The Financier writes:
“”I am neither here nor there with my opinion on NAME as an investment. This is really one that you would have to base on the quality of all of their domain assets (they’ve sold a ton of the good stuff and a lot of the remainder is priced at “wish we didn’t sell the good stuff before” prices). Other than that, you have 50$ of their revenues coming from the other ancillary business units (Smartname, et al). It’s so hard to forecast something like that because Smartname customer could easily jump ship in a heartbeat based on something Yahoo! did down the pipe.
I think what this comes down to is belief in the management team. Can they excute on a growth strategy, which seems to focused on the premium site development. I don’t know them well enough and don’t know their history to make any assumptions here.
Personally, I don’t think the debt is an issue. The IPO should be okay and they’ll turn the debt into equity on the balance sheet. They’ll save a ton of cash flow because they won’t be making interest payments anymore and they won’t make any dividend payments so you can see all of the debt wiped off the books and expenses that used to be interested-related ($10m or so) will move right to the bottom line.”"
HI Frank
You may want to comment this, on the need to register all the possible variations of your domain name:
The other day, I discover quite a useful website (I am not associated with it)…
Today I wanted to return to said website, and since I thought their name was easy enough to remember, I typed “expertsvillage.com”…only to find a web “on construction”.
The fact is that the site is called expertvillage.com (not the plural of expert), which for me, is not the most natural name, since there are many experts and many videos on the site (around 3000 experts, +40k videos?)
In any case, they are looking bad, and probably losing visits from people that type “expertsvillage.com” in, see nothing, and automatically think that they got the name wrong, so they leave never to be seen again!
It may not be a big deal for a small site, but I think it is an important issue for webs this size…
Regards
Javier Marti
Trendirama.com
that a site as popular as this one is losing
***FS*** This is a good point Javier!.. but unfortunately the owner of the name which seemsmore logical to you may actually have rights which predate expertvillage.com every case is unique.. In a perfect world the owner could get both versions but that is not always the case.. Still your point is very good. You should try to acquire all logical permutations of a name so you don’t loose traffic.
Speaking of the “wish we didn’t sell the good stuff before” I noticed they BuyDomains has a .org listed around $200,000; I bought the .com from them about 2 years ago for $3,000.
of the subject,but came across this today. Seems even the Telco’s want a piece of the internet real estate.
http://www.gigaom.com
Verizon Redirects Typo Traffic to its own Search service
Written by Om Malik
Sunday, November 4, 2007 at 9:39 AM PT | 1 comment
Some customers of Verizon’s (VZ) high-speed FiOS Internet Service are reporting that when they mistype a website address, they are redirected to a Verizon’s own search engine page, regardless of what they have set as default. Verizon had introduced “Advanced Web Search” in June 2007.
Cox and Earthlink (ELNK) have dabbled in similar search-jackings, and if you use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, a mistyped URL leads you to MSN Search page. On the surface, it seems this is to save Verizon customers the hassle, but it is also a nice way for the incumbent to goose up their revenues via advertising. The ads on the site come from Yahoo (YHOO) and Ask (IAC).
Sure, they can’t beat Google, but they can game the system in their favor. Thus far, domain squatters have benefitted from mistyped web addresses, and seems like large ISPs are waking up to “money making opportunity.” If this trend spreads across the world, then pure-play search engines, especially Google have a reason to be concerned.
Verizon has an opt-out option for its Advanced Web Search service. Why make it a default – is what I ask. If they are just offering it as a helpful add-on, then make it an opt-in feature. Let the customer decide, what and where do they want to do. I have emailed Verizon to get their side of the story. Stay tuned.
Hi Alex…good post.
This ‘battle’ has been ragging on…started first… just between ‘browser’s’…(MS IE, Firefox, opera etc…)
Now for about the last 6 – 12 months, its been almost all the ISP’s trying to take control over peoples error default search. They are basically taking it away from what has been the browser company’s territory.
( I happen to think neither one should be profiting on this.)
I have Charter cable broadband and they switch my default error search to their own SE type page…without asking, but they have an ‘opt out’ option.
This is and will become a HUGE war in the following months and years. A lot of traffic/money at stake.
Best,
Dan
***FS*** We’re on the right side of this one.. senators are poking around at the cable co’s asking pointed questions about which people get which kind of access.. the cable co’s browsers etc would LOVE to shape your viewing experience.. but ultimately they can’t
“…the need to register all the possible variations of your domain name:”
Javier Marti of Trendirama.com practices what he preaches.
I checked to see if he owns Trendyrama.com.
He does!
Way to go.
Patrick
***FS*** Way to go Javier!!~ You get my: “He ‘gets’ it” award.
I’d prefer reading in my native language, because my knowledge of your languange is no so well. But it was interesting!
You’ll love this one. Netsol on the way to the name jet figured out why should Kevin Ham own the Internet when we can keep it for ourselves. So the wildcard of the century- take any dotMOBI– add a dotcom as consumers will do and see what you get- Verizon is there too