NamePros Blog

Bob Hawkes · Mar 9, 2026

Artificial intelligence offers breathtaking opportunities. AI also poses frightening risks. Lately, thinking about that keeps me awake at night. I imagine I am not the only one. Many of the most active and hotly debated discussions here on NamePros are about artificial intelligence.

This...

Bob Hawkes · Apr 26, 2025

Most of the time, domain name automated appraisal systems don’t receive much positive commentary from investors. When a newly released AI powered appraisal service was praised by a number of respected voices in the domain community, I decided to take a deeper look.

I gave the instrument a try...

Bob Hawkes · Feb 12, 2025

The pinnacle of American football is now over for another year. While some watch for the game, many are tuned in for the ads. At an estimated $8 million per ad this year, it is a big investment, but also reaches a huge audience.

Domain investors are not just checking out the ads, but also watch...

Bob Hawkes · Feb 29, 2024

One key to domain investing success is to be well informed with up-to-date information. NameBio just made that easier, with introduction of NameBio Trends Reports.

In this article, I take a look at the different components of the NameBio Trends Reports, as well as...

Bob Hawkes · Dec 21, 2023

2023 was a particularly active year in the domain world. I wanted to overview many of the changes, to make sure you can take advantage of any important to you.

In this article I am not covering things like trends in popular extensions, such as .ai, or niches and sectors. Early in 2024 I will...

Bob Hawkes · Dec 6, 2023

Successful domain investing is acquiring domain names that users will want, pricing them effectively, and getting the names noticed by those in a position to buy them.

That last step just got easier for .io and .xyz domain names with the announcement today that Afternic Fast...

Bob Hawkes · Nov 16, 2023

Several domain name niches have received a lot of attention lately, all related to some aspect of artificial intelligence or automation. Each week dotDB publish a list of trending terms based on new registrations. In the most recent report, grok and gpts were at the top of the...

Bob Hawkes · Nov 9, 2023

A year ago OpenAI publicly released ChatGPT. Within weeks nearly everyone was trying it out and talking about it. Now worldwide there are over 100 million active users.

AI is having a significant impact on the domain world. This year .ai one of the hottest extensions. Names geared to artificial...

Bob Hawkes · Aug 31, 2023

Next month in San Francisco TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 is happening. This event brings together tech leaders and enthusiasts, startup founders, and early stage investors.

It struck me that the conference agenda and speaker list could provide valuable insights for domain investors. So what...

Bob Hawkes · Jun 15, 2023

It was widely anticipated that Apple would introduce at the annual 2023 Worldwide Developers Conference goggles to support virtual reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR), and Extended Reality (XR).

What was not expected to many, was that the...

Bob Hawkes · Apr 26, 2023

Domain names listed on a marketplace by someone other than the owner are a problem. Often these are the result of the previous owner overlooking taking down the listing after the name expired or was sold at another venue. In some cases, the names may be deliberately listed in error for nefarious...

Bob Hawkes · Jan 18, 2023

The last week has seen heated debate following the announcement by GoDaddy/Dan that commissions would be aligned across the Afternic, Dan, GoDaddy and Afternic platforms, resulting in savings for many, not all, sales at Afternic, but higher commissions at Dan.

The main NamePros discussion on...

Bob Hawkes · May 26, 2022

Do we need another automated domain name appraisal instrument? While automated domain name appraisals have their critics, and are certainly not precise instruments, some find them useful in certain circumstances.

While some instruments like Estibot, have been around for a very long time...

Bob Hawkes · Mar 28, 2022

A NamePros member has purchased the Alter domain name marketplace. Alter will continue operations as a brandable marketplace under the new ownership.

I reached out to the new owner, Filip Erkic, who goes by the NamePros handle @F.E., to learn details of the sale, and his plans for...

Bob Hawkes · Jan 20, 2022

Are we approaching a time when domain names will be considered an asset class, like bonds, stocks, real estate, currencies and commodities?

Will investors be able to hold domain name investments without the need to be directly involved in buying and selling of individual domain names...

Bob Hawkes · Aug 5, 2021

The metaverse does not yet exist, but everyone is talking about it. Domain investors have had their eye on the metaverse for some time, particularly since the domain name metaverse.io was sold by Andrew Rosener’s MediaOptions for $175,000 in March, 2021 at ParkIO.

Metaverse...

Bob Hawkes · Mar 30, 2021

It is hard to read anything these days without some mention of NFTs, non-fungible tokens. Earlier this month, Christie’s auction house sold a Beeple NFT collage “The First 5000 Days” for $69 million. Mike Winkelmann, Beeple, who operates on the interesting domain name...

Bob Hawkes · Oct 14, 2020

This week the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson, both from Stanford University, for their work in better understanding and optimizing auctions. The Nobel Prize press release says

This year’s Laureates, Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson, have studied how...

