The Verge published an article about a teleconferencing startup that recently raised 7 figures in funding and its name made me think, “hmmmmmmm.” The startup app is called Mmhmm, and it uses the Mmhmm.App domain name for its website. Personally, I think the brand name is pretty confusing and the domain name exacerbates that confusion a bit.
Here’s what The Verge wrote about the app and its funding round:
10 years ago in June, the late and great Lonnie Borck kicked off the launch of the .CO extension by purchasing e.CO at a charity auction for $81,000. Lonnie didn’t know about the auction until the morning of the event, but he drove to New York City to get together for dinner and ended up winning the domain name and supporting one of his favorite organizations. I remember that day like it was yesterday. Lonnie eventually sold e.CO for an undisclosed amount.
The .CO extension officially launched a month after the auction of e.CO, and the registry is celebrating its ten year birthday this month. Over the years, many startups have used and embraced .CO domain names, and the extension has taken off.
I’ve never really been a super early morning person, but the coronavirus pandemic has changed my morning habits. The early morning has becomes the best time for me to get a workout on the treadmill before our kids are awake and needing attention. While running on the treadmill, I watch CNBC to stay on top of financial news for the day.
This morning on CNBC, I saw a couple of television commercials for Adyen, the payments platform that is used by DAN.com to facilitate deals. Up until late last year, I wasn’t at all familiar with Adyen and I started using the platform to sell more of my domain names. Here’s one of the television spots that ran during a commercial break on CNBC:
Every day, I see quite a few domain names in auction with bids that could have trademark issues. Some of these trademarks are super obvious, like Microsoft or Volvo, but others are not as clear. Olympics, for example, is a highly defended trademark, and there are a number of UDRP filings for Olympic-related domain names.
Over the weekend, Peter Askew shared some advice about staying away from generic sounding terms that are actually trademarks. His observations were based on a domain name that is listed on GoDaddy Auctions and will be sold in about one week:
Monte Cahn emailed me to let me know his company, Right of the Dot, brokered the sale of Vehicle.com for $121,675. A week ago, Monte reported that his company brokered the sales of Kick.com for $276,077.45 and Cogent.com for $60,029.60.
The Vehicle.com domain name is currently registered under Whois privacy at Namecheap. When I visited Vehicle.com this morning, I was taken to an Efty “for sale” landing page on Oxley.com. That website is owned by prolific domain investor Brent Oxley, who has acquired many high value domain names over the last few years.
Domain industry attorney Jason Schaeffer reported today that three of his clients received $60,000 offers to buy domain names, and the supposed prospective buyer requested an “appraisal certificate” in order to proceed with a deal.
3 clients this week had $60K offers through GoDaddy. Each appeared to be from Japan requesting an “Appraisal Certificate.” Screen shot of the result: Pay $349 to appraise and verify your domain name. A good way to lose $349. #domaining #domainnames pic.twitter.com/F3wOEKaCIU
— Jason Schaeffer (@TLDadvisor) July 3, 2020
