In October of 2011, Occupy.com was put up for sale by its owner, and it was brokered by New York based domain name and IP attorney Karen J. Bernstein. I put up a poll at the time asking the value of the domain name, and about 30% of those who responded thought it was worth less than $10,000, although I am quite sure the price was much higher. While the Occupy.com domain name had value due to its descriptive nature, the Occupy movement certainly increased its value tremendously.
At the beginning of this year, it was reported that Occupy.com had sold for an undisclosed sum. According to an article on MRC.org a few weeks ago, “Filmmaker David Sauvage co-founded Occupy.com with film producer Larry Taubman after they purchased the domain “for a large confidential sum” to give voice to Occupy activists.”
As the Occupy movement prepares for its May 1st day of action across the United States, it appears that Occupy.com has launched as a home base online for the Occupy movement. The “Alpha” version of Occupy.com contains quite a bit of information about the movement and its events. The site appears to have launched in early April.
It will be interesting to watch the Occupy.com website evolve.
Much more valuable will be OQPY.com. That will end up being th symbol for movement.
OQPY.COM will end up being more valuable.
@ Duane
What does Oqpy.com mean?
OQPY is the ticker symbol for when the movement (further) sells out.
@ Marc
LOL
The movement should trademark OQPY. Its much more memorable and marketable than Occupy. Just my recommendation to whoever is involved.
@ Duane
I really don’t understand what OQPY stands for or means. Why would they do that when the correct spelling, Occupy, works just fine?
my OQPI.com is much better .
@ Duh
What about CloudOQPY.com?
“for a large confidential sum” to give voice to Occupy activists.”
Great domain, but I find the irony and hypocrisy of the purchase of it rather amusing. If it wasn’t for capitalism in the first place, they’d never have the domain for their “voice” to be heard. Sadly, an overwhelming number of these occupiers still have no idea what they are protesting, so they choose to just protest capitalism, in general.
P.S. What about 0qpy.com, using a big fat zero instead of an O?
Do “David Sauvage and Larry Taubman” retain control over the domain, or did they give it to the activists?
If they still have control of the Occupy.com domain, then the Occupy.com presence is one of “David Sauvage and Larry Taubman” and not the occupy movement, regardless of the associations they may be promoting.
@Eliot, I can tell you are not a fan of this OQPY.com idea but what do you think in general about the phonetic representations of dictionary words? Do you think domains of this nature can have value?
I think they can to the extent that they can be brandable.
It’s an interesting conversation to me and I find your cloud comment to be somewhat related to the comment I made on your blog last night – a past post of yours concerning cloud domains. I happened to be mining cloud domains last night and registered CLOUDSRVRS.COM – I like the name – for $10 its a no brainer. Which brings me back to my original questions, what are your thoughts on names like this and what kind of value do you think they carry?
@ Brad
I have nothing against brands creating new names to stand out. I think it’s dumb for a brand to have a confusing spelling and I think that leads to brand confusion, but that’s just me.
I would never personally invest in a made up domain name that is difficult to spell and could be confused with the actual spelling.
The Occupy movement (whatever it is today) should take this name and symbol (OQPY) and brand it and market that symbol into the consciousness of society. Its short, memorable and could be very symbolic. However, the problem that this supposed movement has right now is a lack of direction/focus. OQPY names could be very valuable real estate if that happened. Short of that, the names are almost worthless right now. However, I see that Occupy-Montreal uses OQPY.NET. So maybe thats the start.
fortunately my investment is very minimal and in a niche that I believe still has significant market appeal…Im going to post it at WHT and see what they all think of it, I will report back if I collect any interesting feedback.
I also got cloudwhoa.com and whoacloud.com – I like them, I don’t think I’m getting rich here but I do think the names carry some brand value.
I saw knowcloud.com sold for $105 and to me, that is a steal but likely represents a good approximation of where the market would be at on my names. $100 to $350, would you say this is a good estimate?
@ Brad
I have no idea.
@Duane, I think the symbol could certainly catch on but I do see that there are significant challenges in reaching critical mass with any obscure symbol or term, which in my opinion limits in value. I think that is what Eliot is saying, these names don’t carry the inherent identity that their related dictionary words possess and require more investment in developing the brand and its identity, which may or may not be adopted…but in my opinion, it could be a good risk reward proposition and there is upside to the symbol.
How about this one for occupy branding,
OCPY.com
OPY.com
occu.py
These comments we’re making me so hungry that I accidentally registered occuPIE.com
What do you think Elliot, is it worth $10k?
@ AB
At least.
Ill put my money on OQPY over Occupy on the long run. Ill check back in 10 years and see which one is more valuable.
I bought occupysex.com for good time. Hollllaaa!
OQPY is just another wannabe SyFy branding effort. It is a common sense that Occupy dot com is far more valuable. Occupy dot com represents the 1%, whereas OQPY com accepts the inferior 99% position.
Welcome to the new world order – Occumocracy 🙂
Cloudsrvrs.com? What would I do with that? How does that help me compete with Microsoft’s Azure or Amazon AWS? (Btw, interesting offtopic I’ll write about on Google plus, azure.com is redirected to windowsazure.com isn’t azure.com way better?).
OccuPIE.com? Nice try (heh, it rimes). I don’t know, I guess I am in my 5 minutes pesimism…