namewinner.com is dropping tomorrow

[katherine]

The veterans must remember the venerable dropcatcher namewinner.com, that ceased operations years ago - it is now retiring for good.

After the drop of the infamous registerfly (Rot In Peace) it's another remnant of domain history that is going away.

Memories

http://web.archive.org/web/20050611021519/http://www.namewinner.com/

 

[Theo]

I used them a decade ago. Here's an email from 2003 now that you opened the time capsule

Dear NameWinner Customer,

As we e-mailed you several days ago, we updated the NameWinner auction
system and bidding interface with many new rules. Many of you told us that
these rules made the system more complicated and harder to understand.
Well, we're listening and went back to the drawing board to simplify the
process.

We have just put online the following new changes to the bid system:

- We have eliminated the private auction.
- All auctions end at 10 a.m. PST with one exception. If a customer is outbid on
a domain in the last 5 minutes of the auction, the auction for that name is
extended for 10 minutes until 10:10 a.m. PST. The auction is then over at
10:10 a.m.
- We have simplified the bid increments. There are no more tiered
increments. All bid increments are now $10.
- We have reduced the price on second bids from $35 to $30 and have
eliminated the $45 third bid requirement.
- You can now bid your grandfathered $8.75 base bid price on deleting
domains up until 20 hours before they delete. Within 20 hours we have
lowered the price to $20.

We hope that these changes make for a great NameWinner experience. If not,
we always want to hear your feedback so we can make the best possible online
expiring domain auction system. We have added several new partners for
grabbing domains over the past week and we have several more coming online
any day. We thank you for all the support that you've given us while we go
through these improvements. Please, if you have questions, don't hesitate
to ask.

Happy Bidding!
Your friends at NameWinner

 

[hawkeye]

..got some good names there.

(cue - "Memories....,")

 

[Onward]

I loved that site...

 

[dmyre]

They won WWF.com....
They were a good service at the time...

 

[bro]

In that archived page, found spacecats.net expiring, looks like this is what that took them down

 

[NAK]

I liked namewinner but of course i am bias, when you make $300,000 from a drop, your grateful to whoever helped you get it.

they had a flaw in the system that I really liked, you could bid after auction ended to see how much reserve was from winning bidder, that was great.

 

[randomo]

Another blast from the past (2002):

Dear NameWinner customer,

Exciting new changes are in store for you at NameWinner! Visit www.namewinner.com today!

When we first launched NameWinner more than a year ago, we were the first secondary domain registration site to offer an auction model where you only paid if we were able to register an expiring domain name for you. That, along with our low beginning bid price of $25, made NameWinner a very attractive alternative to other services available in the competitive expiring domains market.

Now, we're once again taking the lead in secondary domain registration services by dropping our beginning bid price to just $8.75. It's true! Bids on any expiring domain name at NameWinner now start at just $8.75! Nowhere else do you have the opportunity to register great, previously unavailable domains at such low, low prices. But hurry and make your bids -- secondary bids start at $25. And, as always, you only pay if we successfully register the domain for you.

To make the registration of these expiring domains even easier, we've implemented an Ultra Fast Registration Process. In a matter of a click, you can lock in your domain and be done.

We're also now offering NEW domain registrations -- through NameWinner only -- for just $8.75!

NameWinner is now the only stop you need to make on the Net for everything related to new and expiring domains. Check out our exciting changes today! Visit www.namewinner.com.

 

[katherine]

Those were the times, looks like fond memories still abound

 

[alexdon82]

I wish I was involved in domaining that years, it was so many possibilities comparing to current market. (lower competition in dropcatching, much more motivated end users)