25 years of .com (1 Viewer)

mjp

Founding member
Today is the 25th anniversary of the first .com domain registration. On March 15, 1985 a computer company in Massachusetts registered symbolics.com.

I registered my first domain name in October of 1995, close to 15 years ago. The price to register a domain at that time was $0. A government agency (NSA) underwrote the domain registration system.

The oldest one I currently own is smog.net, which is a little more than 12 years old.

bukowski.net was registered in 2001.

At one time I owned/managed over 400 domains. Now it's a mere 68.

Isn't that fascinating? Hey - wake up!
 
I still wish I had a @gofuckyourself.com e-mail address.

It is hard to believe that they had domain's in 1985 but it was in 1985 a car dealership got scammed out of a couple of thousand dollars for a bogus used car locator computer link. The dealer they scammed has now established that he deserved it.

Yesterday was Pi day 3.14 and Einstein's birthday.
 
The price to register a domain at that time was $0. A government agency (NSA) underwrote the domain registration system.

And now certain domain names are big business being bought and sold for lots of money. Too bad I couldn't foresee that. Then I would've been rich by now. :)
 
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Too bad I couldn't foresee that. Then I would've been rich by now. :)
Well, a lot of people didn't foresee it. Early in 1996 Network Solutions took over the registry, and they sent every domain owner a bill for $100 (It was $50 a year at that time and you had to pay the first two years up front) when their domains came up for renewal. A lot of people who had registered what are now very valuable names let them drop rather than pay $100 for them.

In 1996 I had the chance to buy pop.com for $500, but I passed on it because I thought it was a bit too much (and that was a lot of money to me at that time). Ha. There's a lack of foresight for you.
 
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Right, pop.com is probably worth a small fortune by now. Thank God, people like us don't care about such worldly things like money (cough-cough).:rolleyes:
 
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the company i work for is trying to buy a three-letter domain (the initials of the company)... mjp told me that three-letter domains are usually sell for six figures, although the web marketing manager seems to think that she can use a domain broker to buy it for under $500. i'm curiously watching this play out, since that's an awfully big swing between $500 and $100,000.

(also, i'm tending to side with mjp - her valuation is based on some metrics she ran, like links pointing to the monetized site, and she concluded that the site isn't monetizing well and is only "worth" $32.00.)
 
Yeah, I'd be interested to know what they ask for it, if they are willing to sell (which is unlikely). They will get a good laugh out of a $500 offer though. I would like to see that email exchange.

That "six figures" range is for a three letter .com. You can get more obscure three letter domains for less. Like mjp.us. I didn't even have to buy that from anyone, I just registered it (though I did it in the first few minutes the .us domains were available). The only thing your company has working in its favor is that the three letters don't spell a common English word. If they did you'd be in a different price range.

Look at it this way, the schmoe that owns caroles.com wants five grand for it, and he's been sitting on it for 8 years. You don't get shit for $500 anymore. Everyone thinks every domain they own is worth a million dollars.
 
I'd like to own roc.com but I have nothing new to contribute, nothing interesting to say, no reason to create a website and not enough money to buy it.
 
my old boss had hundreds of domains, thinking that he would cash in on one of them eventually. the only two people ever offered to buy - mybike.com and santabarbaradiet.com - he asked $20,000. no dice, although the one of the guys that wanted mybike.com got creative and built a site caled "my byk" (mybyk.com).

also, they were registered with godaddy, who would periodically send lists of suggested domains that he asked me to peruse - domains like mybigdick.com, mybigtits.com, etc. godaddy rules.
 
Nothing. A "domainer" owned it and it was just a generic ad page.

charlesbukowski.com expires next year. HarperCollins owns it, but big companies like that often have pretty crappy domain management. Squirreling in and snatching that away from them would be a lovely thing.
 
Of course it is.

And eventually, it will be google.com too :D

[INSERT IMAGE:- 'Google.com - a friendly place']
 
so it's no longer bukowski.net?
It will always be bukowski.net.

