AOL's shop "in-store.com"

[yesonline]

AOL just launched their own eshop named : in-store.com
Now here is an interesting fact, why AOL uses in-store.com instead of instore.com?
Of course both domain were registered few years ago, as whois shows, instore.com registered at 19-Mar-1999 by a Norwegian company, and in-store.com registered at Jan 27 2001 with AOL. However, if you checked the archive.org you may find that the original registrant of in-store.com was a Korean who listed this domain for sale with $2k.
So in-store.com should be bought by AOL later.
Though instore.com is a living site and in-store was not, I think if AOL wants to buy they can do it without problem or AOL may find other alternative domains without the "hyphen".
So maybe AOL does not mind they promote a big project with a hyphenated domain, do you think it would be a great help to increase the value of the hyphenated domains?

d

 

[David G]

IMO someone at AOL is just plain stupid or misinformed in not realizing the non-hyphenated name will end up getting some of their traffic.

 

[yesonline]

IMO someone at AOL is just plain stupid or misinformed in not realizing the non-hyphenated name will end up getting some of their traffic.

Very possible, I wonder AOL will end up with buying instore.com later?

:-D

 

[steven22]

What do you think the error domains for this site would be worth? I think AOL is just plain stupid but time will tell. I would imagine they tried to purchase instore.com

 

[Jack Gordon]

Of course, if you can direct a few gazillion people to your sister site using your own links, the url seems kind of unimportant, doesn't it?

I think they know exactly what they are doing, and the small number of people who get confused will eventually figure it out.

When you are Ebay, the same rules do not apply.

 

[Anthony Ng]

Yes, they should have acquired instore.com as well BEFORE launching in-store.com, but the truth is: with the resources of AOL, it doesn't really matter if there's a hyphen or not. And if they really advertise heavily on that, the rest of the world might actually benefit from it too. Okay, now I'm going to check out some hyphenated domains. LOL!