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Ask HN: Domain names you bought for a start-up that never happened

• samwillis 14y ago
  swapsend.com: This was going to be a file sharing service for businesses like design consultancies, it would enable them to Swap files with their clients and Send files to others. designdown.com: This has been planned for many things, a blog about design and UX, the over arching name of a group of other websites, a web design and development consultancy. projectaur.com: This was going to be a project management tool for engineering and design firms, using the idea of issue trackers from software development and applying it to physical product development. flutterbox.com: This is the project I have gotten furthest with, it was back in about 2007 I think, it was a social news aggregator along the same sort of lines a friendfeed.com. I actually launched this one but never attracted many users. I think I finally shut it down in about 2010. cloudjs.co.uk (I thought I had the dot com but don’t seem to any more): This was going to be what we now call a “platform as a service “, it never got further than me buying the domain name and researching SpiderMonkey (this was before V8). If you are interested in any of them let me know, email is in my profile.
  • itsprofitbaron 14y ago
    I actually remember coming across flutterbox & seeing it as a "track what your friends are up to" type service. IIRC it was built in Django & supported about 10-11 services inc. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Digg etc
    • samwillis 14y ago
      Wow, so few people ever used it im suppressed you remember it. You are correct, it was built with Django and did support about 10 services. The mejor flaw with the service was that you needed to get all you friends signed up to it as well in order to get them to enter all their accounts. It was fun to make and I lernt allot building it...
• yashchandra 14y ago
  www.ekfolio.com I have always wanted to build this where people can create interactive resumes and not just old style boring word document resume. Got some ideas but never formalized so far. I still own the domain though :)
  • deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
• cfinke 14y ago
  pieinterest.com: Pinterest for pies. (Just kidding. I don't remember why I bought it, but I did.)
  • jcfrei 14y ago
    hehe - you could branch out into offering different computations of π
• maxer 14y ago
  yrecruit.com - replacing recruitment consultants with one click candidate sourcing betzap.com - crowdsourced betting tips
• dudurocha 14y ago
  buzy.co A place that will have meny services for business (and buzy) people. Like a summary of books, of daily news, personal assistants, reservation and booking services.
• kenneth_reitz 14y ago
  placehub.com: local news platform/aggregator service.
• hackNightly 14y ago
  Kapsl.com - This has been everything from a todo list, ticket tracker, and team planner down to an analytics package. I believe this domain name is cursed because I can't seem to finish any of the projects I start with it.
• sradu 14y ago
  tinyact.com: an ad network where advertisers would pay for micro actions performed by users on their site (like downloding a pdf, staying on the site for a period of time, coming back a number of times, etc); graffly.com: a Groupon for affiliate marketing offers; crosscookie.com: a service where SaaS could exchange cookie information about their paying members and use that information to target display advertising on ad exchanges; peeknpoke.com: a service where you could write an essay/blogpost and ask friends to review it; Most of these are offline now.
• jcfrei 14y ago
  dronedelivery.com - a bit futuristic and never intended to be developed by myself.
• jayniz 14y ago
  fatbattle.me Weight loss contests using withings scales and their apis
• padobson 14y ago
  Futuretoob.com I was going to build TV apps to get in on the coming disruption of television. Still waiting to see where TV goes. Droplounge.com A content aggregator for stuff in you Dropbox. Basically a way for digital creatives to share their work. Algapi.com An algorithm API marketplace. Programmers expose algorithms and other programmers pay per request to use them in their apps. If any of these excite you, drop me a line.
• jaxn 14y ago
  purplelynx.us: monitoring social streams and prioritizing the links that your network is sharing (purple = visited). Built a proof of concept and it is a neat feature, but not the experience I was hoping for. howiuse.it: Was going to build a site for sharing tips on how to use software. i.e. how I use evernote for a paperless office, etc.
• jeremymcanally 14y ago
  * invoices.io - Simpler, cheaper Harvest. * hippo.io - Reminders that actually worked with you instead of beating you over the head. * fubar.io - An error tracking service that didn't suck. * sharing.io - Sharing buttons as a service. We maintain them for you so you don't have to worry about having a MySpace button on your site in 2012. * keys.io - Hosted software key authentication. * tele.io - Hosted, simple phone trees for small businesses. I actually have a lot of code for hippo, fubar, and tele. Sad I never pushed them through. Willing to sell any of these domains, btw. Don't need them now. E-mail's in my profile.
  • drewjoh 14y ago
    Those must be expensive to hold on to. Usually .io goes for $99/year.
    • jeremymcanally 14y ago
      Yeah they're like $80 from the registrar I use. :( Going to let some of them go after this year.
