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closed Social.com

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Superb name there congrats on that.. Personally i have a dilema on this name what i would do if i owned it.. Sure its worth $xxx,xxx or higher but a question i keep asking myself wouldnt you make more money by leasing the name to a corporate fortune 500 company and take a seriously nice income yearly by leasing. A benefit of this would be the name would be owned by you, you would become pretty rich on a yearly return of profits from the lease and it would become a major traffic player and surely the value would increase substantially after a few years of lease to a level where the domain could be worth $xx,xxx,xxx.

I may be way off here but many people have mentioned names like youtube would be a reg free name if it did not become the player it has today.. your name is worth mega bucks as it is and the internet is pretty much covered by your domain as a social network so taking that into account this name + the power of a youtube size company behind could turn this domain into one if not the biggest valued names around.

Just my view.

I recall yearly registration fees of 1/2 Mil $ for some Premium .TV domains.

I believe Pharmacy.TV went for 1/2 Mil $ per yr.

This domain could fetch the same under a similar leasing model (with many cascading benefits and peripheral revenue streams opportunities in the meantime) and gain a much greater ROI than an auction would IMO - with the difference I guess being whether the owner wants to invest resources over time or gain a quick lump sum return now. Leasing it would obviously allow the owner to retain position for the future (where domains, especially developed and recognized, will only be even more valuable.)

Either way, absolute beauty of a name and I'm sure it will make any buyer and seller happy.

Best Success BlueSkies!
 
Since so many people took the time to post to my appraisal thread, I thought I'd provide you with a followup.

I had it listed at Sedo for 2 weeks. This was after months of an aggressive e-mail campaign to companies in the social networking and venture capital space. I made the mistake however of putting the minimum bid at one million (largely due to an abundance of 7 figure appraisals at another popular domain name forum). No takers.

I learned over the months that "Social" was viewed differently by domaineers than by those in the social networking business. Some comments in a Mashable thread on the name was an example. Social networking companies seem to prefer the made-up, catchy names. Perhaps in 5-10 years that may change when everyone realizes how difficult it is to remember such names :)

I decided to take up the suggestion from hugegrowth and some others and develop the domain into a social networking portal - more specifically a directory for now.

If you get a chance, please visit Social.com and give me some feedback here.

Thanks!

BlueSkies

I would agree in the six figure range at least, without any development. I don't think development matters so much in order to get a good price for this name, the value here is in the name itself. Look at what YouTube sold for, that was purely for the development and traffic the site had gotten - almost any name can be developed into profitability. YouTube would have been worth reg fee without the development, but Social .com has worth just for the name.

Anyway, any development should target the US for sure, and then all other english speaking countries.

I could see it being a social portal - with sections for social forums, social networking, social dating, social blogs, social groups, etc. - this word can be used beyond just dating.
 
I'm in the same situation with mashup dot com. needless to say, check out popfly.com to see what i mean.
 
Since so many people took the time to post to my appraisal thread, I thought I'd provide you with a followup.

I had it listed at Sedo for 2 weeks. This was after months of an aggressive e-mail campaign to companies in the social networking and venture capital space. I made the mistake however of putting the minimum bid at one million (largely due to an abundance of 7 figure appraisals at another popular domain name forum). No takers.

I learned over the months that "Social" was viewed differently by domaineers than by those in the social networking business. Some comments in a Mashable thread on the name was an example. Social networking companies seem to prefer the made-up, catchy names. Perhaps in 5-10 years that may change when everyone realizes how difficult it is to remember such names

I decided to take up the suggestion from hugegrowth and some others and develop the domain into a social networking portal - more specifically a directory for now.

If you get a chance, please visit Social.com and give me some feedback here.

Thanks!

BlueSkies

Youtube.com is not hard to remember. Neither is friendster. Or bebo. Or orkut. People actually prefer brands.
 
He means in a few more years when every good web 2.0 sounding name is gone
 
I think you probably shot yourself in the foot with the high minimum bid.

It would probably have been better to have had a much lower initial bidding system with a very high reserve. In this way you lure bidders in and make the name more popular and interesting.

Such a high opening bid means you limit the playing field greatly - and gives it the appearance of no interest, putting potential high bidders off, IMHO!

PS...

I don't see ANYWHERE on your site to leave comments... wonder why that is... was it ever really for sale or was all this just free advertising and hype?
 
I think you probably shot yourself in the foot with the high minimum bid.

I agree with you. It was a mistake.

I don't see ANYWHERE on your site to leave comments... wonder why that is... was it ever really for sale or was all this just free advertising and hype?

When the site was for sale and had a listing at Sedo, interested buyers could reach me at the e-mail address that was clearly marked on the Wordpress Blog at social.com. There was also a phone number that was listed in the press release that I issued. With the listing over, both are not available.

With a Social Networking Directory still in development at Social.com, I have not yet added a contact address to the site. It will appear in time. In the meantime, please feel free to PM at DNForum.

Was it really for sale? Yes, of course. I put a lot of time into trying to market it, but failed to obtain the price I was looking for.

BlueSkies
 
When the site was for sale and had a listing at Sedo, interested buyers could reach me at the e-mail address that was clearly marked on the Wordpress Blog at social.com.
BlueSkies

That's what I was expecting to see just now, some kind of blog or at least something that people could leave the comments you suggested.

It's just when you get there and see nothing like that, people start to think other things..... ;)

Anyways, that aside...

Have you tried a VC for capital input?

With the right marketing plan and model, you should be able to attract the attention of some Venture Capital firms.
You could enlist the services of someone professional enough and proficient at being able to lay out a good business model and proposal.
You could possibly achieve this without any or little up-front Capital if that was a problem, with a name such as this I would imagine for a share equity in the future company.
I would envisage you could do that for somewhere around the 50% mark total of your future company, maybe slightly more - your VC will probably want circa 40%, and depending on who you go for, and how good they are, the business marketer could be around 10-15% share (maybe even more), leaving you a potential 45-50% share in a business that could eventually become worth Millions, maybe even a $1.7 Billion nest egg like you tube.
It certainly has the potential - just needs the right model and the right vision, and you should be head hunting the best in the business for this with the lure of an equity share and nothing more, up front.
It's do-able like this, and that's certainly the way I would be moving it forward it if was mine...

Someone with vision... who can go beyond the Youtube and MySpace models and envisage something that hasn't been tapped into yet... the internet is still only a baby that there is so many ideas which have not even manifested themselves on the social networking front yet and really capitalise on that name ....
 
You could enlist the services of someone professional enough and proficient at being able to lay out a good business model and proposal...

Thanks for taking the time to provide me with your thoughts. It sounds like you may have some experience here? Are you connected to any of the types of folks that you mentioned (ie. VC, business, marketing)?

BlueSkies
 
great name, should be worth $1-2 millions with social networks getting more popular by the day, and web 2.0 kicking in, lots of big companies would like this name
 
and i didn't even get a like ;)
 
Congrats and hats off for hanging on to the name for the best possible deal. Many would have sold it for $xxx,xxx
 
Congrats - you're an overnight millionaire that took 15 years in the making!

If you regged it in 1995, was it still free back then or $100/year? Why did you reg it back then, out of all the words that would have been available - and years before social media or networking even existed?
 
If you regged it in 1995, was it still free back then or $100/year? Why did you reg it back then, out of all the words that would have been available - and years before social media or networking even existed?

I think I read that his original idea was to develop a dating network to rival Match.com.
 
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