Sedo Holding “Premium .CM Auction”

Elliot Silver
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Sedo has been running a “Premium .CM Auction,” and it ends in a couple of hours. There are over 200 .CM domain names listed for sale at auction, and there are many good keywords up for auction.

As you might recall, .CM is the ccTLD (country code) for the African nation of Cameroon. Journalist Paul Sloan wrote an article that discussed .CM domain names and their connection with Kevin Ham in a 2007 article in Business 2.0 magazine (now found on CNN Money). The article spawned quite a bit of discussion about the domain industry.

All auctions have reserve prices under $1,000. At the present time, just 16 of the 207 auctions have bids on them. I did a quick Whois search on several of these domain names, and the names I checked had privacy enabled, so I don’t know who is selling them.

 

Trip.ME Produces Highest Sale in Great Domains Auction

Elliot Silver
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The January Great Domains auction at Sedo ended last week, and the largest sale was Trip.ME at £10,200, or roughly $16,000 USD. The auction netted just under $50k, although a number of names (like Clams.com) received bids that didn’t hit the reserve price. Of the 200+ domain names at auction, 44 sales were closed.

Listed below are the results from the auction.

trip.me 10200 £
prv.com 6900 $US
pec.net 5200 $US
salbei.de 3100 EUR
711.net 1716 EUR
filtercoffee.com 1049 $US
onlinedeals.net 1000 $US

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Ladies of .ME Registry Visit Name.com… Hilarity Ensues

Elliot Silver
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2

Two members of the team from the .ME Registry visited the Denver offices of Name.com, and of course they made a video. What else would you expect from Name.com? I really hope they’re able to keep their company culture.

Go Daddy Offering Ten $10,000 College Scholarships

Elliot Silver
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2

Go Daddy is offering ten college scholarships valued at $10,000 each as part of its Go Daddy .ME Scholarship program. I am not sure if the Dot ME Registry is participating this year, but it would seem so based on the name.

Here’s how eligible people may apply:

Applicants submit a 500-word essay describing how the Internet or technology has helped them and how they envision benefiting from it in the future. Essays are judged on quality, creativity and originality.

The application process began today, and applications will be accepted until  March 30, 2013 at 11:59 p.m. (PT). The ten winners will be announced on April 25, 2013 (or around then). You can look on the website for full details about the scholarship and application process, as there are some eligibility requirements.

Domain investor Brian Diener won a scholarship a couple of years ago, and he is now attending Emory University in Atlanta.  I am sure there are plenty of domain investors who are attending college or have plans to attend college, and it would be great to see someone in this business win a $10,000 college scholarship from GoDaddy.

Barack Obama Using Boliva ccTLD, Mitt Romney Using Trinidad & Tobago ccTLD

Elliot Silver
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22

If you follow US politics and the upcoming presidential election, you likely follow President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney on Twitter. To make the most use of the limited space on Twitter, most people use url shorteners, the Twitter default being T.CO.

One of the most popular url shorteners is Bitly, which is found at Bit.LY, with .LY being the ccTLD for the country of Libya. Both President Obama and Governor Romney previously used Bitly to shorten their urls. It appears that both candidates have come to the same conclusion with respect to using Libya’s ccTLD for their shortening, and they are both using unique ccTLD shorteners.

President Obama appears to prefer to use OFA.BO for his shortening, and Governor Romney appears to prefer Mi.TT. The .BO domain name is a ccTLD for the country of Bolivia, and the .TT domain name is the ccTLD for the country of Trinidad & Tobago.

Mi.TT appears to be registered to someone from Targeted Victory, a  interactive advertising agency that appears to support Governor Romney’s presidential campaign. OFA.BO appears to be registered to the Democratic Party.

It’s neat to see the candidates using these ccTLD domain names so prominently.

Wrestler Mister Saint Laurent (MSL) Acquires M.SL from Sierra Leone

Elliot Silver
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1

I don’t usually publish press releases, but this one is pretty unique. Congratulations to professional wrestler Mister Saint Laurent, who was able to acquire the one letter M.SL domain name. .SL is the ccTLD operated by the county of Sierra Leone.

Here’s the press release I received:

ORLANDO, FL, August 28, 2012 — Professional wrestler Mister Saint Laurent (MSL) has announced his acquisition of M.SL, the world’s first one character .SL domain name. The .SL extension, which is controlled by the West African nation of Sierra Leone, has never before allowed a one character registration. However, they have made an exception for the AWA World Tag Team Champion and allowed the purchase of the M.SL domain.

Not only is Mister Saint Laurent known around the world for his wrestling prowess, but he’s also the great grandson of former Prime Minister of Canada Louis St. Laurent. Experienced in international relations, Mister Saint Laurent was able to eventually secure the domain after an intense eight month negotiation. With many registrars not allowing one character domains and others having sold their one character domains for thousands and sometimes millions of dollars, there were many times MSL almost gave up on his quest to register M.SL.

“Winning the world championship was an unbelievable experience, but having the world’s only one letter .SL domain name means more to me than anything,” said Mister Saint Laurent. “The fans on mistersaintlaurent.com have been so loyal to me and I’m happy that accessing my site will now be easier than ever.”

The exact amount of the four figure purchase price has not been disclosed.

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