Domain Magnate

A quick update on the recent .ca pool auction results:

icq.ca sold for $3400
north.ca sold for $2701

MyID is also going to do a premium .ca auction.

They are mostly after 2-3 char domains and generics. Also cities and french domains.

Myid.ca doesn’t seem to be too popular so I’m guessing this auction won’t have a wide enough reach.

In other news pizza.com auction on sedo is up to $2,505,000. Many seem to be trying to capitalize on the big pizza chunk by shillbidding their domains to just under the reserve. We’ll soon find out if that worked for them..

ICQ.ca in now at auction in Pool.com with current high offer $2302 and over 3 days to go.

Now obviously this LLL.ca domain is only that valuable due to the popular IM program with the same name. So it’s very likely that icq.ca has some very good type in traffic that can let the owner make the money back in just a few months.

But the problem is ICQ is a trademark, which now belongs to AOL. Even if the domain icq.ca will be used for something unrelated to the icq brand AOL can claim it and most likely receive the domain. read more »

Currently there are 990,000 .ca domains registered according to cira.ca.

With current registration rates we could hit a million within a couple weeks, or a month.

Meanwhile .ca prices are going up quickly. LL.ca market values are already at the point where few end users can afford the and LLL.ca selling for $100+ on drops.

dnexpert reports:

CNNic, the Chinese .cn domain name registry have announced they have passed the 10 million domain registrations mark in January 2008.

While other countries take pride in reaching 7 figures, China is strongly striding towards being the leading nation in terms of ccTld registrations. Only Germany with their .de ccTld have reached 10 million registrations in the past.

China is also fast becoming the leading nation in terms of internet users with 210 million internet users in China today.

You can find more information about .cn domain names at the CNNic registry website.

New record for .ca sales: $41000 for banks.ca at Pool.com today.

Previous high .ca sales:

savings.ca $36,050 2006-03-28 Pool
cruise.ca $33,363 2006-05-23 Pvt Sale

Some argue whether banks.ca is really worth much because there are only 6 banks in Canada, although I think it’s an excellent finance related domain and its value will only rise as the .ca registrations approach 1 million.

Banks.com is a developed site so it’s possible that they had interest in banks.ca as well.

Other reports suggest that the winning bidder was ready to pay as much as $112K!

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) today launches its campaign to celebrate the registration of one million dot-ca domain names with the unveiling of a campaign website at onemilliondomains.ca. CIRA expects to reach the one million milestone in early April 2008 after passing 750,000 registrations just 18 months prior in October 2006. The campaign showcases the growth of dot-ca domain names, dot-ca websites and the Canadians behind them. read more »

Casino.de Sold for $591K

German Domain Name Casino.de Sold for USD 591,000.00

Balslev Media announces the acquisition of Casino.de

HOLSTEBRO, Denmark–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The Danish Internet company Balslev Media has recently purchased the German domain name casino.de for Euro 400,000 / US $591,000. This is a new record price paid for a German domain name. read more »

Another interesting discussion thread appeared on DNforum that deserves to be featured here. This time it is a comparison between Canadian and Indian domain market. Some figures first:

Canada Stats
Population=33,390,141
Internet Usage=22,000,000
%Penetration=65.9%
Use Growth (2000-2007)=73.2%
GDP Growth(2007)=2.6%
GDP Per Capita (PPP): $35,600 (2006 Est.)
As of 2008-03-16: .ca registration contain 985,474 domains read more »

Here is an interesting list with .asia domains which received more than one application.

Many generics, like:

card.asia
video.asia
policy.asia
vip.asia
ugly.asia
ship.asia
reform.asia
swallow.asia read more »

FragerFactor reports:

“I’ve never understood the need for .mobi, my mobile site is doing fine with a .com domain.”

Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the Web, is none too keen on dotMOBI.

Berners-Lee — who also is the director of the W3C consortium and a senior research scientist with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — argued that adding domain names indiscriminately is not the best way to insure the Web can scale up and out. read more »