RhodeIsland.org Lost by Rhode Island Economic Development Corp.

A .org domain name came across my email this morning that caught my attention. RhodeIsland.org is listed as one of the most active pending delete backorders on NameJet. At the present time, there are 24 bids with a high bid of $101 on NameJet alone. Since most of the major drop catching platforms will likely try to catch this domain name, I presume there are many other bidders standing by ready to place bids on this domain name.

After seeing RhodeIsland.org on the most active pending delete list, l did a Historical Whois Search at DomainTools to see who previously owned the domain name before it went into the pending delete status. According to DomainTools, RhodeIsland.org was registered to Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation as recently as September 6, 2017. The Whois registrant email listed an @riedc.com email address. Very strangely, the registry expiry date is listed as June 24, 2018, so it doesn’t look expired despite its “pending Delete” status.

I looked at Archive.org, and it does not look like RhodeIsland.org was used as a website in the recent past. An Archive.org entry from this past June shows that the domain name was forwarding to RI.gov, a website operated by the Rhode Island state government. It looks like RhodeIsland.org had been used for a website in the past, with an Archive.org entry from 2007 showing a website.

Despite the fact that RhodeIsland.org doesn’t seem to have been used to its full potential, I don’t understand why the domain name is in pending delete status. From my vantage point, the domain name has commercial value and would have likely had value to a number of organizations in the State of Rhode Island. This seems very peculiar to me.

The auction is set to begin sometime in the next day or so. I believe the auction start time will depend on which auction platform or drop catching service catches the domain name. My guess is this will be a mid 4 or low 5 figure sale since a .org works well with a geographic domain name such as this one. I am not sure if I will participate since I typically only buy .com domain names.

Hopefully this is some sort of mix up and the domain name can be recovered.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

4 COMMENTS

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Recent Posts

MAD Comment from NTIA About “Wholesalers”

2
Andrew Allemann wrote about the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) statement about the .com registry extension agreed upon with Verisign. As a...

Beware When Using AI for Domain Name Descriptions

6
Artificial Intelligence can be a time saver. For domain investors, it can make it easier and quicker to create marketing copy to help promote...

Atom.com Promoting Black Friday Sale

0
Atom.com is promoting a Black Friday sale with a prominent header banner on its home page. Atom CEO Darpan Munjal shared some insight and...

Fluid.io Becomes 2nd Largest Publicly Reported .IO Sale

5
This afternoon, Joshua Schoen reported the $199,995 sale of Fluid.io. The domain name was sold at his BIN price via Afternic, according to a...

Employer.com Acquired for ~$450,000 via Afternic

1
Late last night, Jesse Tinsley, Founder of Recruiter.com, announced a large domain name acquisition. His company purchased the Employer.com domain name for $450,000 USD....