Snapnames just confirmed that 香港.net (Hongkong.net) ended at $3,600 while 台灣.net (Taiwan.net) ended at $1,174. I personally have an aversion to .net’s and the prices fairly reflect the current market. But like all market-priced IDN’s in 2009, in 5 years, these purchases will be seen as a steal.
Market inefficiencies are a great thing. After all, that is what creates a deal is, isn’t it? If everyone knew that the price of a certain domain was $20k nobody can make a huge profit off of the buy, right? Well the beauty of domains is that as of now, there is no formula and [...]
In 1996, Scott Day bought watermelon.com for $3,000. In 1996, the internet was considered speculative, trendy, but possibly fleeting and without a viable business model. Common retorts at the time were, “who would buy a product online without seeing it in person?” and “who knows what they’ll invent next to take the place of the [...]
Mutuelle.fr, meaning “mutual” in French has just sold at Sedo for $115,000, as first reported by Domain Name Wire. The name has obvious value as it refers to mutual funds and related financial products. It might be shocking to some that a premium name that is only relevant to the 65,000,000 people in France has [...]
Buying symbol domains is not wise unless one enjoys obscure hobbies or extremely speculative investments. For those unfamiliar with the market, you actually can own ♥.com or §.com, which are represented by xn--g6h.com and xn--eba.com, respectively. Unlike true IDNs which are characters of a foreign language, symbol domains are not intuitive or easy to type [...]
The upcoming ICANN Seoul Conference will shed much needed light on the future of IDNs, most importantly by potentially finalizing the Final Implementation Plan for the ccTLD IDN Fast Track Process, and it hopefully will address the concept of aliasing current TLDs to IDN TLDs (so that an owner of an IDN.com is automatically the [...]
There are many influential domainers who are uneducated about IDNs and put them down. Why? 1. Most influential domainers made their money by buying English .com’s and since that is what worked for them, they narrowly propose sticking to this tried and tested method. Remember, [...]
On my way home from the Yankees game tonight, I had to withdraw money at the local Chase ATM. This is a screenshot of what I saw. Multiple language interfaces. If in the English speaking U.S., businesses find it worthwhile to allow the customer to communicate in his/her native language, why won’t businesses do the [...]
The future will likely present groundbreaking developments in nanotechnology, robotics and genetics. A miniature robot, a nanobot, will travel through the blood stream looking for tiny problems in the body. Designer children with handpicked physical features will exist (at least on the black market) and robot drivers, cleaners, and cashiers will abound. Exponential upward curves [...]
When purchasing an IDN as an investment, it is best to have a valuation system. Try and list the domain names that are most valuable to you. Ranking 100s of domains is often necessary before you translate them and pursue them as acquisitions. Some criteria that you might consider in making your list are: *How [...]
