Now that the party has ended and it is the next day...

[Commerce]

Does anyone know if any of the more senior players in the business of domain names actually reservered *any* .me names...

I would hate to feel like we were takenby.me (already registered)

It would also be interesting to find the total number of .me registrations to this point. I would guess it a high number because even some of the stranger .me names were grabbed....

The strangest one I encountered (I clearly need to get more rest) was allyourbasearebelongto.me - I had to look.

-Commerce

[Acro]

All these funky TLD's are good for one thing: name hacks - domains that form words or phrases with the TLD included, e.g. Ani.me for anime

Here's a list of words that end in "me" - most are taken, some obscure ones might still be available. I did some checking but the live whois appears to be out of sync.

http://www.morewords.com/ends-with/me/

[rajs1ngh]

A huge scam was going on behind the actual registration scene. I tell you all about my story. I contacted GoDaddy weeks before the general registration begins. One of their support staff replied that if i want to register .ME domains in bulk then i can give them a list of my desired .ME domain names. I did so (With a list of about 70 .ME domains). Then he replied that as soon as the registry opens on 17th july, he will submit all my domains for registration and will charge my credit card on file at godaddy. Now, i was also prepared for registering some premium .ME names when the registry opens. Then on 17th July 8 AM PDT onwards, i searched again and again and found about 50 of my desired domains were available, i choose all of them (in 3-4 phases), and checked out. My credit card was charged, and i also got the order confirmation mail. Meanwhile, i also got an order confirmation mail from the support staff of godaddy about successfully registering 4 of the .ME domains from the list of about 70 desired domains. Now, the scene is, i just got 2 domains in my godaddy account and i started recieving emails for the registration failure for all of my .ME domains for which i recieved order confirm mail from godaddy earlier. Now, from those 2 successful domains, they withdrew 1 of them and finally its just 1 domain which i got from godaddy from the 70 applied (and paid for 50 .ME names, about $2000). and still waiting for refund. Now, I have 2 concerns1. when they send me an order confirmation mail (manually by their staff) who himself registered my names on my request and sent me a personlize message about 4 domains successfully registered from the total list of 70, then why they cancelled those domains (those all were 1 word premium domains)2. The other domains which i registered manually and paid for, and also got order confirmation mail from them, then why did they cancelled my order by saying that the particular domain is not available and is already registered.3. Just in curiosity I searched again at godaddy for some of those domains, and their system still showed me, all of those domains "Availabale" which i already registered and paid for and got order confirmation mail also. I dont know what happened behind the scenes, but i smell a huge scam behind all this.

[Acro]

The .me registry kept hundreds of "premium" domains for future auction.

[Rockefeller]

Any "new" extension is essentially a scam. You get all of these small players on these forums that missed out on .com, .net, .org, and even .info and they have NO IDEA how to buy domain names under market value and flip them for profit...so what do they do? They go out and spend $1,000s on .mobi, .asia, and .me thinking they are going to make a million dollars. Haven't you guys learned yet? Come on, we can only tell you so many times. There hasn't been a successful "new" extension since .info that I can think of..and .us doesnt even compare with .info sales. The registries that run these new extensions LOVE you guys..you pay $35 for a two year reg for a domain name, they probably make most of their profits in the first 24 hours of a new domain name extension launching to last them for 10 years.

Stop wasting your time on these things and put your money into a generic .com.

[TheLegendaryJP]

Any new extension shouldnt keep premium regs longer than 1 traffic auction lmao

[Credit]

Any "new" extension is essentially a scam. You get all of these small players on these forums that missed out on .com, .net, .org, and even .info and they have NO IDEA how to buy domain names under market value and flip them for profit...so what do they do? They go out and spend $1,000s on .mobi, .asia, and .me thinking they are going to make a million dollars. Haven't you guys learned yet? Come on, we can only tell you so many times. There hasn't been a successful "new" extension since .info that I can think of..and .us doesnt even compare with .info sales. The registries that run these new extensions LOVE you guys..you pay $35 for a two year reg for a domain name, they probably make most of their profits in the first 24 hours of a new domain name extension launching to last them for 10 years.

