Software.de sells for €235025

Surpassing all other sales so far this week is software.de, which sold at auction for €235,025 (312,278 USD). Software is the same word in both English and German, so I think this domain has a lot of multinational potential. More than half of Europeans speak either German or English.

Other sales of note include gr8.com (“great.com”) for $16,000 USD, iwant2.com for £15,000, and kleding.com (“clothing” in Dutch) for €14,362.

A number of premium .tv domains also went to auction this week. Some of the bigger sales include learn.tv for $41,000, christmas.tv for $32,000, home.tv for$ 31,000, and guide.tv for $29,500.

Source | Domain News

VeriSign lowers prices on premium .tv domains

In an unexpected move, VeriSign has significantly lowered the price and renewal rate of tens of thousands of “premium” .tv domains. As a result, domainers are rushing to grab the reduced names.

Some of the 26,000 names available include sociological.tv for $90 and computer.tv for $3,800. VeriSign made a good decision here. Even though domain values have been rising steadily over the last several years, I think the company realized most of its “premium” names were drastically overpriced and reduced prices accordingly.

New media advertising report is good news for domainers

A report on advertising spending conducted by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers shows that UK advertisers have spent more money on Internet advertising so far this year than on television adverts.

In all, the web accounts for 23.5% of advertising expenditure, or £1.75 billion. Still a dominant power, TV made up 21.9% of spending.

This is important to domainers because it shows that companies and marketing firms value the Internet just as much as any other communications medium. Thus they are more likely to understand the value of a premium domain. Because of increased advertisement spending, website owners stand to make more from PPC ads.

Source | The Domains

Oprah sues cybersquatters

American talk show host Oprah Winfrey made news last week when she became one of many celebrities lately to go after cybersquatters.

In this case, Winfrey and her broadcasting company, Harpo Entertainment Group, are suing a group of nutritional supplement websites. The sites sell weight and anti-aging products, and feature fake endorsements from Oprah and the show’s resident physician, Dr. Mehmet Oz. To reinforce these claims, the sites are located on domains such as www.drozadvice.com and www.oprahdietsecret.com.

Many companies and media labels have been known to be very abusive with cybersquatting claims, but this looks like an open-and-shut case to me. The domains are clearly being used in bad faith and a number of the sites are notorious for ripping off consumers.

Source | Business Week

Photo | Flickr