Have you heard of CRIDO yet? You will likely soon hear a lot about this group comprised of over 45 trade organizations representing at least 87 companies including Amex, Dell, HP, Johnson and Johnson, Kellog, Burger King, Allstate Insurance, Coca Cola and many more all of which are have already signed a petition submitted to the department of commerce asking them to put a halt to the new gTLD program. CRIDO stands for Coalition for Responsible Internet Domain Oversight. Could this huge group with powerful lobbyists throw a big monkey wrench in the gTLD program or even halt it completely?
Domainfest organizers recently annouced that Twitter co-founder Biz Stone will be a keynote speaker at the conference taking place in Santa Monica in January. The speech will be a ‘fireside chat’ lasting approximately one hour. According to the Domainfest website: “During this 60 minute fireside chat, Biz will share his thoughts on Twitter’s future and the evolving world of social media. For example, how will Twitter compete with Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media options for user traffic and advertiser spend?” I didn’t see anywhere in the keynote page where Stone plans to talk about domains but I’m sure he’ll work that angle as well.
By now you have surely heard of the Meet.me sale, if not, hold on to your pants. Meet.me which was previously owned by Michael Berkens, Ammar Kubba and Rick Schwartz achieved a $450k price tag earlier this week. This is by far and away the highest .ME domain sale ever, with the next highest publicized sale being date.me for $70k. Michael Berkens wrote a great blog post talking about the sale, buyer and .me domains recently at TheDomains.com. Congrats to the group on that great sale!
Another six figure ccTLD sale to report that was made public this week is the sale of Local.ly. According to TechCrunch, the name was sold for $100k which is a massive sale for a .ly (Libya) domain. A company called Infor (Infor.com) is the new registrant of the name. Currently the name does not resolve. Not sure but I do think this is the highest publicized .ly sale.
A couple things going on here on NameTalent.com. I’d like to welcome our newest sponsor SparkleCube.com (see banner below). Abdu Tarabichi who also runs the Domainsville.com aggregator just re-launched this development and monetization platform that seems to have some very competitive pricing. Abdu is a very talented developer and I look forward to testing out a couple names to report on in the next few weeks. Also, a new writer has joined the NameTalent.com team! Mike Awada, a domainer and friend of mine will be sharing his insights and experiences in domaining. You can read Mike’s first article here.
