The rush to buy .me
Cory Bergman July 17th, 2008
Sales opened for the .me domains today, and so many people crowded GoDaddy.com, many domains were sold to several people at the same time. For example, a half dozen people received confirmation notes that they had successfully registered Hug.me. But alas, GoDaddy started sending out cancellation notices an hour or so later. “Apparently they didn’t realize that after months of pent up demand and publicity for an extremely desirable domain, they’d be seeing an onslaught of prospective buyers,” writes Jason Kincaid, who had one point thought he had successfully registered Hug.me and Watch.me. By the way, a few quick searches reveals that most city names, like Seattle.me, are already taken.
14 Comments Add your own
1. tdc | July 17th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
yes, but alot of nbcxxx.com remain un-taken.
???
i say that again to my nbc affiliated friends who may not realize their importance going fwd.
wncn in the next story down just happens to be nbcraleigh, don’t they?
2. tdc | July 17th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
i have to tell you though, these extensions are nearly WORTHLESS (.my .opinion).
like someone said either here or elsewhere “it’s like having the 1-800 version (.com) vs. the 1-866 or 1-888 or 1-877.
they will only enhance the value of the .com .
mauitoday.tv did a 3 minute parody of their own name using their audience to prove it.
3. Liz | July 17th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
I think tdc might have a point. In any case, I have a feeling this is a fad that won’t ultimately have much effect on anything.
4. Donald Turnbull | July 17th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
I got bvi.me for the British Virgin Islands. Going to turn it into a cool vacation site.
5. another thought | July 18th, 2008 at 3:37 am
The real story will be the 2009 gold rush for gTDL’s, as any word and non-latin characters will be allowed as Top Level Domains.Of course, you’ll need a million dollars to buy one from ICANN, but that may be a drop in the bucket for the ability to control to the right TDL.
6. tdc | July 18th, 2008 at 10:33 am
in response to ‘another thought’: here’s yet another thought-
who gets .coke?
coke (the fuel) was pioneered by the chinese in the 11th century (according to wikipedia) and coke (the pop) in the very late 1800’s (again wikipedia).
this is an oversimplification of what’s about to happen, but worth ‘another thought’.
7. discreet_chaos | July 18th, 2008 at 11:04 am
A random whatever about the nbcxxx idea: When I was a kid, the NBC affiliate in Raleigh was WRDU; Then the station was sold and the same channel number, the same NBC affiliate was rebranded WPTF; Now, NBC is on a different number, it’s owned by a different company and it has different letters. I’m sure most markets/stations aren’t as fluid as to make so many changes over the course of 40-odd years, but it could be an argument against branding yourself so closely to one network.
After all, it wasn’t that many years ago that a lot of CBS stations flipped to Fox because of CBS’, then low ratings and because Fox had won the bidding for football.
8. discreet_chaos | July 18th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Also, if I might stick with my network-flipping theme…
Throughout my early life, WRAL was an ABC affiliate and WTVD was on CBS. Then, WRAL’s parent bought the ABC network and for reasons that I’ve never researched, WRAL was spun-off to a free-standing company, it switched to CBS and WTVD became an ABC O&O.
Also, one of the times that I lived in Boston, WBT flipped from NBC to CBS. In this case, I don’t think ownership changed, it was simply an affiliate switch, but it’s probably a good illustration of the pitfalls of tying yourself too closely to one supplier.
9. tdc | July 18th, 2008 at 11:34 am
ultimately branding or not, the <$10 it’ll cost to secure the name NOW is far better than the multi-$$$ worth of hassle that will follow when wnbc does their thing later this year (think NewBeginningChurch Chicago or that abc thing in miami).
evidently the nbc affiliate in pittsburgh ain’t waiting around to find out having just registered a month or so ago.
columbus, augusta, losangeles,sanfrancisco, hartford, miami, raleigh, etc.
wanna bet i’ll sit back and have a good old “i told you so” not too far up the road?
and, dial position as a brand? you have to be keeeeeding!
10. tdc | July 18th, 2008 at 11:39 am
funny you should mention boston… abcboston is another can-o-worms.
btw- your pov has moved considerably closer to what i’ve been saying for the last few years (tieing yourself to one supplier).
i am only offering up the nbcxxx stuff as advice for those too busy watching their share price erode.
11. discreet_chaos | July 18th, 2008 at 11:43 am
OK - I’ll shut-up for now, but back on-topic for a miinute…
I just punched some more colorful expressions into the GoDaddy domain search (think the acronym for a Van Halen album) and as suspected, they were all taken. But, what I found somewhat amusing were some of the alternatives suggested and the fact that their engine is obviously intuitive.
12. another thought | July 19th, 2008 at 6:19 am
RE: gTDL and coke–that is super interesting and the Chinese, under the current rules, could lay claim to it… But, they might want to buy it in Chinese charachters rather than Latin… So, the Sino-cola wars may be averted… Whew.
13. Anonymous | July 21st, 2008 at 8:30 pm
I’m waiting for Pepsico to launch dew.me…will I wait long?
14. Aviyan | August 6th, 2008 at 3:27 am
Our team managed to pull in some hefty .me s. Somewhere around 19 anyway, we did some research, and I agree. With personalization giants such as Youtube, Facebook and Myspace, the same ideology applies to .me. Only now the personalization lies solely in the hands of the creator. Just like a .com, but .me is saying something. People are all about that sole person in their life “me”. And that person prevails every time in these cases. It is truly here to stay and will make a great investment towards the future.
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