Is Domain Speculation Bust?

The latest Netcraft survey is more interesting than usual, because it reports a drop in the total number of registered domain names, as well as a decreasing number of sites reachable overall by the survey. It's been a traumatic year in the tech world, but the drop in domain names goes back to domain name buy-ups of 1999 (and looks like it will accelerate the same way domain speculation did in 2000). All is not gloom, though, and the number of registered domain names is not the same as the number of active sites. The Netcraft site points out that "as domains bought for speculative reasons are abandoned, we can expect a higher proportion of sites to be active." Read the rest of the survey report for more interesting information on the state of the domain world.

Comments

Had a cool URL which recently expired...

[MsGeek]

Anyone for www.willcodehtml4food.com? It's now up for grabs...since I'm not really in the Web design/development business at this point I really don't need it anymore. I had it registered at Dotster.

Must Sell!

[DeadBugs]

Due to these tough times I am forced to sell Squatter.com, which I have held on to for years hoping to cash in but never had any intention of using.

fear and speculation and the Telemarketing Game

[dnight]

Several weeks ago, I was sent an unsolicited "legalspeak" fax notifying me that I had 24 hours to respond, or I would lose all claim to the (My Company Name).info name. Interesting marketing technique.

I called and pretended to be horrified that I would lose all claim to it, and told them our legal department would be in contact with them immediately to negotiate a settlement. The poor lady on the other end of the phone was conpletely thrown for a loop.

The game is scored by minutes kept on the phone plus 5 points for every repeated phrase, and if you get the marketer to swear, we win automatically.

Needless to say, it was great fun. :)

Re:not only that...

[aka-ed]

You may have noticed that, since February, entering a typo in the address bar of a browser is much less likely to send you to an advertising site. That's due to the FTC action against Gregory Lasrado. This may have helped reduce the number of registrations.

Once in a while the gov does something right.

Re:Speculating

[seanadams.com]

or a zillion other speculative bubbles [clarity.net].

There's an interesting paragraph near the bottom of that eassy, under "1997?". Freifeld tries to make a level-headed assesment of the stock market in 1997, putting it in the perspective of a half dozen bubbles he's just analyzed. His assessment:

there are some telltale signs that the market for stocks has gone a bit too far

But he admits:

The bubble is as difficult to recognize before it's over as it is easy to spot in hindsight.

We all knew it was getting too hot, but we didn't know how far it would go. Anyone who pulled out out of tech in 1997 could have easily quadrupled his money, had he sold in March Y2K instead.

So why don't you /. kiddies quit bitching about how much domains were selling for, or how stupid the dotcom bubble was. If your foresight had been half as good as your hindsight, you'd all be billionaires right now from the companies you shorted in '99.

Erm, yes they are!

[Myriad]

There will always be money in p0rn. Don't say that all dot.coms are bust.

Hmmm, p0rn... isn't "bust" largely the point?

Re:$7.5M

[rjamestaylor]

• business.com sold for -- I kid you not -- $7.5M US in November of 1999. What were they thinking?

Apparently (by looking at the link) they were thinking, "Yahoo!".

Re:Speculating

[budgenator]

We all knew it was getting too hot, but we didn't know how far it would go.
Buy quality for the long term, does the business plan make sense or is it all Blue Smoke and mirrors.
Resource allocation helps a lot, if the riskier tech stocks pick up too much value compared to your solid blue chip's, reallocate.

As far as domain name speculation goes, its about supply and demand. When Companies overestimated the economic potential of the web, names were scarce and therefore valuable in themselves, after the dotBomb most companies are a lot more careful about looking through the BS and some are positively gun-shy, making names plentifull and less valuable.

As far as shorting stocks, you'd better only do it with money that you saved up for a Vegas trip, but remember slots there pay out 98.7%, and are probably a better deal!