I only bought charlesbukowski.org to keep it out of the hands of someone who would sit on it for the next 10 years, serving up a page of click-ads that they make a penny a day from. Domainers, they call themselves, and they are scabby little wiener lickers.

Not the good kind.

If someone or something Bukowski-related needed the .org for something they could have it. For now it just points to this site.
 
charlesbukowski.com expires next year. HarperCollins owns it, but big companies like that often have pretty crappy domain management. Squirreling in and snatching that away from them would be a lovely thing.

Congrats on the .org snag but mask this one. Some HC tweak and twitter Snicker eater might google this and break out in nut-sweat with your nefarious plans. A heartfelt carbon credit to you if you can parcel this piece of webbery from corporate lands.
 
No, man. I'm hiding in plain sight. If they know I'm after it, all the better. It's a huge company. The harder they try to keep it, the more likely they are to do something stupid and lose it.
 
I only bought charlesbukowski.org to keep it out of the hands of someone who would sit on it for the next 10 years, serving up a page of click-ads that they make a penny a day from. Domainers, they call themselves, and they are scabby little wiener lickers.
Heh. Wiener lickers.
 
Fair enough. Thought you might have heard something around the water cooler while you were discussing last night's American Idol.
 
water cooler? my friend, this is the 21st century. the marketing director is in bozeman, montana, and the web marketing manager is in littleton, new hampshire. they "telecommute."
 
Not exactly. It used to be owned by an email company, now it's owned by OpenSRS (Tucows) which is the third largest domain seller. They have it as part of a system for email and web sites, so if you want [email protected] they can provide it. But they do place a ton of ads everywhere, don't they. And those are paid ads, they aren't necessarily relevant.

Domain names are a strange world full of strange things and everyone trying to make a penny. The woman who let charlesbukowski.org drop was trying to sell it (and .info) for $20. If I had known that I would have bought it from her and saved the trouble of catching the drop.

And you'll never guess what kind of person picked up charlesbukowski.info...ha ha.
 
Man, that's all a bit confusing. I get it to an extent. I ran a website for a football player, Jake Plummer, for about 3 years, but never really understood the ads, and pay-per-click thingy.

What kind of person picked up charlesbukowski.info? I can't guess, I clicked on it, and it seems exactly like bukowski.com? Another page that leads to more pages about the subject?
 
A domainer picked up .info. Which means it will probably look like that for years to come. They just sit on thousands (sometimes hundreds of thousands, and in a few cases millions) of domains and rake in the pennies from the clicks. If you own a million domain names and make an average of $15 a year on them (4 cents a day), that adds up to big money.

But it pollutes the web, as you have no doubt experienced when you hit one of those pages and think, "Oh shit, not another one..." And most of them won't sell a domain for what it's really worth to someone who actually wants to use it for a site. There is one huge domainer who has a $500 minimum offer on any domain. Even crap that isn't worth $5.

They are weirdos and bottom feeders. I know they are weirdos because I've sold domains to some of them. ;)
 
You give up too easily.

No match for "CUNTCUNT.NET"

No match for "CUNTCUNTCUNTCUNT.COM"

$ whois cuntcunt.org
NOT FOUND
 
I'm a lazy bevvy merchant. Also, it's five am. =D

But cheers for finding these domains. I now realise I can't register either of my two cunt domains. Sad times. Have you registered either? =P

Also, it's five am so I can be forgiven for my laxidasicalism surely?!
 
I'm sure there are 30 or 40 "charlesbukowski" domains available, but I don't see any point beyond the big three.

You know, unless the Republic of Kiribati decides to relax their rules...then we could get bukows.ki for a mere $1,798 per year. But sadly, I don't think we would qualify:

Application for a ".ki" domain states that it should not be used to publish any material deemed not suitable for children, so as to create a "safe harbor" or "greenspace" on the Internet for children that will restrict content relating to violence, pornography, tobacco, hate speech, illegal drugs and alcohol as defined by the laws of the Republic of Kiribati.
 

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