According to Mashable, the single letter domain name i.Co has hit the auction block.
All the information about the auction is at i.Co
The auction was announced today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.
Every bidder will have to be pre-qualified to bid in the auction and the pre-qualification period ends on January 21, 2011.
My understanding is that every bidder will have to be pre-qualified to at least $100K.
The auction will be held by Moniker/SnapNames.com
i.Co, is arguably the best possible single letter domain.
According to the i.Co site:
“”One letter. One brand. Only one chance. With an ever-changing and even faster-paced society, less never meant more. Imagine the possibilities in owning a single-letter domain. In the era of opportunity, .CO is making that notion a reality. With all the promise of the social web before you, i.CO could just be the ultimate “point of control” to engage the entire world of mobile and socially connected consumers. Don’t miss this exceptional opportunity!”””
As you know O.co was purchased by Overstock for $350,000 and e.Co was purchased at a Sedo.com auction, in what may well become one of the years best buys for $80K.
X.co is owned by Godaddy.com and T.co is owned by Twitter.
According to Mashable:
“We anticipate that i.CO will likely command a final price tag in the hundreds of thousands of dollars — if not millions — range. The demand for single-letter domains is high, and with “i” signifying “Internet,” this one would certainly be appropriate for a number of big brand names.””
Juan Calle CEO of .CO Internet S.A.S is quoted as saying:
“As one of the shortest possible URLs in the world, and featuring the most popular single letter in the alphabet, the ‘i.CO’ domain is likely to be one of the most valuable pieces of online real estate ever available,”
Nice, how much do you think it will sell for?
$500K+
Could go into the seven figures
0.co sold for 350k, that doesn’t mean any other one letter .co worth 6 fig.
I can’t see this name sell for 6 fig.
I’d be very impressed (and amazed) if this sold for 7 figures. Someone out there has some very deep pockets
Seems like a lot of the .CO hype has really died down. Far better .CO than were available @ landrush auctions totally bombed at TRAFFIC.
I don’t see why someone would pay $500K+ with an endless amount of super premium .COM on the market for far less.
Brad
$75k-$99k
We all saw how much e.co sold for. (That was at the time of the hype)
Brad -> Well, considering the fact that you are heavily invested in .com, .net and .org, it is pretty normal that you don’t like .co. Mouth, money, etc. You can deny it, but it is basic psychology and business coherence. The rise of a new extension can only weaken the .com, and not strengthen it.
But I’m still very curious about the “super premium .com” available on the market for a reasonable price. The truth is that the .com market is increasingly saturated, and companies which don’t have $200,000 to put in a domain (95% of US companies) may simply go away.
Sure, I acknowledge that .com is still the king, and it is the only “classy extension” out there. But it will soon collide when every single meaningful name will be taken and used by people who don’t have the intention to sell them.
@ Henry
I am invested in many extensions other than .COM/NET/ORG
I have been around long enough to see this game play out in the past with countless new extensions.
As far as new extensions hurting .COM value, I don’t see that. More and more people are coming online every year which increases demand.
I sell other extensions all the time, but at the same time .COM is the global internet brand. Releasing a bunch of inferior extensions will not change that.
Brad
Gnames
e.Co sold before the extension even re-launched, before there were almost 600,000 registrations, before the land rush auctions and before Overstock.com spent $350K on O.Co
“i.Co, is arguably the best possible single letter domain.”
Why? (Rhetorical question.)
Nice to see dipshit ‘Brad’ infesting this site along with others with his protectionist, down with dotCo mumbling. Gee Brad, how did your precious .com do at TRAFFIC? It’s had a 25 year head start on dotCO. Anyone dumb enough to have invested in .biz, .tel, and (LMAO) .asia has nothing valuable to contribute regarding dotCO and it’s future.
In other news, where only the relevant reside, this could do well but I doubt 7 figures. If it tops O.co I’d suspect foul or rigged play, but whatever. All press is good press right now.
All depends on development, search rankings and ‘offline’ promotions branding the dotCO extension and that will take time (years.)
This is good timing for i.co to be auctioned. Juan and the crew are rolling this out very well so far.
@ Vito
First of all I have never invested in .ASIA or .TEL so I have no idea what you are talking about.
Secondly, I understand anything that isn’t pro .CO can upset the .CO fanboys, but there is no need to namecall.
People have the right to their own opinion, and you just need to understand that not everyone is drinking the Kool-Aid when it comes to .CO
Brad
@Vito:
Knock it off with calling other domainers “dipshit” – especially while hiding being an alias. It makes you sound like you’re in 5th grade. The best thing about dotCo is the fact that it has a crack team with Juan, Lori and company behind it. You couldn’t ask for better. The downside to dotCo are the ridiculous comparisons to dotCom. DotCo is doing fine and will make it on its own. Comparing dotCo to DotCom sets up insane expectations and will eventually doom it.
I agree with David. I’m currently investing in .co’s, but it’s pointless for .co investors to make comparisons between the extension and .com. But I’m also tired of .com investors reffering to .co as an extension without legs, which is only good as .com typo, which will never be good for a worldwide use, etc. The right to decide .co’s (and all other TLDs’) fate belongs only to the market.
I think the max amount this domain can fetch would be around 5 figures. .co is still not a very common usage and it doesn’t make sense to spend 6 or 7 figure amount for this.
This one will likely go into the 6 figures, around the $350K paid for by o.co. This is just the kind of thing that causes well meaning but not entirely savvy start-up investors to overvalue the ancillary benefits this kind of a purchase can bring. They will value the domain itself at $X and add things like “PR Value” “Ease of Branding” etc… and force the bidding too high. Just because this goes that high, I wouldn’t put too much into the overall value picture of .co. They are off to a solid start and should be focusing on getting sites to use that tld in their marketing to generate traffic. That will be the sure sign of success.
Brad,
Quickly, with the advent of IDNs, .com will cease to be the “global” brand. In the last 6 days, 400,000 .rf have been registered at quite a high registration price. Imagine in the future when 5 a year of these will role out within asian countries. This will severely dilute the .com extension. A shame for those who put all their eggs in one basket.
To call .com the “Internet Global brand” just does not hold anymore. Too many extensions coming out, too many choices, limited supply of choice .coms.
@Brad “I don’t see why someone would pay $500K+ with an endless amount of super premium .COM on the market for far less.”
Because I would rather have ” i.co” for 1Mill than “icantstoplaughing.com” for 1mill (which is the closest one available to i.co at a similar price…LOL) . Domains that long are cumbersome. You can pump them all you want with the “.com the best…oooh” schtick but i would rather have a one to two keyword domain in .net, .co,.org, .de and if i was in Russia, .rf.
I recently asked Moniker/SnapNames.com whether they auctioned .CO and .nz domains and was told they auction neither of them. What gives?
I have 20+ .CO names (and 40 .nz) and I’m keen to sell them or at least have them appraised. Some of the appraisal sites are miles off.
Anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks for your help
Stephen
@Stephen,
Some view .Co’s to valued at around the same price range as .mobi. Perhaps this is why Moniker/Snapnames won’t auction them?