays

Since last March, a number of other .com domains have celebrated their 25th anniversary including: bbn.com, think.com, mcc.com, dec.com, northrop.com, xerox.com, sri.com, hp.com, and bellcore.com.

More domain names will celebrate their 25th birthday this year. Here’s a look:

03/19/1986   IBM.COM
03/19/1986   SUN.COM
03/25/1986   INTEL.COM
03/25/1986   TI.COM
04/25/1986   ATT.COM
05/08/1986   GMR.COM
05/08/1986   TEK.COM
07/10/1986   FMC.COM
07/10/1986   UB.COM
08/05/1986   BELL-ATL.COM
08/05/1986   GE.COM
08/05/1986   GREBYN.COM
08/05/1986   ISC.COM
08/05/1986   NSC.COM
08/05/1986   STARGATE.COM
09/02/1986   BOEING.COM
09/18/1986   ITCORP.COM
09/29/1986   SIEMENS.COM
10/18/1986   PYRAMID.COM
10/27/1986   ALPHACDC.COM
10/27/1986   BDM.COM
10/27/1986   FLUKE.COM
10/27/1986   INMET.COM
10/27/1986   KESMAI.COM
10/27/1986   MENTOR.COM
10/27/1986   NEC.COM
10/27/1986   RAY.COM
10/27/1986   ROSEMOUNT.COM
10/27/1986   VORTEX.COM
11/05/1986   ALCOA.COM
11/05/1986   GTE.COM
11/17/1986   ADOBE.COM
11/17/1986   AMD.COM
11/17/1986   DAS.COM
11/17/1986   DATA-IO.COM
11/17/1986   OCTOPUS.COM
11/17/1986   PORTAL.COM
11/17/1986   TELTONE.COM
12/11/1986   3COM.COM
12/11/1986   AMDAHL.COM
12/11/1986   CCUR.COM
12/11/1986   CI.COM
12/11/1986   CONVERGENT.COM
12/11/1986   DG.COM
12/11/1986   PEREGRINE.COM
12/11/1986   QUAD.COM
12/11/1986   SQ.COM
12/11/1986   TANDY.COM
12/11/1986   TTI.COM
12/11/1986   UNISYS.COM

Octopus.com, #46 in the top 100 list of oldest registered .com domains, has just been listed for sale at Flippa.

According to The Next Web’s list of the hundred oldest domain names, Octopus.com was registered on November 17, 1986, the same day as Adobe.com, Amd.com, Das.com, Data-io.com, Portal.com, and Teltone.com.

The auction, which has an oddly low reserve price of only $20,000, ends March 5, 2011.

Flippa has placed a minor warning on the listing because the seller has provided estimates for the claimed financials. Flippa says, “Estimates can hide many issues, such as fluctuating revenues and inconsistent profitability”.

According to Whois records, the registration is privacy marked.

Registrar: DOTSTER
Domain Name: OCTOPUS.COM
Created on: 17-NOV-86
Expires on: 15-OCT-11
Last Updated on: 30-JAN-11

Why is the owner selling?

According the description on Flippa, “We have purchased this site not so long ago for the value of its domain name alone to start major project. We haven’t been able to proceed with our project and so have recently decided to sell this site. The revenue was never of any concern to us since we bought this site for the value of the domain name. We haven’t actually changed anything since we bought it and we think that the previous owners have also not optimized it for revenue at all. However, it does make some little money in Adsense worth $1200 for the last 12 months”.

Readers, does the reserve price seem low to you?

Updated: Octopus.com isn’t the only notable domain to go up for sale this week. As one reader who goes by “Gnanes” pointed out in the comments, Registrar.com has also been put up for auction, with a reserve price of $3MM or buy-it-now of $14MM.