Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Who Would Buy a 5-Digit Number!?

Actually, lots of people. Last week's buyout of the remaining NNNNN.com domain names was not just internet hype, these things are very scarce (only 100,000), valuable, and have many possible commercial purposes. Just take a look at the first 100 1NNNN.com's, most are developed websites, including about 40 Marchex US zipcode sites and the following 20 other sites:

10008 Developed Chinese website
10012 US media business.
10014 US Business Wiredset Digital Agency
10015 Adequate.org (ISO 10015 quality assurance standard).
10020 Developed Chinese website.
10022 WhatsUpNYC.com NY guide.
10026 China IT Outsourcing Managed Service).
10035 HiChina Web Solutions.
10042 Developed Korean gaming website.
10044 Roosevelt Island Computer Repair.
10049 WhatDomains.com
10051 Developed Chinese website
10054 NHKJ.gov.cn
10061 Timberland.com
10069 Bracha Real Estate Group (Trump Condominiums).
10071 Chinese Internet Company
10076 Chinese Film Commentary
10086 Developed Chinese website.
10088 Developed Chinese website (51688.com)
10090 Chinese school-related website.
10092 Developed Chinese website


A couple things to note: lots of developed Chinese websites. Numeric domains are huge in Asia, and that is why 173.com went for over $300k last week. A few NNNNN.com's in the top 100 Alexa ranked Chinese websites as well. Another thing to note is the interesting use of numbers related to a particular product, like adequate.org using 10015.com because of the ISO 10015 quality assurance standard, and Timberland.com using the popular boot number. There are lots of productive and creative uses for numeric domains!

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