.mobi Regarding the UNSOLD .mobis from Moniker...

Monte confirmed that only three were left this morning. Apparently, it's not that the buyer wants to sell them, but Moniker is not wanting to deal with a group of investors from Sri Lanka. It's amazing how some people made false conclusions before investigating the matter further.

/case

yeah, I was interested in move, price, but sigh ... all gone

Excellent. Thanks for the update. Too bad a house these days couldn't sell that quickly after a deal falls through.

LOL, they sold twice

Wonderful news, thanks.

allnicksgone said:

Excellent. Thanks for the update. Too bad a house these days couldn't sell that quickly after a deal falls through.

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They could have made a nice risk-free nothing-down profit if they had said in the email something like 'highest (blind) bid wins' instead of 'first come first served' They have enough credibility as a house for people to trust them on that.

Perhaps they were afraid of being accused of profiteering, etc.

Who knows...

gou said:

Monte confirmed that only three were left this morning. Apparently, it's not that the buyer wants to sell them, but Moniker is not wanting to deal with a group of investors from Sri Lanka. It's amazing how some people made false conclusions before investigating the matter further.

/case

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Monte said that the Sri Lankan investors were having difficulty moving the funds out of their country, which is having long-term difficulties with a rebel group. He has dealt with them in the past but this time they were unable to transfer the funds. So it is no-one's fault (unless you want to blame those responsible for the war).

An auction is supposed to find the highest paying buyer. To duplicate most of those bids (price.mobi excluded, it was a steal) is a sign of strength. Wish I could afford Jewelry.mobi.

The naysayers have a lot invested in .com, and .mobi's success will come at .com's expense. They never will change, only the venom level will rise. That last group seemed at the edge of panic.

MrRhee said:

Just to let you all know:


I wonder what the big deal is... when I called Moniker to buy 2 of the domains on that list (News.mobi & Price.mobi), they were both already sold and was told that only 3 were left as of this moment.

News.mobi Live $110,000.00 RESOLD
elections.mobi Silent $3,000.00 RESOLD
move.mobi Silent $3,000.00 RESOLD
price.mobi Silent $3,993.00 RESOLD
weightloss.mobi Silent $3,000.00 RESOLD
Shopping.mobi Live $55,000.00 AVAIL
ZIPCodes.mobi Live $8,000.00 AVAIL
jewelry.mobi Silent $15,730.00 AVAIL

I was told that News.mobi was the first to go. The FIRST to go at $110K. I wonder if all the .mobi naysayers, haters and doombringers will still say this is bad for .mobi, LOL. Whatever. Truly ridiculous posts on some boards and blogs. I believe it only proves that the extension is highly coveted. Keep in mind, these premium domains MUST be developed, especially the ones released by the MTLD registry itself.

disclaimer: In my portfolio, I own 2000+ .mobi domains and will continue to buy them (for development). And I'm VERY happy with my investment to date. All my .mobi names are free and clear at this point.

ahh... "to each his own."

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Naysayers means good investment; Every good investor should know this...

Once again I share your opinion, MrRhee;

Thanks for the update.

Rep added MrRhee. Thanks for update.

I have promoted you to SirRhee :sold:

i still think it was not only steal price for Price.mobi , but some kind of
a strange deal in general.
I would pay more than 4K for that name and i'm sure alot more poeple would.
What's the price for the Price ? very strange.
Why not put it on Open auction ?

teabag said:

i still think it was not only steal price for Price.mobi , but some kind of
a strange deal in general.
I would pay more than 4K for that name and i'm sure alot more poeple would.
What's the price for the Price ? very strange.
Why not put it on Open auction ?

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What is strange about the deal for a name that was sold in an OPEN auction at SEDO? Maybe the confusion of so many auctions ending at once distracted some of the potential competitive bidders. If you were there at the time you could have bid on it. But I imagine you would have been bidding it up against the original winner. I agree with you that it was quite a deal. Moniker/original-winner likely figured it was best not to double-dip and just let it go for the same price.

Well here is the latest after some investigation.

DomainTools.com said:

So I am left scratching my head and wondering what is going on! I went back through my notes and video of the auction. If I was Ari Goldberg, I would be more then pissed. Ari purchased poker.mobi for $150,000 after a lot of these unpaid for names sold right in front of him. To think there might have been shilling bidding to drive up perception of DotMobi value.

