The front page of domain sales site, Sedo.com, lists Jets.com as having just recently sold for $375,000. To my knowledge, details of this sale have not yet been disclosed to the public. First reaction is that the name was likely purchased by either an airline company or the New York Jets professional football team.

The Whois details do not yet reflect the new registrant owner and still show Sedo’s escrow service contact details.

Approximately three years ago, the Dallas Cowboys missed a golden opportunity to acquire Cowboys.com in a competitive live auction. It was evident that the Cowboys’ bidding representative was naive and grossly uninformed about the value of generic domain names. This was illustrated when the rep bid something like $275 not realizing that the bid was actually $275,000. The Cowboys backed out of their bid, and bluntly put, had no idea what they were doing.

The Dallas Cowboys’ owner, Jerry Jones, just completed the construction of a new Cowboys stadium in Arlington, Texas with a one billion dollar plus price tag. To have acquired the definitive best domain name, Cowboys.com, would have been a very intelligent investment in the future of the Cowboys’ franchise.

Similarly, Jets.com would be a terrific acquisition for the New York Jets NFL football team. I’m looking forward to learning who the buyer is.

.COM Domains

Ad.com sold at the recent TRAFFIC conference auction for $1.4 million dollars. It was purchased, after some competitive bidding, by a young man named Divyank Turakhia. He is the founder & CEO of Skenzo and the co-founder of Directi.

There is no questioning the quality of the domain name. It’s perfect for advertising. The ad industry is a multi-billion dollar enterprise … year after year.  A phenomenal amount of wealth is channeled into advertising. This will never change.

Ron Jackson of DN Journal wrote a very informative, inspirational piece about Mr. Turakhia in September 2008. In this profile, Ron outlines the evolution of Divyank Turakhia’s success as an entrepreneur. At just 27 years old, Mr. Turakhia’s companies are worth an estimated $300 million. This is no ordinary person.

Last week, he decided to buy Ad.com. Blogs and opinions immediately went live with many pundits offering their particular view as to whether the domain name was a prudent investment. As is typically the case, some speculated that it went for too much while others saw the beginnings of something great on the horizon. I am in that last camp.

There are several reasons why I think good things will come from Divyank’s acquisition … 

First –> The person. Divyank appears, from all indications, to be a doer, not a talker. Ron Jackson’s article depicts a highly intelligent and focused individual with the ability to take most anything to which he aspires to great heights. At 27, chances are that we will see more impressive things to come from Divyank Turakhia.

Second –> The industry. Advertising is an incredible industry. Internet, television, magazines, newspapers, billboards, shopping carts, you name it. It’s all around us 24 hours per day.

Third –> The domain. Short, highly descriptive, and category defining.

When one considers the potential benefit of launching an ad network with something like Ad.com, then the purchase price becomes only an interesting anecdote. The story is in the branding potential of Ad.com. And that chapter has not even been written … yet.

Good luck Divyank! May your entrepreneurial spirit lift you high.

.COM Domains, Domain Sales entrepreneur

Domain name investor, Omar Haddedou, has formally launched the geodomain travel site ParisFrance.com. The website provides hotel booking & apartment rental functions as well as providing a wealth of information on local tours, restaurants, and attractions.

Readers can learn about the history of the city and access information regarding many of Paris’ famous landmarks and monuments.

ParisFrance.com is available in both the French and English language. Quite nice. And a hotel search engine located on the front page produced 799 hotels in Paris with vacancies for immediate booking. A “Travel Resources” link at the bottom of the homepage yielded more sites for those who really want to explore getting around in Paris via the metro or other means.

A general Google search of ‘Paris France’ finds Omar’s newly launched ParisFrance.com on the second results page already. Won’t be long before ParisFrance.com is dominating the first page. Of course, with a premium geodomain, search ranking is often a secondary consideration because of the quality direct navigation traffic such a domain will pull on its own merit.

For geodomain investors, you may be interested to know that Omar Haddedou is the owner of other fine quality location domains such as SanDiego.biz, Tulsa.US, and PebbleBeach.US.

With the launch of ParisFrance.com, the site will now be promoted on the official mobile internet version at ParisFrance.mobi.

.COM Domains, .MOBI Domain Names france, paris, travel

The past few months have shown that domain investing is in the spotlight. Just out is the news that well known domain investor, Rick Schwartz, is working on a $3 million dollar deal for his Candy.com premium domain. Rick posts on his blog (Rick’s Blog) that Candy.com is set to sell for $3,000,000 plus an ongoing percentage of future revenues. Beautiful! Not only for Rick, but also for whichever company is acquiring a top class domain portal.