• jcc80 14y ago
  blurre.com: photo related site vendorvote.com: angie's list for b2b mansworstenemy.com: dictators & oil spills
• xabi 14y ago
  * ga.am - URL shortener (easy typing in t9 phone keyboards) * lectur.as - News aggregator * visteme.com - dressings * betterlater.com - read it later url bookmarking
• adora 14y ago
  failchat.com / chatfail.com yet another humor site.
• dlytle 14y ago
  faevor.com/net/org. A site for establishing and trading promises and favors between friends. (Inspired by the whole "favor trading" schtick the fae tend to have in mythology.)
• davewasthere 14y ago
  * dejunk.co.uk - for getting rid of my crap (hated freecycle and still think there's a better way) * badnewsbunny.com - delivering bad news for people through a hand-puppet. Still think this one would be a laugh, but a lot of bad things happened around the time I started it, so don't want to touch it.
  • horsehead 14y ago
    >>* badnewsbunny.com - delivering bad news for people through a hand-puppet. Still think this one would be a laugh, but a lot of bad things happened around the time I started it, so don't want to touch it. One of the most ironic things I think I've heard on this site.
• mlntn 14y ago
  brewmasterapp.com - A mobile/online homebrewing (beer) app. Lots of data, but never finished building it.
• adamlindsay 14y ago
  notifybyphone.com - Phone alert system using Twilio storesapp.com - eCommerce platform, had launched in beta and customers, eventually closed. sitesapp.com - CMS sister service to storesapp.com fingerlakeswineregion.org - Free app listing wineries and attractions. Willing to sell domains as well, I have finally found focus. :)
• johnnyg 14y ago
  breastpump.com - Breast Pump and Nursing supplies for mothers. Medela is currently getting sued for anti-competitive pricing and supplier behavior. If they get forced to behave by the courts and I can get supplied, game on!
  • mikejarema 14y ago
    Wow this name alone is easily worth tens of thousands, probably more!
• mikejarema 14y ago
  digitalinfo.com - reg'd in 1998 hoping to sell information products, still holding onto it! brandvocates.com - brand + advocates = brandvocates :) great for a social media agency, again didn't get past idea stage productapi.com - self-explanatory, was going to be somewhat of a amazon-style API of products, but with a "ship" function, grabbed this when I was working with drop-shippers and thought that there had to be a better way affiliateapi.com - wanted to make a skimlinks-style platform, ended up (recently) with a open-sourced JS-library for GoDaddy affiliate links giftify.com - send a virtual gift through FB, and the real one arrives at the recipient's door (launched shortly after the FB platform became available, shipped approx 20 orders) dealreel.com - curate your own list of daily deals from Groupon, etc. and publish it for your friends and followers, wanted to address the fact most deals are crap and there are a select few power users that do look at every deal, wanted to put them to work to find worthwhile deals for the masses, Yipit is doing something cool w.r.t this idea based on normalized sales data: http://blog.yipit.com/2011/08/05/introducing-trending-daily-deals/ http://blog.yipit.com/2011/08/05/introducing-trending-daily-... dnsrecipes.com - central wiki w/API listing all the cloud services out there and the DNS settings required to make them work, essentially helping non-techies tie their Google Apps, Tumblr, UServoice, etc. services to their domain in a consistent and visual way, still want to do this at some point as my buddies bug me all the time to do this shit work logocaster.com - auto-generates an infinite canvas of logo variations (much like the entries page on 99designs) and let's a user refine their logo design based on parameters like color, font-face, emotion, etc. autowatermark.com - automatically watermark images uploaded to social networks, sadly this is not possible via FB's API or others :( I'm probably as guilty as any fellow HN'ers of being trigger happy on domain registration when struck by a moment of inspiration. I am happy to see some of the great & fun domains & ideas popping up in this post.
• pavlov 14y ago
  * slated.to - bought this before the iPad came out, thinking that it could be an app site for tablets. For example: slated.to/ipad, slated.to/android, slated.to/windows8 * see.io - some kind of visual sharing site, maybe? Or a dating site for CIOs ;) * join.as - no idea even when I bought it... I'd sell any of these if someone's interested.
• jkeel 14y ago
  whisperYELL.com The idea is similar to Klout but instead of measuring online influence it was to be geared toward online privacy. People would be able to measure how much of their information is out there and depending if they want to be noticed (Yell) or go primarily unnoticed (whisper) the site would track their rating on a scale and provide suggestions to move in either direction. I stopped right before I began development because I decided to partner with a friend on another idea called felpme.com
• jtweeded 14y ago
  SteamCorps.com - fancied a Steampunk based RPG for iOS. About 5years into reg fees now :)
• cleverjake 14y ago
  howtoroot.com - detailed how to's on rooting android phones.
