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I Love Vegas (Generic Domain Names)

We made a last minute decision to take a trip to Las Vegas, and we landed last night. My wife has never been to Vegas before, and I have never been for anything other than a bachelor party. It’s been a long couple of weeks (new site, dissertation defense, marathon…etc), and we needed a short respite.

When I was looking into booking options, I decided to support the companies who operate on generic domain names. We got a great deal on a round trip JetBlue flight and hotel room packaged together at Vegas.com. They offer a ton of deals at just about every airline and hotel in the area. I saved a couple hundred dollars by not booking on the airline website and Hotels.com… not bad.

I then did some research on restaurants in Las Vegas. As you might expect, LasVegasRestaurants.com  ranks at the top of Google for a search of Las Vegas Restaurants. The website had photos, menus, and reviews of many restaurants in Las Vegas, and I was even able to make a dinner reservation right on the site. An hour later, the reservation was confirmed, and we are good to go.

Just like I prefer to shop at family-owned stores, I also like to patronize websites that understand domain names when all else is equal. Gotta respect the domain intelligence.

Monitor How Quickly Google Indexes Your Website Articles

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I wanted to share a way for you to easily monitor how quickly Google indexes articles and posts on your website. You can set up a Google Alert for your website, and as soon as a page is added to Google’s index, you will receive an alert. The alert should be set up like this: “site:YourSiteName.xxx.”

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed a considerable amount of lag time between posting an article or dog walker listing on DogWalker.com, and I asked my developer to look into a couple of thing. I also worked in Webmaster Tools to see if I could find an issue. A few tweaks were made, and I wanted to know if they helped, so I set up a Google Alert.

After these two weeks, I know for certain the tweaks helped, as I now notice Google indexing new articles within 12 hours +/- a bit every time I post something. I am not 100% sure whether the indexing had to do with the tweaks or just that the Google Alerts made me more vigilant, but they’re good to have anyway.

If you are concerned about the health of your website or if you want to know if there are issues preventing Google from indexing your articles, you should set up site:YourSiteName.xxx Google Alerts.

Scott Day’s Digimedia Invests in Warren Royal’s Bobbleheads.com

The story of Bobbleheads.com is one of my favorite in the domain industry, and I have much respect for its founder Warren Royal, who built his company after purchasing the domain name at auction. Similarly, I have tremendous respect for Scott Day and Jay Champman, whose Digimedia has a fantastic portfolio of generic domain names, including FantasyFootball.com, Dress.com, Shops.com, Decorations.com, and many other domain names.

I just received a press release from Warren announcing that the company that owns and operates Bobbleheads.com has received an equity investment from Digimedia.

As the company continues to grow, develop new products, and has the need for holiday and other inventory, it becomes necessary to fuel this growth with significant capital. Digimedia knows domain name assets and can provide the capital to ensure growth without supply chain hiccups.

It’s a smart move for both parties, and knowing the principals behind both companies, I think it’s a very good match.

Press release below:

The company that owns and operates Bobbleheads.com has received an equity investment  from Digimedia.   Bobbleheads.com was founded in 2008 by internet entrepreneur Warren  Royal with the objective of becoming the premier source of collectible bobblehead products in  the world.   In 2010, Bobbleheads.com and its parent Royal Bobbles LLC have achieved that  goal, with its products being sold in museums, gift shops, catalogs, and online stores  nationwide.   The company also is one of the top sources of custom bobble heads, producing  thousands of custom orders each year for consumers worldwide.

Digimedia, co-founded by domain pioneer Scott Day, owns and operates a portfolio of some of  the most powerful domain names on the internet, including Recipes.com, Chairs.com,  FantasyFootball.com, Decorations.com, and Jerky.com.   The company’s ongoing goal and  history of developing successful online businesses in association with these names are its  hallmark.

Royal says, “When we decided that it was time to find an equity partner to join us in growing our  business to the next level, there was no question that Digimedia was the best possible partner  we could hope for.   We recognized right away that their remarkable experience, technology, and  business acumen would bring powerful benefits to our company.   We are very proud to become  their partners.”

Digimedia also felt that the partnership represented a powerful opportunity. “Bobbleheads.com’s  progress is remarkable, especially in such a short period of time.” Digimedia president Jay  Chapman said.   “It was clear that the leadership, direction and vision of the company is very  compatible with our own.   We are excited about the synergies between our two companies in  providing value and satisfaction to customers.”

ABOUT BOBBLEHEADS.COM

Bobbleheads.com and its parent Royal Bobbles, LLC, are the internet’s premier source of  collectible bobblehead products.   Its products are featured in such prestigious and historic  stores as the Library of Congress, Arlington National Cemetery, the Old South Meeting House,  and the John Adams National Historic Park.   They have also been featured on television shows  such as “Meet the Press”, “The Today Show”, and “Glenn Beck”, and in magazines such as  Kiplinger’s and Fast Company.   Bobbleheads.com can be reached at 770-781-9850.

ABOUT DIGIMEDIA

Founded in 1997, Digimedia.com, LP utilizes its simple yet powerful domain names to provide  value for people on the World Wide Web.   The company’s sites include Jerky.com,  MovieReviews.com, and Dress.com. Digimedia develops these category-killing domain names  in a variety of ways, using technology, services, information and partners to help each site  visitor quickly get what he or she needs. Learn more at http://Digimedia.com.

Use FB.com to Shorten Vanity URLs

Facebook.It looks like Facebook is already putting its FB.com to good use, and it’s not just for internal corporate email addresses. Visitors and companies can now use FB.com to shorten vanity URLs for corporate and personal pages.

Instead of visiting a page like Facebook.com/DogWalking, you can now visit FB.com/DogWalking, and you’ll end up on the same page. Similarly, you can visit FB.com/MarkZuckerberg or whatever the vanity URL is.

This may not seem like such a big deal since it only saves 6 letters, but in a world of 140 character tweets and short updates, it’s probably going to big deal to some people.

Thanks to George for the tip.

Facebook Introduces “Social Inbox” & SocialInbox.com Recently Sold to HubSpot

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Facebook.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?

Earn $5,000 from Overstock for Software Developer Referral

I just saw something on Overstock’s homepage that I thought I would share with you in case you know someone looking for work. According to the company CEO, “we have more good ideas than we have folks to build them.” Sounds like a problem familiar to many domain investors!

If you happen to know a software developer looking for work and you’re interesting in making $5,000, have them send an email to  javajob@overstock.com and have him or her  include your name and the email address associated with your Overstock.com account. If your  referral  is hired and stays with the company for at least 90 days, you’ll get paid. More details on the Overstock website.

Some of the open positions at Overstock include:

  • Senior Software Developer
  • Software Developer II
  • Software Developer I
  • Software Developer in Test
  • Software Tester
  • Senior Software Tester