4 ms·

Perhaps if Jacques is not willing to give the price that he sold the name for he could mention the % that the broker received for the sale and/or the gross comm

• dang 12y ago
  In general, HN tries to emphasize content, not personalities. So this was a clear case for reverting to the article title, even though you're right that jacquesm is the only reason why people here (including me!) would find it interesting. It sometime happens that a story makes it to the front page because of some bait that was added to the title (in this case, to add social interest where intellectual interest was lacking), whereupon a moderator removes the bait from the title. This is not a bad pattern if you think about it. It's ok for the front page to have a few such stories, but they shouldn't dominate it. And once a story makes the front page, it should stand on its own.
  • larrys 12y ago
    In this case I agree with you (stands on its own) but otoh I think in terms of some of the major contributors to HN a less interesting story is often worth reading just for that fact. As the person who posted the story I would have posted it regardless of whether Jacques was involved or not. But of course I definitely recognized that if I included his name it would have a much better chance of garnering interest.
  • jacquesm 12y ago
    I totally agree with the sentiment here, applying that even-handedly is going to be hard though. Plenty of articles about frequent HN contributors had the HN handle in the title, and in the future you're going to have to decide between 'original titles only' and this 'emphasize content, not personalities' policy. Two samples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4328367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4328367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3214397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3214397 But those were not on 'your watch' so I'm 100% on board with your new policy. Quite a few blog posts carry the name of the blogger in the domain as well, which emphasizes personality rather than content, that's going to be harder to get rid of. Anyway, I didn't even expect this to be on HN at all, it's been a roller coaster month of negotiations and traveling, I'm happy it's done. Now to repair the website, amazing how many dependencies on a domain name creep in over the years!
• jacquesm 12y ago
  That's not really fair to Tom, (since it might affect his ability to negotiate in the future), but let's just say that I would happily recommend him to anybody, his rates are reasonable and he works really hard (which in the world of brokers is a welcome change). We got close to selling 3 times, and in the end I got a deal that I'm pretty happy with. Let's just say that since I bought ww.com with the proceeds of gameplay.com, which in turn I bought for $12 I would be highly surprised if I ever say that kind of ROI again in my life.
  • larrys 12y ago
    I own one of these things as well. For the benefit of others on HN although I've never received a quote from a broker to market a 2l which I own I have on other domains. Generally anywhere from 7 to 15%. I've also had brokers take a haircut to close a deal. On the buy side godaddy had recently sold one of my names (I almost blew them off but found they were clueless enough that it really worked to my advantage) and I'm seeing they get 10% when they represent sellers.
  • haptiK 12y ago
    It says on your own website that WW.com it was sold for 3000000. I'm confused.
    • larrys 12y ago
      That was his asking price.
      • general_failure 12y ago
        whoa, we have a milionaire in our midst. Is that 30 million!?
        • CanSpice 12y ago
          No, it's three million.