Bloggers, including myself, love to write about domain sales especially those in the six and seven figures.
Reader love to read stories on the big money sales.
There is nothing wrong with that, except where the buyer of the domain specifically doesn’t want the publicity
That takes us to one of the six figure domains that was sold by BuyDomains.com/Afternic.com, last week that has been reported by several sources.
The problem is that the buyer of this domain wanted the details of the sale, including the price to be kept private.
Yet there it is, out in print, on domain blog after domain blog, Twitter, Facebook, everywhere.
Some bloggers who wrote aboutthe sale had no idea, nor would have had any idea, that the buyer requested that the sale be kept private.
But someone, probably the first one who reported it, whoever it was, knew it was to be kept private at the buyers request but decided to release the information anyway.
Not Good.
No Bueno.
Just to be clear, I was not the buyer, nor was I the seller of the domain, or involved in the transaction in any way.
I did “heard” about the sale last week, but was asked to not make it public as the buyer wanted the details to remain private.
So I keep it private.
However someone chose to write about this sale, so to my fellow bloggers, twitters and domainers, I think it very important for a buyer’s desire for non-disclose to be respected by all.
I think one of the problems that some sales “leak” when a buyer wishes for it not to be made public is from automated systems the larger sales venues like Afternic and Sedo have in place. The systems are flawed and post sales as they clear automatically and somebody has to manually go back and “remove” the domain for the sold list if the buyer did not want it made public. If somebody happens to catch (see) it posted before it is manually removed, it is likely that somebody will write about it. As you said, the person writing about it will likely not know the sale was meant to be kept private.
Services like Moniker Escrow, Escrow.com, EscrowDNS.com technically do not automatically report domain sales like Sedo and Afternic do, so this is always an option for the buyer if a sale is to be kept private, but it should also be expressed at time of purchase.
Jamie
Could be the case, in which case those services need to put some safety measures in place to guard those sales from being noticed to protect buyers which want the sale to remain private.
I agree Michael. I notice sales often that get reported on Afternic and Sedo that are later removed. If I happened to write about it when I see it, I have no idea if it will be removed later. I have to assume because they are making it public, the sale is OK to report on.
I only report Name Media sales that I first learn about on facebook direct from executives who are in my feed
We found out about the sale simply by reading through NameBio (where the sale is still listed). We had no idea the sale was intended to be Private when wrote about the story.
Yes and No, if blogging is the 21st Century media there are always going to be those looking for the story. CNBC does not respect privacy, if they can get a scoop they will get a scoop. If less people are going after the scoop, all the better for them.
Now I really don’t discuss the big .com sales on my blog which is focused on .tv and I know a lot of private deals that people have told me including the biggest .tv aftermarket sale of all time. I would not disclose the seller or the buyer, but I do understand someone else would love that scoop.
And please, do not start with we are all on the same team, we are not, there is enough jealousy and hatred in Domaining to make Hollywood look like Utopia. Again IMO
There’s only one way a sale gets public: the seller tells, the buyer tells, or the broker tells.
There is no such thing as privacy on the world wild west…
Get used to it!!
I completely agree. I know exactly what domain sale you are talking about. I was made aware of the sale but also asked not to blog about it which I respected without any hesitation.
Andrew
“There’s only one way a sale gets public: the seller tells, the buyer tells, or the broker tells.””
Not according to Jamie
One addition to my last comment.
I do believe once the sale is made public and reported on several outlets, it’s ok to blog about. Not that I agree leaking the information is good and I certainly wouldn’t be the first to report the sale, but if reported it’s now public information.
FYI – I still have not and have no plans of reporting the sale. Maybe if it was over $1mil 🙂
Well, maybe the buyers can sue….
Chef
I agree with you.
Once the news is out it out.
I gave my word I would not release the info, so I can’t, but that is my personal deal.
Same here Michael.
Hmmm, was it Scarface that said it best?!
“All I Have in This World Is My Balls and My Word, and I Don’t Break Them for No One.”
Mike,
Why were you told if they buyer wanted anonymity? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of keeping something quiet? If I tell 10 people a secret that they need to keep quiet, it’s no longer a secret.
There are plenty of things I am told that aren’t for public consumption, and I respect privacy when I am asked. However, people should be wary of what they say to any journalist or blogger that they don’t explicitly trust.
Elliot
I was told of the sale and the amount of the sale but not the domain.
Shortly within a hour or so I saw a domain announced on Twitter and on a blog at the same price with the same auction house.
I then inquired if that was the domain in question which was confirmed to me, but once again I was asked not to write about it as the buyer wanted it to be confidential.
However as a general rule, people tell me stuff all the time and ask me not to write about it or discuss it with anyone else.
I’m sure we all have relationships, friends, acquaintances, business relationships where one party tells the other something in confidence and in such situations I honor their requests.
You are quite correct that “people should be wary of what they say to any journalist or blogger that they don’t explicitly trust.”, however that still does not let the one who was given the trust off the hook.
MHB – in Jamie’s example, that would be the broker telling. Are we talking about the domain that sold for $675k?
Andrew
When I think o f a broker telling its via an announcement, press release, weekly sales info release, Jamie’s comment made it sound more like a “catch” of the broker’s information rather than what I’m talking about.
To help further explain my first comment above, I had visited this link on Afternic https://www.afternic.com/names.php?c=0&sold=1 which they post sold domains on each week day. I happened to see a domain on the list and I reported it that day on my blog after confirming the domain changed ownership via Whois, but I was tipped off from seeing the domain listed on the sold page via the link above on Afternic. A little while after I wrote about it, somebody posted a comment that asked where I got the info, which made me go back to the link above and I noticed the domain I reported was gone from the list. Since the domain was removed from the list, makes me think the domain was listed by Afternic by mistake publicly and the buyer or seller wanted to keep that specific domain private. I was never contacted to remove my posting about the domain I wrote about, so I think this is a different domain then what I wrote about.
MHB – if we’re talking about the same domain, the broker posted it to their publicly available sales feed, which gets syndicated through RSS. Once you get something out on RSS, it’s a little late to call it back in.
Bloggers and/or reporters do not need to respect a damn thing in this regard.
If someone wants the sale private then sign NDAs and put the necessary legal paperwork in place. Don’t bitch and moan later about it because it was leaked when there was nothing protecting the details of the transaction in the first place.
The Broker is yet again today spreading this “news” on FB…
Look, are we talking about Luck.com or not? If it’s Luck.com, the broker isn’t keeping this secret at all — it’s on their web site. If it’s not, then what are we talking about?
Luck.com is the domain and the broker has now listed it since the news is out.
I don’t think this was ever a secret. The broker sent it out on their sales feed last week. I wouldn’t blame anyone for writing about it. I wouldn’t expect anyone who sees a publicly listed sale to then confirm with the broker whether or not they wanted it to be public.
I’ve seen this mistake routinely made at the larger venues. It should be noted that if you are going to make deals that you want private to have the T’s crossed and I’s dotted in those contracts.
I think some of Pete Lamson’s comments on ChefPatrick’s blog last week may have unwittingly led to disclosure. (http://tr.im/BXnA) I know I was a bit perplexed by what seemed like a non-denial denial, and then the non sequitur about “additional (private) sales.” I have no problem with Pete or NameMedia; just thought the whole commentary was a confusing at the very least.