Mark Zuckerberg is currently discussing the new Facebook email system, and although he mentioned that everyone will receive @Facebook.com email addresses, it seems that the FB.com domain name which was recently acquired by Facebook, will be used for internal emails.
One very interesting tidbit that Zuckerberg just announced is the introduction of the Social Inbox for “filtering exactly the messages that you want to see.” I was curious to see if Facebook had acquired the matching SocialInbox.com domain name.
According to a Whois lookup, SocialInbox.com is currently registered to the Escrow Transfer department at Sedo, meaning it was sold very recently. DN Journal reported that SocialInbox.com sold for $4,970 at the end of September.
Interestingly, it looks like a company called HubSpot has launched a new service on SocialInbox.com, which is in Beta. According to the meta description for the site, “Social Inbox is a simple tool for professionals to more effectively use social sites like twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to find and nurture prospects and leads.”
If Facebook ends up branding this new “Social Inbox,” did they just get preempted by another company by just a couple of months?
just because they are referring to the technology as a social inbox doesnt mean they need to own a domain called socialinbox.com, its all run through facebook.com and apps. facebook also launched Places but didnt buy places.com and they are a social network but didnt buy socialnetwork.com and they just launched a deals service but didnt buy Deals.com.
Yes, but if they brand it Social Inbox and constantly refer to it as Social Inbox (which is TBD at this point), people will naturally type it in to their browsers. Had they gone to buy it a couple of months ago, it would have been less than $5k and they would control the domain name to match their product name.
I don’t think owning ProjectTitan.com was important, but if they refer to it as Social Inbox, then this domain name would have been something they should have thought about buying. Too late now.
spending $5k a couple months ago or spending $500k a couple months from now is the same thing for a company making $500 million a month in revenue.
@ nr
Not the same thing, but I do understand your point.
Unfortunately for Facebook, HubSpot would be in the negotiation power seat, and could say they wouldn’t sell the domain name without selling the entire company, and that could cost way more than $500k. They could also tell FB it would cost $10m for the domain name. They may not need the cash, so the ball is in their court.
@nr
$5K and $500K is not the same thing regardless how big the company is. People works within the organization maybe wasteful and incompetent..but they don’t announce to the world like that. Be careful what you say if you are lucky enough to hold a job at this time. Just a friendly reminder..people are watching.
just read this story that shows 20 large screen shots of the new service in action
http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-email
looks like it is still just called messages for now
Or I could sell them FBSocialInbox.com for 50K which I registered toady 😉
Something tells me they won’t be calling you.
You’re “probably” right but I was willing to “risk” my $8 to see where it all goes 😉
Let’s just hope that risk doesn’t turn into an expensive UDRP liability.
UDRP ?? For FB ? Or Social Inbox ? They dont have trademark for any of this !
Perhaps, but what you posted here would show their lawyers that you bought it to profit off of their brand.
Nevertheless, I don’t think it’s a name that would be worth anything to them. Had they any interest in the Social Inbox branding, I am sure they would have bought SocialInbox.com.
I wouldn’t sell it to them anyway , since I registered it with my own bussiness in mind (believe it or not – not related to FaceBook) Thanks for thw warning thou . . . All the best