After reviewing the video, I see that ZipCodes.mobi sold to phone bidder #161. The shocking thing is that phone bidder #161 also bought computer.com for $2,200,000. Did Tiger Direct, Inc. ever get paid for that sale, it appears they still own the domain?
When I look at the bidding on Shopping.mobi I see that the winner was bidder #338 Rick Schwartz. Rick bought Flowers.mobi for $200,000 earlier this year and set the high water mark for a DotMobi name. Surely Shopping is better then Flowers, so what “other financial obligations” would allow Rick to back out of the successful winning and binding bid?

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http://blog.domaintools.com/2007/11/mobi-moniker-auction-looks-like-a-deep-rabbit-hole/

thegenius1 said:

Well here is the latest after some investigation.

http://blog.domaintools.com/2007/11/...p-rabbit-hole/

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"The latest"? Usually, that refers to something that's "news."

These, however, are just skeptical assumptions/conclusions based on a highly speculative "investigation."

I'd believe Moniker long before I'd pay any attention to the insinuations in his blog post, personally.

After 9/11 - and considering the Rebellions / Wars going on - Monte's reply was more than Believable to me .... He has worked hard to build up his Reputation in this industry and I seriously doubt he'd risk it for anything.
You have to realize there are several people holding these live auctions now a days - Don't be surprised to see "Competitors" saying things to discredit the others. It's sad they wont merge all of them together somehow to better suit all of us really.

And yes, I still own No .mobi's - So take this as an impartial opinion if you will

Is this what we are being asked to believe: that someone tricked Ari Goldberger about the value of an extension that has been the talk of the market for over a year?

If this theory came from a clueless journalist, I would laugh my head off.

But since it comes from someone who must know very well who Ari Goldberger is, my reaction can be described as deep astonishment - among other things.

Whether or not you care to read this article from USA Today about Ari and his business partners, do feel free to share your own estimate of the plausibility of this theory:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/industry/2007-07-21-domain-name-dealing_N.htm

These are just a couple of excerpts to give you an idea of how easy this guy must be to trick into buying a domain:
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"...
Goldberger's entry into the business was unorthodox to say the least. In 1996, the Hearst Corp. sued him, alleging trademark infringement after Goldberger registered esqwire.com, which resembles one of the company's magazines.

The two sides eventually settled and Goldberger, a lawyer, was allowed to keep the name. Word got out that Goldberger knew something about the thorny legal issues involving Internet domain names and people began approaching him for advice.

Goldberger's fascination with the burgeoning industry was sealed.

"I was an entrepreneur strapped into this suit-and-tie job," Goldberger said. "Kind of a square peg in a round whole and this lawsuit just kind of changed everything for me."

He eventually left the respected Philadelphia law firm where he worked in 1997 and joined a small start-up in Manhattan called mail.com, which was buying up domain names.

Goldberger began collaborating with Fischer in 2001, building their portfolio of domain names. Together, they became a formidable yet quirky team (imagine George Costanza and Jerry Seinfeld with the pioneering spirit of Lewis and Clark).

Two years later, they created a company called smartname.com, which they sold earlier this year...
....
They don't bother with dot-nets or the others.

"Dot-com is king," Goldberger said. "Dot-net is worthless."
..."
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If you are left wondering whether this is the same Ari that Jay is talking about, that would be understandable - and not just because Jay appears to have misspelled Ari's surname in his post: IMHO it's Goldberger, not Goldberg.

So is Jay talking about the same Ari - yes he is: have a look at comment number one on Jay's blog and Jay's response - he appears to be inferring that Ari bought the name on behalf of his business partner Eli (who is also mentioned in the USA Today article above).
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"DomainNameNews_com Says:
November 10th, 2007 at 6:17 pm

Why should Ari be pissed? My understanding after interviewing Ari and Larry is they were bidding on behalf of someone else. You need to be careful about reporting that someone bought something. For example, I bid on behalf of several people at the auction on several occasions.

UPDATE BY JAY: Ari had to be influenced by everything he was seeing. Certainly the guy he was buying for might have been influenced as well. I think both Ari and Eli should be upset. It is a fact that Ari had the winning paddle. Why would I need to be careful about reporting that. Who Ari bid for really doesn’t matter."
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Hmmmmm.....

This is quite sad.

If steps are not taken quickly to clarify things, domaining as a whole stands to lose.

Either Jay is going to lose a good deal of credibility (which would be bad, because at least IMHO his auction platform can revolutionize the sales side of the business and make the owners of quality domains much better off) or something is rotten at Moniker, which has been so instrumental in shaping the entire domain industry for so many years. I can't believe the latter, and I don't want to see the former. So I'm really hoping it's an unfortunate misunderstanding that will be corrected very soon.

