NicaraguaCanal.com: Smart End User Purchase

Reuters is reporting that “Nicaraguan lawmakers granted a 50-year concession to a Chinese company on Thursday for it to design, build and manage a shipping channel across the Central American nation that would compete with the Panama Canal.” The construction of this Nicaragua Canal would likely generate a significant amount of revenue for the country if/when it’s built.

Smartly, the company behind the Nicaragua Canal project appears to have bought the matching NicaraguaCanal.com domain name. The current registrant for the domain name is HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co., Ltd, which is the same company mentioned in the Reuters article.

NicaraguaCanal.com has a registration date of August of 2007, and it appears to have been owned by a domain investor. In 2009, the domain registration was made private. According to Daily Changes, the domain name was on Sedo DNS until September of 2012 when it moved to Afternic DNS. The Whois registration remained private until May 18, 2013. The domain name is still listed for sale on Sedo, but based on the current ownership, I would assume it’s a dated listing that should probably be taken down.

NicaraguaCanal.com does not currently resolve, but I assume the company has plans for it – or didn’t want someone else to control it. Interestingly, PanamaCanal.com appears to be owned by a tour company, not affiliated with the Panama Canal.

Pope Francis Using PopeFrancis.com

You probably heard about a Chicago man who registered PopeFrancis.com back in 2010. Shortly after  Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio from Argentina was elected Pope, the lawyer who registered PopeFrancis.com offered to donate the domain name to the Vatican and the new Pope.

PopeFrancis.com is now being used, and a Whois search shows that  Direzione  delle  Telecomunicazioni  SCV at the Vatican is now the registered owner of the domain name. I am not sure when the Vatican took possession of the domain name since it appears to have been made a private registration in mid-March through April.

The website looks very similar to

ESPN Acquires CollegeFootballPlayoff.com Domain Name

CollegeFootballPlayoff.com WhoisAccording to a report from the Associated Press on Yahoo, “The  Bowl Championship Series  will be replaced by the College Football Playoff.” Interestingly, it appears that ESPN is now the registrant of the matching CollegeFootballPlayoff.com domain name.

It appears that the plural  CollegeFootballPlayoffs.com is owned by an unrelated entity, and it currently shows a generic Go Daddy PPC landing page. Perhaps they will purchase this domain name as well, since there will likely be some confusion when people visit the url.

CollegeFootballPlayoff.com was originally registered

Confirmed: NBA Buys Pelicans.com

Pelicans.com Domain NameA few weeks ago, I noticed that the Whois had changed for the Pelicans.com domain name, and Marksmen was listed as the registrant. Neither the domain broker nor a representative from Marksmen  would confirm what I assumed, that the NBA was the buyer for Pelicans.com.

According to the most recent and current Whois information, the NBA did purchase the Pelicans.com domain name, and it will be used by the New Orleans basketball team that will be known as the Pelicans beginning next season.

When Media Options was brokering Pelicans.com, the asking price for the domain name was

Problem With Getting a “Valuable” Brand Domain Name

FacebookHome.comDuring a meeting yesterday, Facebook announced a new product dubbed “Facebook Home.” According to a TechCrunch article about the product launch, Facebook Home “replaces your standard Android’s homescreen with an immersive Facebook experience featuring full-screen photos, status updates, and notifications.”

Like many domain investors likely did at around the same time of the news, I did a Whois search to see if Facebook had bought the FacebookHome.com domain name, and it appears that the company has owned it for quite some time. As  Bill Hartzer points out in an article on his blog, the company did not secure several alternative extensions for this particular product.

I think it’s arguable about whether Facebook needs to buy

Did The NBA Just Buy Pelicans.com?

New Orleans Pelicans logoEarlier this month, I wrote an article about the Pelicans.com domain name. Pelicans.com was owned by a band called “The Pelicans,” and they listed the domain name for sale with domain brokerage  Media Options  with a $125,000 asking price.

I wondered whether the NBA’s New Orleans basketball team would purchase Pelicans.com because the team nickname was changing from Hornets to Pelicans next season. It would make sense to own the exact match domain name, especially since the league already owns so many other .com exact match team names.

Very recently, the registrant information for Pelicans.com changed, and it’s now