.CO landrush auctions raise over $50k so far

The ongoing .co landrush auctions have fetched well over $50,000 in sales so far, according to stats released by the registry, .CO Internet, today.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the biggest price tag among the 24 closed auctions is attached to a typo – 163.co went for $5,778. The .com equivalent is a Chinese portal with hundreds of millions of visitors.

The registry has not released any figures for adult-oriented domains, or any domains that look like they might have UDRP issues (why are these being sold?), so the list is far from complete.

163.co – $5,778
cityjobs.co – $4,600
dedicated.co – $3,600
airporttransfers.co – $3,200
christchurch.co – $3,100
boaterexam.co – $2,550
economist.co – $2,550
center.co – $2,150
globo.co – $2,050
exchangerates.co – $2,050
bonus.co – $2,000
customer.co – $1,550
abel.co – $1,470
communicate.co – $1,350
addiction.co – $1,300
elevator.co – $1,251
acid.co – $1,250
herbal.co – $1,201
duo.co – $1,161
cycles.co – $1,150
desi.co – $1,060
developers.co – $1,001
baker.co – $1,000
ace.co – $1,000

I’m told that the many of the “hotter” auctions are still open. Rules state that any new bid extends the auction by 24 hours. This could go on for a while yet.

Domainers get there before the dictionary

The new third edition of the Oxford Dictionary of English contains more than 2,000 new words, according to reports today, but it looks like domainers will find slim pickings.

For every neologism the dictionary now defines, you’ll find a .com equivalent that was registered years ago, in some cases over a decade ago.

Here are some newly official generic dictionary words, along with the earliest date I could find for their original .com registration.

SoftSkills – May 1996
Turducken – June 1997
ExitStrategy – August 1998
ChillPill – December 1999
CarbonCapture – May 2000
Cheeseball – August 2000
Vuvuzela – May 2004
PayWall – June 2004
Frenemy – February 2005
Defriend – June 2005
Staycation – November 2005
Bromance– April 2006
Microblogging – April 2007
Deleveraging – April 2007
TweetUp – June 2007
Overleveraged – July 2007
ToxicDebt – September 2007
QuantitativeEasing – November 2008
Catastrophizing – April 2009

Not all of these were registered by domainers, of course. Some are in use, though plenty are currently parked or marked for sale.

The Oxford dictionaries cover primarily UK English. Some of these words, like “cheeseball” or “turducken” are Americanisms that clearly saw some lag crossing the Atlantic.

Sedo handles domain sales worth $22 million in Q2

Sedo oversaw almost $22 million in domain name aftermarket sales in the second quarter, predominantly in the .com namespace.

The company’s Domain Market Study, published today, also shows that .co.uk, .de and .eu continue to be the most popular domains in the ccTLD market.

Sedo said that 11,146 domains were sold for a total of $21.6 million in the three months to June 30. That’s down from 11,942 names totalling $23.2 million in the first quarter.

The Q1 results included the $1 million sale of Poker.org.

Sedo had no public seven-figure sales in Q2. The most expensive domain to change hands was cgm.com, which went for $365,000.

The other two of the top three sales were German – kredit.com and software.de. Domains under .de accounted for almost half of all ccTLD sales: 49%.

Of course, .com continued to dominate overall, representing 46% of all sales and 74% of all gTLD sales.

But .net continues to be, on average, the most pricey TLD, with a median sales price of $581 versus .com’s $510. The .biz TLD has the lowest median, at $380.

Q3 is likely to see a sharp spike in sales data by dollar value. Sedo is currently trying to broker the sale of Sex.com, which will certainly fetch seven figures, if it sells.

Cybersquatters already hitting .co

Just over 24 hours after the general availability launch of the .co top-level domain, the secondary market is already beginning to fill up with dodgy domains.

Aftermarkets including Go Daddy and Sedo are currently listing some names that are unarguably typosquats of famous brands, and plenty more that very probably wouldn’t beat a UDRP complaint.

Go Daddy Auctions currently has almost 200 .co domains listed, Sedo over 500. Of those, I managed to find a few dozen dubious registrations, mostly on Go Daddy.

It beggars belief that, with millions of decent greenfield domains available, somebody had the failure of imagination to register wwwgoole.co. But they did. It’s currently listed on Sedo.

Other probable typosquats found on Sedo this evening include yahhoo.co, listed with a £10,000 price tag, as well as yayoo.co, geogle.co and barclys.co.

Go Daddy has listed some more obvious brands: poptarts.co and tostitos.co for the foodies, sanfranciscogiants.co, washingtonnationals.co and seattlemariners.co for the American football baseball fans.

Somebody who pays way too much attention to Rick Schwartz registered bpoilspill.co for the quick flip.

Cartoon characters for sale include mariobros.co and goofy.co. Celebrities duncanbannatyne.co and mikeposner.co both get squatted.

Yahoo, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft all get targeted, with yahoomaps.co, iphonedeals.co, facebookme.co and bingsearch.co all receiving price tags between $5,000 and $50,000.

For the Brits, centerparcs.co, virginuk.co and bbciplayer.co are also all up for auction.

Bear in mind that these are just the domains that have been registered and listed for auction in the first 24 hours. There’ll be plenty more not yet on the market.

I’d estimate about 5% to 10% of Go Daddy’s .co auctions are currently UDRP fodder.

This is why trademark holders hate new TLDs.

Kredit.com sells for a fraction of Kredit.de

Kredit.com, which means “credit.com” in German, has been sold via Sedo for a fraction of the price that Kredit.de sold for about 18 months ago.

Sedo reported today that the domain changed hands recently for €220,000, which works out to $271,000 at today’s exchange rates.

For comparison, the German ccTLD equivalent, kredit.de, went for €892,500 in December 2008, also via Sedo. At the time, that amount translated to $1.25 million.

A generic ccTLD selling for roughly 5x the .com is a fairly uncommon occurrence, perhaps demonstrating how strong the .de namespace is locally. I can’t imagine such a wide discrepancy in valuations between a generic .com and .co.uk.

Kredit.com was originally registered in 1996. It’s currently parked, with an Irish address listed in the Whois.