Written on October 6, 2008 – 4:13 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
Earlier today we were the lucky winners of the Sedo auction for TheNextWeb.com. We noticed it was for sale a few weeks ago and offered $1000 just to see if the owner would be interested in selling. Turned out that $1000 was enough to start a public auction that ended today.
Near the end of the auction we all grouped around one computer and kept reloading the page ready to bid more if the bid would increase. The last 3 minutes were extremely noisy with everybody screaming their lungs out in excitement! Luckily nobody else placed a bid and we were announced the winner by Sedo.
Here is a screenshot of the last minute. It seemed to take forever:
We will be keeping the .ORG domain name and will move to the new domain somewhere in the following month.
Written on May 21, 2008 – 12:43 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Only two weeks to go before companies can register a .me name, the domain from the country of Montenegro. As you can imagine, this is quite an attractive domain. It creates some sort of personalized approach, even when it comes to world’s largest companies. 
Apple for example has registered apple.me, ipod.me, itunes.me, reports Networkworld. Trademark holders had the opportunity to register their domain names before yesterday. Other tech companies that profited from this rule - are amongst others - Microsoft, Skype and Digg.
What struck me, are the high fees of the .me registrations. Whereas a .com domain only costs you $10 a year, a .me domain will take 110 to 200 Euros per year from your budget. And there’s a catch too: the minimum registration period is five years. I wonder whether our sponsors will run for a domain when the costs are that high. Although Wakoopa.me and Fleck.me do sound good. And what about Netlog? Imagine somebody comes up to you and asks: “Tell me all about yourself?!”. A simple reply will be enough: “just Netlog.me”.
Written on May 20, 2008 – 10:09 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
I guess we all know that selling domain names can be pretty good business. But exactly how much money is in that business is anybody’s guess. To give you an impression of what your 4 letter, dictionary safe, erotic style domain name could be worth here is a list of the most expensive domain names ever sold:
1. Sex.com: $12.5 million
2. Porn.com: $9.5 million
3. Diamond.com: $7.5 million
4. Business.com: $7.5 million
5. Casino.com: $5.5 million
6. Asseenontv.com: $5 million
7. Korea.com: $5 million
8. Wine.com: $3.3 million
9. Creditcheck.com: $3 million
10. Vodka.com: $3 million
The interesting thing about this list is the amount of traffic they all generate as measured by Alexa. Sex.com is an obvious winner here but porn.com is only just getting started. And sex.com isn’t even a real site. It just redirects to another domain: sptc.information.com (Yeah, I checked so you don’t have to). If I would own such a great domain name I would use it for something more, well, to the point.
Another surprise is Asseenontv.com. Isn’t that a damn ugly and long domain name? I would guess that it would be a lot cheaper than the 5 million they got for that one.
Do you own any domains you don’t use which might be worth more than usual? Tell us in the comments!
Written on January 21, 2008 – 1:27 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
As of today you can register a whole bunch of new, obscene and funny domain names. Montenegro has launched a Registry Service together with Afilias and GoDaddy to sell .ME domains. Soon you will be able to register any domain name ending in .ME at Nic.me.
Besides the obvious ‘screw.me‘, ‘forget.me‘ and ‘notyoubut.me‘ domains there must be millions of variations you can come up with. We can imagine a whole range of new Web2.0 services launching soon that take advantage of this name. Just as Del.icio.us inspired Script.aculo.us, Blo.gs, Project.ioni.st and Wua.la.
LinkedIn will soon be rebranded ‘connect.me‘ and Google might go for ‘searchfor.me‘. Or not. But do think about your own brand name and consider registering it before someone else does. Unfortunately the register page was still under construction when we tried to register ‘Visit.me‘
Know a really funny .ME name? Let us know in the comments here.
PS: recognize the title? Think you invented it? You are not alone:
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The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