  • pitt1980 14y ago
    you should turn this into an app for how to coordinate fan chants at sporting events at duke basketball games they pass out a paper detailing all the chants they're going to do The How to Root app - eveyone chant (whatever) now!
  • slowernet 14y ago
    You may find a better market for this one in Australia.
• rohansingh 14y ago
  * intense.ly - for something intense, I guess? * picscri.be - for some sort of picture-based app. also picscribe.com.
• captk 14y ago
  AskAllOf.us - a platform for you to share comments you made on other blogs that needed answers. Sort of a hybrid of Disqus and Quora. Never did anything with it, I'd sell it if anyone wants it. 1orZero.com - think Hot or Not, but a much simpler scale. Would you or wouldn't you...
• Concours 14y ago
  webtimetable.com simple timetable webapp in the cloud postiquette.com simple social media updating webapp (similar to ping) printive.com online pdf generator service podsender.com podcast hosting and streaming service substitweet.com for a twitter service (still on my todo list) P.S. If you have some cool ideas for any of those, drop me a note, I could sell some.
• impostervt 14y ago
  Shutdownstartup.com - Was intended as a mini-social network. Intended to encourage developers temporarily out of a job during the last few almost-was US government shutdowns to create startups together. Then, to everyone's surprise, the government didn't actually shutdown...
• world_eggplant 14y ago
  - poetwee.com - poetry, twitter style. All driven through Twitter and various hashtags for votes, comments. - uneducation.net - a network for learning things a more disorganised way.
  • rys 14y ago
    As a Brit, poetwee reads as 'poet wee', where 'wee' is a colloquial term for urine.
• simcop2387 14y ago
  I did thingsdonelater.com for a while, but not long after i started it, had something going, and was planning a revamp to something far more usable, twello.com came out and kind of stole what i had been thinking of out from under me.
• jawns 14y ago
  CivicAssociation.net -- Bought it a couple of years ago; I was stunned it wasn't already taken. I envisioned it as a site that would allow civic associations to offer a core set of useful features (collecting dues online, email announcement lists, etc.). Had to abandon the project because I lacked the time to do it right. ConstantAds.com -- A high-concept online advertising platform. It sold ads that never expired, with no pay-per-click or pay-per-impression costs. You paid a single fee up front, and then the ad was rotated among other ads in its category, relative to the amount paid. FEREM.org -- Domain name was an acronym for Fund Ethical Research and Experimental Medicine. It was intended to provide a list of research and advocacy organizations and describe their positions on certain ethical issues. Never did much with it. ParishNetwork.org -- A social network for members of Catholic parishes. Truyoo.com -- Identify verification service that allowed sites that publish user content to weed out the trolls. Unfortunately, I never worked out a payment model that appealed to both publishers and users ... and Facebook's platform served the same purpose without requiring any sort of payment. SearchGetaways.org -- Sort of like a Kayak for vacation rental listings. RungJump.com -- People could write detailed descriptions of their jobs, and then potential job seekers could purchase access to those descriptions to get an inside look at a particular workplace. Payment model never worked out, and I found that it was more difficult than I thought it would be to get people to dish about their jobs. Swap4Web.com -- The intent was to allow small businesses to swap goods or services in exchange for web hosting and web design services. Upon further reflection, I realized that there was only a small segment of the market that had goods or services that I actually wanted, and I didn't want to go through the hassle of reselling them.
• joering2 14y ago
  thumbkissing.com for some silly touch app :) medicaresetaside.us for medicare cms system examinationundearoath.us cms to manage examinations
  • itsprofitbaron 14y ago
    Re: thumbkissing.com - thats one of Pair's (YC Company) best features[1] There are a few other's in this space as well you should contact Pair or one of them in this space, and see if they might want to acquire it :) [1] http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/23/pair-is-a-path-for-the-two-of-us/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/23/pair-is-a-path-for-the-two-...
• locrelite 14y ago
  agha.st - no idea, just wanted to snap it up pleasedontcall.us - IT sob stories 55-0.org - eventually a simple site for gay rights awareness, after the Argentina 55 to 0 vote in favor of the Gender Identity Law (it's a progressive law; I know it sounds like it could be either).
• DeanCollinsNYC 14y ago
  MobileAppStore.com (i also owned the .net .org .mobi) No i didnt come up with it before the app store but it was still pretty early. Ended up selling it to a domainer who still owns it as needed cash at the time to buy another domain which is part of my http://www.LiveFanChat.com http://www.LiveFanChat.com domain faimly (gulp the only X,XXX domain i've ever bought). Keep wishing i didnt sell it as its just sitting there being used for nothing.
