ICANNWatch | Secondary Market in Domain Names Turns Down

Secondary Market in Domain Names Turns Down
posted by DavidP on Friday September 07 2001, @08:02AM

According to an article by Anandashankar Mazumdar in BNA's "E-Commerce Law Daily," hard times have befallen the secondary market for domain names, part and parcel of the general downturn in the "internet economy."

Was it "irrational exuberance" that drove up prices of domain names 18 months ago to unbelievable heights? Or is the system undergoing a perfectly predictable 'self-correction'? Or something else, perhaps: as new TLDs come on board, and as efforts continue to develop search tools to allow users to find websites independent of their actual URLs, don't we expect, and want, the 'value' of domain names (which clearly were inflated by artificial initial scarcity -- only one xyz.anything that was worth anything at all) to fall, preciptitously?

ICANNWatch Login

[ Don't have an account yet? Please create one. It's not required, but as a registered user you can customize the site, post comments with your name, and accumulate reputation points ("karma") that will make your comments more visible. ]

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Secondary Market in Domain Names Turns Down | Log in/Create an Account | Top | 5 comments | Search Discussion

The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Re: Secondary Market in Domain Names Turns Down
by fnord (reversethis-{moc.oohay} {ta} {k2yorg}) on Friday September 07 2001, @11:26AM (#2275)
User #2810 Info

Ah well, this is what I've been saying here and elsewhere for at least a year. As I pointed out most recently Afternic and similar sites are looking like virtual ghost towns. The buyers have long since left the building and now the sellers are off receiving reality therapy. A branded unique name is only worth something if you do something with it (EGs: Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, benicetobears, ICANNWatch). I fail to see why someone would buy a previously branded name for their own business. Meanwhile a generic name was worthwhile back in the good old days for those blind type-ins so ballyhooed by the hoarders but it is meaningless in a multiple TLD space (and according to my server logs on various sites over the last few years it was always much overrated). Some search engines would give bonus points if you had the search term as, or in, your sLD, but they now only parse how much you are willing to pay them. Even if that weren't so, it was spoofed so successfully by pr0n sites that search engines stopped pointing at the apparently obvious, and for a short while back in the golden age, actually tried to find what you were looking for. Welcome to the internet age of dross. -g

[ Reply to This | Parent ]

Re: Secondary Market in Domain Names Turns Down by simon Saturday September 08 2001, @03:09AM
- 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

1 reply beneath your current threshold.

Privacy Policy: We will not knowingly give out your personal data -- other than identifying your postings in the way you direct by setting your configuration options -- without a court order. All logos and trademarks in this site are property of their respective owner. The comments are property of their posters, all the rest © 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 by ICANNWatch.Org. This web site was made with Slashcode, a web portal system written in perl. Slashcode is Free Software released under the GNU/GPL license.
You can syndicate our headlines in .rdf, .rss, or .xml. Domain registration services donated by DomainRegistry.com