Seven Mile

Microsoft Values Facebook at 15 billion.. Domains Name Valuations in a Bubble

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ah_myY3uN0pE&refer=home

I am consistently dumbstruck that deals like this barely raise an eyebrow, while individual domain names, the foundational elements of the Internet, get compared to tulip manias and bubbles.

It's a strange upside down world we live in.. Domain name monetization has been going on in much the same way since adult webmasters began selling monthly memberships to porn sites in 1995 (3 years after the birth of the modern web browser) ..  Today we have paid search monetization sites for virtually every product and service under the sun. Many are moving away from straight parking toward lead generation, arbitrage, content delivery and pay-per-unique implementations.

But these simple sites which for years have made money in the most benign of ways are 'bubbles' while the publicly listed internet economy, consisting of plates spinning on the ends of pool cues is accepted as foundationally sound and airtight.

All a fellow can do is smile, shrug and keep cashing those checks. It's too tiring and unproductive to pen a counterpoint to each person who don't understand.. or who doesn't want to understand.

Suffice it to say that the Internet has already crashed and burned once ..  domain names did not experience that shock..  If there is a redux of 2000/2001 you can expect domain names to perform in a similar manner as before.

I'm not so sure all of Facebook's 15 Billion will come out the same way.

Unlocking the Latent Value of Domain Names

Great posts today on Sahar's blog:

From Registration Fee To Millions..

Sahar links hope and inspiration to the affordable aspect of domain names, and the ensuing possibilities related to them as cornerstones for many things.

Josh says: Sahar is a smart cookie.
http://www.conceptualist.com/?p=545

[and]

Every Strong Generic Domain Is a Million Dollars+ Property.

Sahar reflects on the present, and peers into the future. The power and importance of language and words is becoming magnified by the web. Think of a word.  Type it in. Whammo.
http://www.conceptualist.com/?p=544

Trademark Law- What Search Marketers Should Know

http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3627333

This is a topic that all domain registrants and paid-search marketers should familiarise themselves with.

Friends from the Island Write..

Friends from the island write:

""Hi Frank, Remember us, the Swedes?.. We surely remember you guys. I read your blog on Google today and I had to send you this dilbert…

***FS*** Thanks so much for sending this Thomas!  Very funny!!~ Owning a portfolio of type-in traffic domain names may not help you get in the Google index but it is a little like owning a "giant mirror" in case the death ray starts to point in your general direction...  Thanks again for your note and the relevant yet unsettling cartoon  ;)

Viacom's Bet on Web Diversity

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2007/10/viacoms_bet_on.html

Quote: "...But in the process of defending his position, he [Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman] did make it clear that Viacom is betting big on the notion that people online will travel to hundreds of individual Web sites for the content they want to view."

***FS*** Not hundreds of sites Mr. Dauman..  Millions of small microsites built across tens of millions of domain names. Same thing has been happening since the dawn of the commercial Internet. Just think of all those viacom billboards you own... displaying different adver-content to different drivers with different interests in different cities. Now think about a network of hundreds of thosands of domain names (microsites) displaying different advercontent to different people in different parts of the world.. You're getting warmer  :)

Facebook Has No Plans For Imminent IPO.

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9799442-7.html

***FS***  Zuckerberg marching to his own beat.

Social Networking .. Meet Search

http://www.news.com:80/8301-10784_3-9800141-7.html?tag=nefd.only

This is a good idea!  Imagine doing this across a network of hundreds or thousands of domains.

Quote: " It will give you the option, from a search results page, to jump to a page on the service where everyone who searches for the topic can communicate".

CNET's Michael Horrowitz on Defensive Computing / Domain Names

Geeky stuff ... Cnet blog post by Michael Horowitz about domain name forwarding. (Direct navigation.)  If anybody knows about the power of a great domain name it's CNET  (News.com, Seach.com, Com.com) .. 

These names drive huge huge traffic for CNET..  Com.com triggers a huge flood of error traffic in older Microsoft browsers that forward slow resolving DNS lookups for any domain name over to Domain.com.com ..  CNET activated this wildcard a year or two ago and experienced a significant surge in traffic. 

The domain names this company owns are what sets it apart from any other tech news websites. Honorable nod to some of the authoring there.

http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13554_1-9800302-33.html?tag=nefd.blgs

The Crutch of Paid Search Traffic Quality

http://www.whizzbangsblog.com/component/option,com_myblog/show,Quality-traffic---No-thanks!.html/Itemid,1/

Quote: "It makes no sense for a domainer to be held accountable for the conversion of traffic delivered to an advertiser's website. Domainer's can't influence how the traffic converts, that is in the hands of the advertiser." and  "What domainers CAN be held accountable for is whether the traffic is targeted correctly. For example, placing "loan" keywords on a games domain will likely mean that any link clicked on will still be largely untargeted traffic."

***FS***  I couldn't agree more..  In the final analysis,  nearly all traffic is merchantable if you know what your users are searching for.  It's up to the publisher to correctly target, but "traffic quality" complaints are far too often a 'crutch' for poor execution on the part of the advertiser.

Yahoo Enables 'Domain Block' Feature for Advertisers

Advertisers can Block up to 250 sites. Feature has been lauded in advertiser circles..  I think it's short-term revenue neutral on high quality portfolios, revenue-negative on low quality portfolios and long term RPC-positive for the keyword marketplace.  Bottom line:  Advertisers need more traffic, this values real traffic better..  Good domains contain real traffic.

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/015038.html