Whatever the outcome, this story cannot possibly stop .mobi - but it may actually help make it even stronger.

.mobi is not on Jay's list of implied suspects. I'm not sure exactly why the headline of Jay's post starts with the word mobi instead of Moniker. This wasn't even a mobi auction - those are held at sedo.com, comprising 300 prime domains (many of which are at least as valuable as - and some clearly more valuable than - poker.mobi):

http://www.namepros.com/dot-mobi/393711-sedo-3-100-more-mtld-premiums.html

Anyway - in the spirit of the smirnoff.mobi celebration going on in the other thread - let's hope this is all just a storm in a teacup - for the sake of those actually involved in it.

soooo..... ... computer.com didn't sell???



nice post mobi cheap .

the genius 1 why are obviously trying to disparage .mobi?

Rick has already denied Jay's claims on his board and on his blog. In fact, I'm the one that gave him the terrible news on his board this morning and I feel bad for ruining his day. Before he knew about Jay's comments, Rick made a great blog post about .mobi, not PRO, not ANTI, but his own interesting POV, plus he also answers Jay's accusations in the comments section after someone asks him about Shopping.mobi

check it out:
http://www.ricksblog.com/my_weblog/2007/11/mobi-sunday-foo.html

MrRhee said:

Rick has already denied Jay's claims on his board and on his blog. In fact, I'm the one that gave him the terrible news on his board this morning and I feel bad for ruining his day. Before he knew about Jay's comments, Rick made a great blog post about .mobi, not PRO, not ANTI, but his own interesting POV, plus he also answers Jay's accusations in the comments section after someone asks him about Shopping.mobi

check it out:
http://www.ricksblog.com/my_weblog/2007/11/mobi-sunday-foo.html

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hmm ... thanks for the link, a very interesting read - i guess you can't have a straighter answer than from the horses mouth. so why did jay lie?

namewaiter said:

hmm ... thanks for the link, a very interesting read - i guess you can't have a straighter answer than from the horses mouth. so why did jay lie?

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I'm not sure if Jay considers it lying. Perhaps Jay will blame mis-information or poor research on his part or... whatever.

But Why make a post like that?


Hmmm... here's something to keep in mind: Jay is a direct competitor of Rick, Moniker, Traffic... it doesn't sit well with me when someone makes false accusations about their competition. Just because you have the ability to blog, doesn't mean you should. Time will tell if there's any fallout from this.

.

namewaiter said:

the genius 1 why are obviously trying to disparage .mobi?

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I hope none of its true , as its not a Dot Mobi thing , its a industry thing.

I was just posting a link to the blog , i have not gave my opinion.

thegenius1 said:

I hope none of its true , as its not a Dot Mobi thing , its a industry thing.

I was just posting a link to the blog , i have not gave my opinion.

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i only ask because you posted it in multiple threads, and it's been an underlying negative tone in the majority of your posts here in the sub forum.

i mean really, shouldn't the focus be of a 2.2 million dollar potential .com sale falling through? 2.2 million.

Jay Has retracted his statements.

http://blog.domaintools.com/2007/11/retraction-on-mobi-madness/

should think so too. twat

Y'know, its all too easy to slice 'n dice and trash someone's reputation with a few words...Doesn't make what is said true...or, the writer right.


...I mean, look at Jay Westerdahl's comments...

...He falsely states, as a fact, that Rick Schwartz was the winning bidder for shopping.mobi...with no proof, or evidence.

...He slyly implies that Ari Goldberger was naively suckered on price for a domain (Ari Goldberger - suckered? Give me a break!!)....And, was bidding for someone else...Again, with no proof, or evidence....and, so what?

...and it all seems to try to imply something murky about Monte's Traffic...


...And Sahar Sahid, alluding to some unstated, mysterious, 'story' that Rick Schwartz may - or may not - tell us about....implying, imo, some skullduggery...but no proof, or evidence...


This is crap commentary & reporting, imo....Looks like cheap stuff to me - subjective stuff, dressed up as factual 'news'...


And - until, or unless - these guys can put proof on the table - it says a lot more about the character of Jay Westerdahl and Sahar Sahid than it does about the people they are writing about.

.

gou said:

Apparently, it's not that the buyer wants to sell them, but Moniker is not wanting to deal with a group of investors from Sri Lanka. It's amazing how some people made false conclusions before investigating the matter further.

/case

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You really think it took 4 weeks for Moniker to decide they wouldn't take payment from someone in Sri Lanka? The buyer obviously isn't able to make payment, for whatever reason.