The generic top level domain Usenet.org has changed hands for $100,000 US dollars in a what is now the largest amount paid for a non .com gTLD (generic top level domain) so far in 2009. The sale far exceeds the ex-leaders, DevonCliffs.net and RockleyPark.net, which went earlier in the year for $37,538 each. This leaves us asking: who deems Usenet.org to be worth so much money and what is planned for it in the near future?
The exact answers to both of those questions will unfortunately remain unanswered for now as registrant details on the .org WHOIS database are protected by a 3rd party privacy company (Moniker) and not much has been released on what will happen to the domain in the future.
The Past
usenet.org has never really had a true purpose over the years
The domain was first registered in August 1995 and has changed front many a time but unfortunately has spent most of it's long life as spammy portal pages. To check out the site from 1996 all the way through to recent times, check it out on the wayback machine. As you can see it seems to have been owned by a company called WebMagic and betwen 2000 and 2001 did seem to act a usenet resource portal but other than that, we can't find any solid evidence of good use; most of the other year's archives show that the site was simply parked - a term used when a domain is not in current use but money is still being earnt by ads via natural traffic.
The Future
"We have no idea" is the best way to some this up
The site currently up (as of writing this) is a small low-content portal which seems to answer a few basic question about Usenet but is mostly being used to drive affiliated traffic to UseNeXT. Unfortunately the way back archive is blank for the years 2008 and 2009 and the last entry for 2007 is still a parked page so we can't make an honest guess on how long this little portal has been around and whether it got put up before or after the sale of the domain (which probably came around the 17th August judging by the domain's last updated field on its WHOIS record.
What we can say is that the site that is currently up in it's current state would never see a profit on that $100,000 investment unless it gets a ridiculous amount of traffic (unlikely)- so if it wasn't there before the sale it is most likely just a holding site to get the domain ranked with Google. What is interesting is the affiliation with UseNeXT, did they buy the domain? Are they re-branding? Who knows.
It could of course be that whoever bought it simply hasn't changed the site yet and we've got some fantastic new service waiting to launch just around the corner....only time will tell.
(via DNJournal)
Update 28th Sept 09: We've had some information that this deal actually went down 4-5 months ago and that the site that is up now (with affiliate links to UseNeXT) was also up pre-sale and therefore probably doesn't give an indication about the domains future.
0 comments. Tags: domains, usenet-org.
The generic top level domain Usenet.org has changed hands for $100,000 US dollars in a what is now the largest amount paid for a non .com gTLD (generic top level domain) so far in 2009. The sale far exceeds the ex-leaders, DevonCliffs.net and RockleyPark.net, which went earlier in the year for $37,538 each. This leaves us asking: who deems Usenet.org to be worth so much money and what is planned for it in the near future?
The exact answers to both of those questions will unfortunately remain unanswered for now as registrant details on the .org WHOIS database are protected by a 3rd party privacy company (Moniker) and not much has been released on what will happen to the domain in the future.
The Past
usenet.org has never really had a true purpose over the years
The domain was first registered in August 1995 and has changed front many a time but unfortunately has spent most of it's long life as spammy portal pages. To check out the site from 1996 all the way through to recent times, check it out on the wayback machine. As you can see it seems to have been owned by a company called WebMagic and betwen 2000 and 2001 did seem to act a usenet resource portal but other than that, we can't find any solid evidence of good use; most of the other year's archives show that the site was simply parked - a term used when a domain is not in current use but money is still being earnt by ads via natural traffic.
The Future
"We have no idea" is the best way to some this up
The site currently up (as of writing this) is a small low-content portal which seems to answer a few basic question about Usenet but is mostly being used to drive affiliated traffic to UseNeXT. Unfortunately the way back archive is blank for the years 2008 and 2009 and the last entry for 2007 is still a parked page so we can't make an honest guess on how long this little portal has been around and whether it got put up before or after the sale of the domain (which probably came around the 17th August judging by the domain's last updated field on its WHOIS record.
What we can say is that the site that is currently up in it's current state would never see a profit on that $100,000 investment unless it gets a ridiculous amount of traffic (unlikely)- so if it wasn't there before the sale it is most likely just a holding site to get the domain ranked with Google. What is interesting is the affiliation with UseNeXT, did they buy the domain? Are they re-branding? Who knows.
It could of course be that whoever bought it simply hasn't changed the site yet and we've got some fantastic new service waiting to launch just around the corner....only time will tell.
(via DNJournal)
Update 28th Sept 09: We've had some information that this deal actually went down 4-5 months ago and that the site that is up now (with affiliate links to UseNeXT) was also up pre-sale and therefore probably doesn't give an indication about the domains future.