• ldargin 14y ago
  electronicsciences.com -- Either a social network of electronics hobbyists, or an online circuit simulator.
• bmelton 14y ago
  I've got a ton, but hold hope that I'll polish them off and finish them some day. As for the domains I'd be happy to get rid of, here they are: Whatdeliversto.me and whatdeliverstome.com -- both intended to compete with GrubHub, but never happened. Typemotion.com -- was a blogging platform that was actually pretty good. Got acquired for a small sum of money, then the buyers folded and gave the domain back. It's an odd story, but I've always liked the domain. Governaut.com -- was a blog for awhile when I was a federal contractor. Had a site set up to act as a social network for other federal contractors and discuss common IT situations, work constraints, etc. Never got around to doing more than just the blog though, and never got traction. Vaginawear.com -- bought while I was drunk. I remember there was a really good idea behind it, but that idea was nowhere to be found after I sobered up. AppDiem.com -- Groupon for mobile apps. We were partnering with mobile developers to release on-sale apps, a new one each day for each target platform. Shuttered a year a more ago. babylum.com -- Was designed to be just like leandomainsearch, as a side project. Then leandomainsearch launched,a nd babylum was no longer needed. Then, there's the 'porn' domains. This was another drunk idea that I realized I didn't have the gumption to actually do when I was sober, and since I couldn't be expected to be drunk through the entire development process, eventually just realized that I'd not do anything with it. These domains are gold though (in a porny sort of way.) - getnakedgetmoney.com, getnakedgetpaid.com, getnakedwinmoney.com -- I think the domains explain the business models.
  • paulsilver 14y ago
    In the UK the female body decoration the 'vajazzle' has become a talking point because of the TV show 'The Only Way is Essex'. I would guess someone trying to sell vajazzles would be in the market for your Vaginawear.com domain, so there might be some money in it while the fad is ongoing.
    • bmelton 14y ago
      It's of course possible. I'm accepting all offers in the 7 figure range. ;-) In all honesty though, I had little idea that was an actual thing. I figured it was just, y'know, parody of bedazzle. Maybe it's just me, but I can't see that being anything other than roll on the floor hilarious, and definitely not enticing. To each their own I suppose.
• rapcal 14y ago
  forfew.com -- social sharing/rewards program
• sangupta 14y ago
  myjerry.org - was supposed to be a web platform for building next gen apps but all contributors backed out with time.
• smoyer 14y ago
  I still have quite a few but it's still my intention to build on them. I tend to let the ones that are hopeless expire, but the one I wonder about is wheresmyflight.com. When I was traveling a lot, I noticed that the flight status and plane locations were much more accurate on the airline's freight websites. If Twilio had been around I probably would have created the application, but sending SMS and voice messages wasn't really practical at the time.
• jrussbowman 14y ago
  fluffcut.com - I was going to build a tool that would go through your twitter and facebook streams and pull out only posts with links or other content fanatastic.com - A sports site, something like digg or reddit focused specifically on sports. I was going to allow users to pick their favorite teams and then have a feed of info about that. The social aspect would be interesting, ie: both Cowboys and Redskins fans would see the same story and comments which could create either interesting or volatile comments. Eventually I was going to offer interactive chat about games as they are happening. mygdnews.com - first domain I picked up for the fanatastic.com idea myidid.com - a task management software, basically a done list with todo list features. I've actually got a better idea for a domain name for this that's available and may actually work on this during my vacation. It's a tool I have a personal need for. twnote and choip.me - were to similar Twitter based tools. Basically commenting for tweets. and some that I have worked on but are not startups (yet, if ever based on current life) unscatter.com - It's seen several iterations. Currently it's a current information search. Basically brings up information from blekko, twitter, facebook and g+ for search terms with results ordered by date rather than relevance. chatfor.us (and chtfr.us) - real time chat engine. Currently focused on Twitter ( it works ) but my goal is to eventually allow more authentication sources. For those times when you want to have that quick chat with someone but don't exactly want to establish that relationship by adding them to IM, following them on Twitter or Facebook, etc etc.
