4 ms·

color spent "only" $350,000 on color.com so $10 million seems to be bit high for milk.com. On the other hand i totally understand the guy: He doesn't need the m

by lepunk 14y ago

color spent "only" $350,000 on color.com so $10 million seems to be bit high for milk.com. On the other hand i totally understand the guy: He doesn't need the money too badly so why would he sell? Also domain prices are only going up so it is a good long term strategy to hold onto it

uptown 14y ago
If you're making business decisions based on how Color did things, you may want to reconsider your approach.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
leoedin 14y ago
> domain prices are only going up so it is a good long term strategy to hold onto it Is there any basis for saying this? With the recent moves by ICANN to allow more TLDs (including corporate ones), surely the value of .com is being diluted? My feeling is that consumers are so used to weird domains at this point that nobody really cares about particular domains. Is having milk.com rather than johnsdairy.com really advantageous to a company? Color seems to have been a disasterous excercise in spending other peoples money from the beginning, so it's probably a poor example for sensible business practice.
- alistairSH 14y ago
  "My feeling is that consumers are so used to weird domains at this point that nobody really cares about particular domains..." I'd love to see some research indicating this is true. While I certainly am used to "weird domains", I still often default to .com when trying to find things. If I want to look at Ford's current line-up, my first instinct would be to try ford.com. Of course, that fails spectacularly when searching for Nissan cars.
  - tickthokk 14y ago
    Just to add, I think a lot of people would just google "ford" or "nissan" when trying to find info about their cars. Some of us might make assumptions, and if it fails (like expecting cars at nissan.com), your next step would be to google it.
  - leoedin 14y ago
    Youtube is full of instructional videos with no real content made by 14 year olds. I've watched a few of these relevant to a website I run, and I was amazed to find that rather than suggesting that users type the domain into the address bar, a lot of seperate videos suggested that users google the name of the site and click the first link. I think there's a certain generational divide at play. If you have only really used browsers with universal search in the address bar, and you've only lived in a time in which the web is commonplace, your attitudes and habits are likely to be quite different. When I first started using the web you had to put the full and correct domain and protocol. Search bars didn't even exist. Habits die hard. I'm not actually sure if we're disagreeing. Ford only means cars because Henry Ford started a car company. The argument for valuable domains (like milk.com) is that the simple "Milk" brand is more valuable than building your brand around a unique name. Consumers don't care that google is at google.com and not search.com. I think to some extent when the internet emerged, people transferred the trademark way of thinking into the internet domain. The first dotcom bubble was defined by people pouring money into something they didn't understand. That included spending outrageous amounts on generic simple domains when in fact, time showed that if you had a valid product (eg google, reddit, flickr) you didn't need a simple expensive name to get widespread recognition. Search completely sidelined the strategy that investors were going for - that if someone was looking for something online they'd first try "buy.com" or "pets.com".
cbushko 14y ago
That's a lot of money for a domain name that is spelled incorrectly (color vs coloUr).

by lepunk 14y ago

uptown 14y ago

If you're making business decisions based on how Color did things, you may want to reconsider your approach.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

leoedin 14y ago

> domain prices are only going up so it is a good long term strategy to hold onto it Is there any basis for saying this? With the recent moves by ICANN to allow more TLDs (including corporate ones), surely the value of .com is being diluted? My feeling is that consumers are so used to weird domains at this point that nobody really cares about particular domains. Is having milk.com rather than johnsdairy.com really advantageous to a company? Color seems to have been a disasterous excercise in spending other peoples money from the beginning, so it's probably a poor example for sensible business practice.

alistairSH 14y ago
"My feeling is that consumers are so used to weird domains at this point that nobody really cares about particular domains..." I'd love to see some research indicating this is true. While I certainly am used to "weird domains", I still often default to .com when trying to find things. If I want to look at Ford's current line-up, my first instinct would be to try ford.com. Of course, that fails spectacularly when searching for Nissan cars.
- tickthokk 14y ago
  Just to add, I think a lot of people would just google "ford" or "nissan" when trying to find info about their cars. Some of us might make assumptions, and if it fails (like expecting cars at nissan.com), your next step would be to google it.
- leoedin 14y ago
  Youtube is full of instructional videos with no real content made by 14 year olds. I've watched a few of these relevant to a website I run, and I was amazed to find that rather than suggesting that users type the domain into the address bar, a lot of seperate videos suggested that users google the name of the site and click the first link. I think there's a certain generational divide at play. If you have only really used browsers with universal search in the address bar, and you've only lived in a time in which the web is commonplace, your attitudes and habits are likely to be quite different. When I first started using the web you had to put the full and correct domain and protocol. Search bars didn't even exist. Habits die hard. I'm not actually sure if we're disagreeing. Ford only means cars because Henry Ford started a car company. The argument for valuable domains (like milk.com) is that the simple "Milk" brand is more valuable than building your brand around a unique name. Consumers don't care that google is at google.com and not search.com. I think to some extent when the internet emerged, people transferred the trademark way of thinking into the internet domain. The first dotcom bubble was defined by people pouring money into something they didn't understand. That included spending outrageous amounts on generic simple domains when in fact, time showed that if you had a valid product (eg google, reddit, flickr) you didn't need a simple expensive name to get widespread recognition. Search completely sidelined the strategy that investors were going for - that if someone was looking for something online they'd first try "buy.com" or "pets.com".

cbushko 14y ago

That's a lot of money for a domain name that is spelled incorrectly (color vs coloUr).