Noteworthy sales of late are:  YP.com, Fly.com, Toys.com, Dubai.info, Miami.US, Movie.info, RT.TV, Wife.com, Auction.com, B2B.net, and now Candy.com. And many, many more at various price levels in the four figure to six figure range.

2009 –> No internet recession from what we can tell. More like an Indy race car coming around turn 1. Hang on! Don’t blink!

.COM Domains, Internet Domains

The economy is in recession, the stock market near a twenty year low, and unemployment figures worrisome. But the internet is healthy. Just another sign of this is the re-auction of Toys.com which had been sold only weeks ago for $1.25 million.

Update: Toys-R-Us just won Toys.com for $5.1 milllion dollars. The Washington Post article described a heated bidding war between several players with all but two bowing out around the $3,000,000 mark. National A-1, a domain holding company, and Toys-R-Us went on to bid against each other for nearly two hours with National A-1 calling it quits when Toys-R-Us moved up to $5,100,000. Premium domains. Gateways & assets. Say no more.

.COM Domains .com, toys.com

Moving forward in time, an investor forms his decisions within the context of history while also speculating on potential future developments. Domainers are pretty eclectic in their tastes & strategies. Same is true for investors in other markets too. Opportunities always vary. And there are many paths to the journey’s end.

Global top level domains (tld’s) include the well established .com/.net/.org plus newer released alternatives .biz/.info/.mobi. Two other popular country code extensions in America are .us and .tv (all pictured at right in the global graphic).

The success of a tld depends on eventual adoption and use by segments of society, especially businesses. Businesses have a specific incentive, and funding, to build out a domain name into a functional asset. Smaller companies all the way up to the Fortune 500 have acquired high-quality domain names to support their internet expansion & marketing plans.

For sure, all of the tld’s mentioned have increased their registrations by large fold year after year. This, of course, is a great trend for domain investors and developers. The trend has been fueled by:

• global internet growth & its assimilation by societies
• the specific migration of businesses to the internet
• domain investment by those who recognized the potential

As of today, the total registrations for major tld’s are –> .com (79,243,372 ), .net (12,077,702), .org (7,392,611), .info (5,081,111), .biz (2,008,779), .us (1,385,171), .mobi (844,357), and .tv (undetermined).

What we envisioned is coming to fruition, in that the world is embracing the internet in ways which naysayers could not imagine. I am an anti-naysayer, while also valuing pragmatism. Naysayers, as a glass half empty group, are only partially served by their cynicism and skeptical nature. Their excessive “that’ll never happen” attitude often keeps them on the sideline where speculative opportunities are missed.

As the collective world continue to find never ending uses for the internet, people (naysayers included) will come to understand the growing importance of all the tld’s mentioned above. The meaning represented in the domain’s extension will increase in importance as continued organization of the internet becomes essential to worldwide users.

This phenomenon will elevate the importance of the familiar, like .com, while also boosting the recognition and use of newer tld’s (already in use) like .biz (Business), .info (Information), and .us (United States).

.BIZ Domain Names, .COM Domains, Internet Domains domains, tld

The Sedo auction for ParisFrance.com has concluded with a final purchase price of $15,644 (12,100 EUR) and Mr. Omar Haddedou being the winning bidder. 

PremiumDomains.biz just featured Mr. Haddedou and his prime geodomain portfolio which includes SanDiego.biz, Tulsa.us, and PebbleBeach.us. Omar will now add a world class .com tourist destination to his collection with the acquisition of ParisFrance.com.

The urban population around Paris is nearly 12 million people. But it’s the traffic from Europe and abroad that make up the 45 million annual visitors driving the local tourism industry. Omar confirms there will be an upcoming website. This domain name is what investment is all about. Congratulations Mr. Haddedou!

.COM Domains, Domain Sales geodomain, paris

I almost don’t believe what I’m seeing. ParisFrance.com is on Sedo with a current auction bid of just $3998 (3100 EUR) and the reserve has been met. That’s right … the .com. 

Paris, France is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world with approximately 45 million visitors annually.

I try not to be skeptical, but with under two days left in the auction, bids for a geodomain like this would easily be in six-figures and climbing rapidly. There is whois protection on the domain. That alone raises my suspicion about the authenticity of this possible sale (with only a nominal bid of $3998). Going to watch this one … and look for details.

Update (2/12/09): The Sedo auction has concluded and the winning bid was $12,100 EUR ($15,644 USD based on today’s exchange rate). Read more about the sale here.

.COM Domains france, paris, Sedo