Feeding frenzy or fizzle? It’s hard to know what to make of the current ‘escalating’ market for the new Internet domain names that may or may not give us suffixes like ‘store’ ‘firm’ or ” (see below) to complement the ‘edu’ ‘org’ and ‘com’ we are all used to seeing. On the one hand some lucky early prospectors have done well by registering names; we reported yesterday (CI No 3,175) that idNames.com, an outfit that specializes in the worldwide domain name research and registration business, claims a Texan company has laid out $150,000 for the rights to ‘business.com,’ followed in dollar stakes by Mecklermedia Corp’s $100,000 for ‘internet.com.’ But as the Wall St Journal pointed out Thursday, CNET had originally offered tiny Minnesota based ISP gofast.net Inc $50,000 for the rights to its registered ‘television.com,’ but its boss, Mike O’Connor, figured he’d see if he could get an even higher bid…and watched as CNET bought ‘tv.com’ instead for only $15,000! Then there’s the guy who is trying to make Bill buy ‘billgates.com’ off of him for his asking price of $1m (it’s been on sale since February 1996 but Bill, or indeed anyone, still hasn’t made a bid). The whole affair has created a new highly temporary category of middlemen who will charge anything north of 415 to enter your wacky name of choice into any of the pregistration name sites. Hence the gentleman who sees a future for the more unconventional domain name: one speculator, noting the fondness Webheads seem to have for porno, has registered 235 unprintable words, according to the newspaper. To follow the fun, tune into InterNIC’s Whois interface and check out of your own pet name is already registered, or go to one of the huckster’s web sites (http://www.123domainme.com, http://www.worldwidedomains.com, http://www.reignyourdomain.org, http://www.igoldrush.com, or http://www.fordomains.com).
