mediajunk

Back in the late 1990s, the internet gold rush was well underway: domain names were being snapped up, with speculative buyers hoping to make millions in the re-sale of their dot com, dot org or dot net names. Precedent was in the buyers’ favour; domains were selling for hundreds of thosands, even millions of dollars. Business.com remains the most expensive domain purchase in history, selling in late 1999 for US $7.5m. I had personal experience of this frenzy when, in early 2000, I was involved in the decision to choose a web moniker for UK-based internet bank, Intelligent Finance. Since the bank was planning to use the word IF as a core feature of its print and TV advertising campaigns, I argued it should drop the clunky domain (www.intelligence-finance.net, I think) it had set aside for its launch, and opt instead for the short, simple www.if.com. The snag, of course, was that if.com was already taken. I admit I was stunned at the final figure (US $1m) Intelligent Finance paid -- a price that remains one of the record domain sales to date. Soon after that, the dot com bubble burst. The cottage industry of domain name broker and reseller sites such as greatdomains.com were suddenly filled with sellers rather than buyers; people couldn’t offload domain names quickly enough. Fast forward four years. As leading world economies -- and technology sectors in particular -- begin to recover, it seems that interest in domain names is finally picking up again. In recent weeks, there have been six-figure sums paid for no less than three dot com domains: men.com, woman.com and truck.com. This is not to suggest that all domains are suddenly going to lift in value, or that we are going to see a return to those heady, feverish days of the late 1990s. Most domains still sell for less than $30, and the broker and reseller businesses are tougher than ever – as Ron Jackson explains, in his excellent introductory article to the subject. “The fact is the domain ocean is filled with ravenous creatures who gobble up every good domain name long before they hit the deleted list you are looking at. These guys are the industry’s killer whales and tiger sharks. You are the minnow.” Sounds like the domain name industry is like any other -- it’s tough at the top. And it’s a hell of a crush at the bottom.