AllthingsD.com is reporting that HP just bought the domain name hack of Gr.Am for $18,000 for its new business division, named Gram
According to AllthingsD, Gram is the new brand name for the Hewlett-Packard subsidiary formerly known as Palm.”
The publication was actually citing a Namepros post for the price HP paid for the domain.
As we noted a month or so ago domaining 6.0 is all about branding.
Yesterday we saw it when we reported that Ediblearrangements.com acquired the domain name Edible.com and here is another pure branding play.
Lets see failing Overstock buys o.co – and boy that worked out – is overstock still in business ?
And now failing HP buys the domain hack Gr.am – well sell the stock ASAP.
Good for the seller
Happy Roy Messer !
If they are going to use it purely as a URL shortener (ex: bit.ly, g.co, etc.) then great- it’s a pretty cool hack since it exactly matches the product. But if they plan on building a brand on a domain hack then my bet is that HP will continue to remain in the background as a “has been.”
Never been keen on most new extensions but i don’t think we can put the entire o.co spectacle just on the TLD. Rebranding something so large away from an established .com is no easy (or clever) feat and from my outsider’s perspective it seems like that’s where they came short if anything. I do like ccTLD’s, i find them more interesting than trying to nibble in the .com crumbs. I might be biased since I live in europe.
I pointed it out yesterday when TechCrunch announced the news http://tcrn.ch/PYsYaC (strangely enough they have since removed my post) then via @domainhacks http://bit.ly/MBe4LK
Google (goo.gl googli.ng ro.me) , Microsoft (bi.ng so.cl) now HP. It looks to me that “domain hacks” just became even more mainstream.
Pete, being in Europe doesn’t make you biased. It puts you ahead of the game because it makes it so much easier to look beyond that typical “.com will always be king” mentality.
@Mr. T
.COM might be considered “king” by some, (okay, many), but saying it puts you ahead of the game if you can think beyond that, is like the mouse, who upon seeing a piece of cheese guarded by a cat, pretends not to want it, using the flimsy excuse that it stinks.
it means that HP has big plans for Gram
@Grim
I´m not against .com, not at all. 75% of our domains are .com´s (so far).
BUT you may have noticed the fact that ccTLD sales are catching up while .com prices have been falling for the last 3-4 years. 5-7 years ago we saw quite a few 7 figure .com sales. Today they barely happen at all. Sure, some sales never get published, but how much does a solid premium keyword .com catch today compared to 5-7 years ago? This isn´t all about the economy, it´s about alternatives.
Companies and individuals look for alternatives when building an online brand. In some cases a good .ME or .TV may be just as good, if not better.
If you´re looking to start a corp that goes global you should have the .com (even if it´s only for defensive purposes), especially if the market you´re going to conquer is the US (we all know the US is all about .com). In Europe things are a little different. There are the co.uk´s, the .me´s, the .tv´s, the .it´s, the .de´s, the .fr´s, the .es´s, the .no´s etc etc. A corp in Europe operating in one country doesn´t NEED the .com. In the US the size of the corp or the location doesn´t matter, all that matters is the fact that any company “NEEDS” the .com.
Being in Europe gives you a better view of non .com branding because we see it happen every day. I like to call it an advantage because more and more online branding is about the “hacks”, the ccTLD`s and the short, memorable domains.
Why go for BlahBlahTV.com when you can use BlahBlah.TV? If I had both domains and had to choose which one I´d build into a great brand, I know it wouldn´t be the .com.
I tipped Arik Hesseldahl, the writer of Allthingsd.com article about the gr.am sale price, he responded by thanking after verifying the ownership and never cared to credit me for the information.
@Mr.T,
Well said, sir.
@Mr.T
I’m still waiting for MTV.com to buy M.TV. (Wouldn’t that seem the ‘hip’ thing for MTV to do?) But MTV doesn’t appear to want it, as it’s just sitting parked, owned by someone in Hong Kong since 2003.
Anyway, yes there are more alternatives nowadays, and they are cheaper, so that is likely the reason people go for those. The economy is having an affect though, as well as perhaps the ups and downs that any industry goes through. People and companies may put their money in the Internet for awhile, then they move it somewhere else, when that gets a bit stale. But while I own the .COs, .TVs, .MEs, etc, as defensive registrations for my largest .COM websites, no one has ever asked to buy those. They just approach me to buy the .COM.
Anyhoo…
TabletRepairs wrote:
“it means that HP has big plans for Gram”
—
I truly hope HP has bigger plans than that. Having known a lot of people who’ve worked there, (just had lunch with one the other day, who now works at Nvidia), HP is nowhere near the company it once was. Renaming product linesg and buying a quirky domain for $18K isn’t usually looked upon as a very inspiring move.
The Gr.am purchase is really an admission that HP is not serious about the PALM / Gram venture / naming in the first place – so this is some kind a “test” marketing gimmick deal – in an attempt to get Roy Messer to lower his number on what they really want Gram.com.
But Roy better not wait too long before a free falling HP does a microsoft reinvent from Live to Bing to whatever… 🙂
They’ll never use this domain in an ad, or at all for that matter. They just pssed away $18K…that’s nothing to a corp like HP
@Grim
MTV owns and actively uses MTV.TV – they don’t need M.TV.
Maybe they’ll go after M.TV someday. Maybe they’ve already tried but failed to reach and agreement with the current owner. Mr Berkens rejected $125k for D.TV so who knows what the asking price is for M.TV. The fact that they use a .TV to run their music portal is great promo for the .TV extension.
@TheBigCheese – thanks 🙂
D.TV is easily worth $2 million
We’ve received a few offers for 5d tv, but nothing close to what we’d take. $75K at the moment, but the price will keep rising as .tv continues to grow in consumer awareness/popularity.
@Mr.T
Still though, while I own some .TV domains, and while the extension may gain in popularity, .COM is so ingrained in people’s minds, especially when it comes to large and successful businesses and websites, that any other extension can seem second-rate.
The exceptions to this would include legitimate non-profit, educational, or government organizations, where .ORG, .EDU, and .GOV are the expected extensions.
Gr.am, if HP chose to actually use it, would be pretty odd. Everyone who knows the story behind it and who are familiar with the wide variety of extensions that are available, would understand. But for most people who aren’t so familiar, seeing a domain name like that (or worse, hearing it on the radio) , could be a bit confusing. And as anyone in marketing knows, when it comes to branding or naming something, it’s usually preferable to have something that doesn’t confuse, or has to be explained in any way, to your potential customers, (or in this case), website visitors.
@Grim
I agree with you. Gr.am as a brand will cause confusion, the same goes for M.TV. 5-10 years from now it could be a completely different story though. I guess that’s why Bit.ly has moved to Bitly.com for now. It’s all about adapting, bringing these new brands / TLD’s out to the public and promoting them the right way.