Social.org Sale Falls Through

In March of this year, NameJet held an auction for Social.org, and the domain name sold for $228,600. The sales price wasn’t much of a surprise considering Social.com sold for a reported $2.6 million.

Unfortunately, the Social.org deal has fallen through. I just heard from the owner of the domain name, and he informed me that the winning bidder did not pay for the auction. I would assume the second and third highest bidders (who also bid above $200,000) weren’t interested in going through with the deal at their high bids either.

As you might expect, the owner is disappointed at the outcome, but he is working with NameJet to schedule another auction for later this summer. Here’s what he had to say:

I’m disappointed that the auction winner defaulted, but perhaps this is an opportunity to put such a powerful name into stronger hands. It combines the enormously popular ‘social’ keyword with the ‘Org’ extension that is commonly used by community/social sites such as Wikipedia.org, Craigslist.org, WordPress.org, and Google’s OpenSocial.org. I’m working with Namejet to schedule a re-auction in July.”

I reached out to NameJet about this and was told the winning bidder’s account has been banned from future bidding, and the company will do everything in its power to ensure that the bidder does not participate in any future NameJet auctions. The company is continuing to work on ways to tighten up the verified bidder process.

While this auction didn’t result in a sale, I do think it will eventually sell for a lot of money.

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

13 COMMENTS

  1. The auction sites should require that anyone who wants to bid over a certain $$$ amount have funds on deposit similar to a broker dealer. No Money No Trading.
    Definitely a good idea i think for auctions going over $50K.
    Too many wanna be players out there

  2. @ John

    It sounds like a good idea, but I’m not sure if there are legal regulations with respect to collecting money and holding it. In addition, some companies may wish to bid anonymously, and they might have a problem leaving a deposit, which would reveal their hand.

  3. “The auction sites should require that anyone who wants to bid over a certain $$$ amount have funds on deposit similar to a broker dealer.”

    //////////////////////////

    A lot of buyers simply wouldn’t do that, it would result in lower prices. There a fine balance here any impediment to bidding lowers prices. I think Sedo for example has gone to far with their requirements.

  4. At a minimum they need to name names, shame the person publicly and let others know so they can decide if it’s worth it do business with the person again.

    An auction house blacklist to suspend them across the industry houses.

  5. Name names? Huh?? Thats potentially the worst idea I have heard to date. If I am selling my name with an auction house and they fail to secure a reliable bidder, they are at fault. These auction houses would lose a tremendous amount of business if they lose the shill bidders and the like. I wish the conversation would turn to legal action against namejet. I would be shocked if social.org now sells for 6 figures. Namejet should pay them the difference. They have damaged the value of the domain immensely.

  6. Shill bidder ruined the auction on purpose and no legal action is taken against him/her. This is just wrong.

    Namejet needs to take action against those who refuse to pay and those who refuse to transfer domains after a sale.

  7. If I was the owner of Social.org I would now sit on the domain for a while after that. I feel the name is worth more but like Rick said “I would be shocked if social.org now sells for 6 figures.” If he trys to re-list it right away I think he will not get anywhere close to $228,600. What do you think it will sell for if he does re-list the domain right away?

  8. That price seemed ridiculous anyways. For someone to think that Social.org is worth over 200K because Social.com sold for over 2 million is beyond bad.

    Why is it that in 95 percent of these fishy auctions, the other bidders never end up wanting the name? Something stinks. If the name was legitimately worth over 200K then I find it hard to believe that the first three bidders would all bail out.

    You NEVER see a sale that is a great bargain for the buyer fall through. Funny, isn’t it. I wonder why?

    • @ Fishy

      If I was an under bidder in an auction and the winner doesn’t pay, I wouldn’t buy the name unless I need it or think it’s a hell of a deal. My instinct is to assume the worst in those cases, so I wouldn’t be willing to take the risk. I can only assume bidders 2 and 3 felt the same as me.

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