Stop wasting your time on these things and put your money into a generic .com.

Bravo

[krossat]

94.7% success rate with Dynadot!

Makes GD look totally incompetent doesent it?

Dear Krossat,

You are receiving this email because you have recently registered a ME domain.

Please remember that the grace period for ME domains is only 2 days. So if you want to delete your ME domain for an account credit, you have to do it within 2 days after registration.

http://www.dynadot.com/domain/grace_deletion.html

Thank you for choosing Dynadot. Our ME launch was very successful. We managed to register 94.7% of all ME domain pre-orders.

Best Regards,
Dynadot Staff
(account krossat)

[tekz999]

Stay tuned for .Mars

[sweetfunny]

Any "new" extension is essentially a scam. You get all of these small players on these forums that missed out on .com, .net, .org, and even .info and they have NO IDEA how to buy domain names under market value and flip them for profit...so what do they do? They go out and spend $1,000s on .mobi, .asia, and .me thinking they are going to make a million dollars. Haven't you guys learned yet? Come on, we can only tell you so many times. There hasn't been a successful "new" extension since .info that I can think of..and .us doesnt even compare with .info sales. The registries that run these new extensions LOVE you guys..you pay $35 for a two year reg for a domain name, they probably make most of their profits in the first 24 hours of a new domain name extension launching to last them for 10 years.

Stop wasting your time on these things and put your money into a generic .com.

Then there are those of us who purchased generic .ME's with high commercial keyword value, and will put up websites with a dash of SEO and have their whole .ME portfolio pay for itself in 60-90 days.

I have no problem with 30 ME's doing an ordinary $5-10 a day for the next 2 years.

It's what you make of the domain, but true if your buying these to sit on and sell to another speculator down the track you probably won't get the pocket busting wads of cash you were hoping when you hit the reg button.

Only time will tell, but for me what i bought was a great investment.

[katherine]

The .me landrush is no different than .mobi or .asia before. Aside from personal names, too many keywords that are just so-so or downright mediocre.
Seriously .me should be treated as a novelty just like .cc or .ws but slightly better.

[Jacksplat]

im not wasting my time on .me.

[radioz]

im not wasting my time on .me.

Agreed. Save your money on this! Most success stories will be with a few of the high dollar auction names. It's a .COM world! DO a search on Google for a popular name such as "www.(term)" and then add "-.COM". You will generally find that the total websites starting with your chosen term drop WAY down. The general public will register the most gawd awful, tortured .COM with hyphens, abbreviations, and 'inc's before they will usually even touch much else.

I own lots of .US, .BIZ, and some .INFO names. Those were 'honest' land rush offerings with no ridiculous auctions. You would be much better buying some of these earlier 'new' extensions here at DNF. Better keywords in these extensions do have some value. They seldom go for much here at DNF though and the .WS, .CC, and .NAME names (even arguably excellent ones) generally just don't go at all. .ME may well beat the last three but in the end, I suspect that even the 'dreded' .BIZ is actually a stronger extension for most terms other than some 'cutsy' ones.

If that isn't enough, and you love land rushes that help ICANN make GoDaddy and Moniker rich, many more will likely be coming as ICANN has pretty much said that if you have the money, they will authorize most any extension soon. This will really kill the value of most anything other than the original 'big 3' extensions.

The .me landrush is no different than .mobi or .asia before. Aside from personal names, too many keywords that are just so-so or downright mediocre.
Seriously .me should be treated as a novelty just like .cc or .ws but slightly better.

Agreed as well! Please save your money. Or, maybe, spend it all on .ME so you won't be able to bid against me on a real, decent domain. Then, I might buy a couple of your better .MEs for $15 each here at DNF a couple years from now when renewal comes up. Some of us have lived this cycle. You should probably listen but I know that you're all excited right now.

By the way, 'JustSayNoTo.ME' is available! I sorta like that one.