• kodablah 14y ago
  yukup.com - Aggregation of common thread-based sources (HN, reddit, google groups/mailing lists, etc) and have nice live updates in-browser w/ unread message support umwut.com - A new kind of commenting site (not just link sharing) where rooms can be created. The great thing was the live system that was very intuitive to jump around many new comments in many threads very easily. forsook.org (and forsook-lang.org/com) - A language/parser framework that transpiles to Java. The key is that you can easily add pieces basically allowing you to create your own language by checking checkboxes (still in the works). sqlchop.com - Basically a free version of transaction-log-based CDC because I got tired of paying Attunity. yocalist.com - A HTML5/Canvas based karaoke system that anyone can easily use and allows you to overlay your own lyrics onto embedded videos from other sites (e.g. youtube)
• karthikm 14y ago
  resu.me - Different approach to building resumes caree.rs - Hiring platform for companies talkto.me - Chat I don't know if I should still hold on to these or sell.
• karthikm 14y ago
  resu.me - Different approach to building resumes caree.rs - Hiring platform for companies talkto.me - Chat App
• wanderr 14y ago
  Makepizzahappen.com - one click pizza ordering system. Set it up once with your CC info, topping preferences, optionally rank local pizza places by preference, then next time you're drunk, want pizza and don't know who's open, just click the giant make pizza happen button Foodmyface.com - more generalized food ordering system, development payed for by the proceeds from makepizzahappen of course. Similar to how Jimmy Johns online ordering works, but for any restaurants that deliver. Ohshitmyshit.com - not even sure. A place for posting awesome stuff? A place for posing about your broken stuff? A place for posting disturbing pictures of poop in the hopes that a medical professional will see them and tell you what is wrong with you?
• Mz 14y ago
  I have novemberwest.com, which I bought to do a webcomic. I currently blog there. I still want to do a webcomic. Time will tell. But I think I have already owned it for three years.
• jason_slack 14y ago
  FriendInMyBed.com - Adult social networking... AnswerBeak.com - search CherishSteveJobs.com - self explanatory WhyDoYouLike.Me - he he
  • waterlesscloud 14y ago
    Integrate WhyDoYouLike.Me with Facebook, get rich, buy island.
    • jason_slack 14y ago
      Ah, you know me a little to well.......Working on it.
• freejack 14y ago
  panoptech.com - search tool that sat in your system tray watching keyboard input and doing background searches so that it would have results immediately ready for you anytime you wanted them. circa 1999, no one cared about privacy issues back then :) feedcache.com/feedcache.net - QOS for RSS. Idea was to cache every RSS feed and their associated enclosures, etc. and make them available via API so that application developers had certainty that they could retrieve the content from the feed when they needed it. circa 2003/2004ish. Internet infrastructure sorta caught up to the idea pretty quickly and we also realized that it was too hard to compete by just providing QOS on content that a) didn't belong to us and b) was freely (usually) elsewhere. I literally have hundreds of others, and these two are my favorites...
• dr_win 14y ago
  upgradr.com - greasemonkey for IE => silly idea digestr.com - some crazy idea similar to Yahoo pipes zedhub.com - don't even remember what it was supposed to be ;)
• anulman 14y ago
  MyShitIsOnFire.com -- A website explaining how to put out various kinds of fires. Also sells cheeky shirts/prints/etc, to match the associated comics.
• anujkk 14y ago
  quickbite.in - for a restaurant search/recommendation system for Indian market. I don't see myself doing this anymore. I'm waiting for someone who can make good use of it and can pay me a decent amount. guzloo.com - Didn't buy it for any particular use. I purchased it because I found the name short & funny. As of now, it is hosting a useless unmaintained php site that I made on a weekend.
• deleted 14y ago
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• leejw00t354 14y ago
  buddy-fund.com - A way for users to sell their Facebook wall to advertisers. We should have done a little more research into the idea, it's against the ToS surprise, surprise. clanbo.com - (The name is awful, I didn't come up with it) It was a free game server hosting service which also provided premium accounts. It got quite a bit of traffic and made me a little money back when I was 16 but the effort to return ratio is pretty low and in such a competitive area it would be hard to make it into anything worthwhile. These two domains and sites are available for sell if anyone is interested. Full source can be provided on both. Clanbo.com fully functional and ready to host both TS2 and TS3 servers.
• baisong 14y ago
  coho.me - "CoHome" Yammer for households/families.
• process 14y ago
  SocialCinema.com. Collaborative video that did not see the light of day.
• kayman 14y ago
  how-to-make-an-iphone-app.com receiptapp.org bettermindsaustralia.org
• zepner 14y ago
  thebulletlist.com - was supposed to be mind-mapping before mind-mapping software existed
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• ges 14y ago
  We built a website for this exact purpose - sharing the domain names you bought but ended up not using. Posted a Show HN the day before this thread appeared. Feel free to have a look! Link: http://friendsdomains.com http://friendsdomains.com