James Iles · Dec 10, 2018

Recently, Jamie Zoch (@Yofie) questioned whether search engine DuckDuckGo had acquired the Duck.com domain name from Google.

Search giant Google acquired the Duck.com domain name in 2010 with the acquisition of On2, a video codec company.

Today, DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg...

James Iles · Oct 11, 2018

The majority of sales of two-letter .COM's that we have covered on the NamePros Blog have been acquired by Chinese investors or companies. China has been one of the big trends in domaining, but one of the most recent is cryptocurrency.

This year has seen many high value sales including the...

James Iles · Aug 21, 2017

Blockchain development and news and information service company Monkey has confirmed the acquisition of the domain name Monkey.com for a fee of $500,000. The Singapore-based company is lead by entrepreneur Daniel Mark Harrison, who initially launched the company using the domain name...

James Iles · Mar 25, 2017

Following yesterday's discovery of Aron Meystedt's sale of Tablets.com, we have uncovered another sale that occurred a couple of months ago.

The domain name in question is Chili.com, which was sold by an individual from Hong Kong. According to DomainIQ, the transaction took place...

James Iles · Jan 28, 2016

Up until recently, a company called Drawbridge had been using the domain hack drawbrid.ge to host their main website. This week, it has been confirmed that they have acquired the domain name Drawbridge.com in a private transaction.

The company, which allows brands to have "seamless...

Kassey Lee · Dec 30, 2015

Rumors are flying and Chinese news sites are reporting the sale of Nubia.com to mobile phone maker Nubia for US$2m. Some sources have speculated that GoDaddy was the seller.

According to the news release from mobile news site Qudong, Nubia.com (reported as "nubia.con" due to a...

James Iles · Dec 22, 2015

Two-number .COM domain names are some of the rarest names in existence. There are only 100 possible two-number .COM's, and even rarer are those with repeating digits: 00, 11, 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, 77, 88, 99.

Today I can reveal that 77.com has been sold. A source familiar with the sale told...

James Iles · Jul 14, 2015

The valuable two-letter .com domain name EG.com has been sold.

The news broke when George Kirikos wrote a tweet stating that EG.com has been unlocked, which would then permit for a domain transfer to take place.

Minutes later, Andrew Rosener (@mediaoptions on Twitter) confirmed that...

James Iles · Jul 3, 2015

I have more information regarding the recent sale of We.com that you may all find interesting. As I reported last week, We.com recently changed hands, and at the time I speculated that the buyer was probably Chinese. I can now confirm that the buyer is Chinese, and Sedo did broker the deal...

James Iles · Jul 1, 2015

Khloe Kardashian has filed a UDRP for KhloeKardashian.com, according to UDRPSearch. The case - which was opened yesterday has been filed by Khlomoney, Inc of Woodland Hills, CA. Khlomoney is Khloe's own brand which owns 78 trademarks for terms relating to The Kardashians.

The domain name...

James Iles · Jun 18, 2015

I've followed Yoyo.Email with some interest ever since I learned that Giovanni LaPorta (CEO of Yoyo.Email) registered around 4,000 company .email domain names to create a "certified email service."

It seems, however, that Yoyo.Email's plans aren't supported by many companies - with over 50...

N-A · Apr 5, 2015

Daniel Negari introduced the new gTLD of .XYZ which has a little over 860,000 registrations to date. After which, he brought .rent and the little known .college to the public.

Donuts came in to compete in the same market with their new gTLD of .school.

The “.school”...

equity78 · Feb 1, 2015

The Marijuana discussion/showcase thread on Namepros is one of the most read and liveliest conversations on the forum. There was a bit of news out a couple days ago that should have those invested in the niche enthusiastic. I want to put right up front, I own 0 marijuana/hemp related names...

Eric Lyon · Jan 19, 2015

The Telegraph published a piece on the race between Internet giants to provide satellite Internet to the world, especially to developing countries that are currently without it.

Elon Musk, the billionaire technology entrepreneur, has announced plans for a space Internet project that would...

Edward · Dec 3, 2014

“You wouldn’t buy a bag of chips or a toothbrush made by Tide, would you?” Matt Mickiewicz said after I inquired why all of his companies have separate brand identities and are separate entities unlike Google or Apple. He further explained that each company was a strategic move in...

N-A · Dec 2, 2014

Theo of DomainGang (@Acroplex on NamePros) reported that the controversial website Ebola.com went live. This is after the exchange of nearly $200,000 in the form of cash and stock options in the medical marijuana company that acquired it from the prior owner Jon...

B&J · Sep 5, 2009

To celebrate one year of official live launch of the popular .me domains, Brands-and-Jingles has issued a white paper on how “me”-branded names are used in marketing. In its effort the advertising agency wants to congratulate .me registry team, registrars, the developers and Internet users with...

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