news Airbnb just acquired a new Chinese pinyin domain name

DN.com · Aug 2, 2016

Last night, when I checked out www.aibiying.com, there was Airbnb's home page saying "Welcome Home" in Chinese. I have a screen shot of it:

Right now, this page doesn't resolve any more, guess they are not ready to launch it yet.

Airbnb recently acquired this domain name, as the whois of aibiying.com shows An Bi Ying Wang Luo Bei Jing You Xian Gong Si to be the owner and contact is [email protected], which is the law firm that offers service to Airbnb in Asia. Whois info was updated on 28th Jul..

Even if I'm a Chinese, I don't understand why Airbnb chose this domain name. Booking.com also acquired their Chinese pinyin domain, binke.com. This is indeed a very good name, ofc it costed them a big price, but it's worth it.

Any thoughts why Airbnb chose aibiying.com?

Kassey Lee · Aug 2, 2016

Could it be 爱必应 (always respond with love -- when welcoming your guests)?

DN.com · Aug 2, 2016

Kassey Lee said:
Could it be 爱必应 (always respond with love -- when welcoming your guests)?

Now this is the best answer I have ever got! Good one Kassey!

D Haynes · Aug 2, 2016

When Kassey gives advice about chinese things it feels like im taking my car to the garage. They could say absolutley anything to me and Id just have to accept it cos I know jack all about it haha. Not saying that anything Kassey says is untrue ofcourse.

Garage guy - "Sorry mate the errr carbon matrix capacitor has gone".

Me - "Oh noooo! Ah well how much is it going to be?".

London555 · Aug 2, 2016

Cynthia-won't it be read by a Chinese speaker as "love Bing" ( as in the search engine Bing)? It's an interesting choice. This company has the money to buy any name they want but they picked this 3 pin name. I think the real story here isn't so much just this name but that when buying pinyin names be a bit creative but short as possible and you might just end up selling to a great end user.

DN.com · Aug 3, 2016

London555 said:
Cynthia-won't it be read by a Chinese speaker as "love Bing" ( as in the search engine Bing)? It's an interesting choice. This company has the money to buy any name they want but they picked this 3 pin name. I think the real story here isn't so much just this name but that when buying pinyin names be a bit creative but short as possible and you might just end up selling to a great end user.

Well, I think Kassey got the right meaning of it. Just like UniflexDomains said, biying's meaning is just like the search engine bing, it has a certain meaning in Chinese, which is to always respond. It makes sense. And true that it's short, only 8 digits.

DN.com · Aug 3, 2016

Eric just told me how to upload an image here, so here you go

London555 · Aug 3, 2016

imho the more important issue here is-as i mentioned-they bought a 3pin name. This is very good information for domain investors going forward. Kassey had recently mentioned that he was surprised that a 3pin name got 750K searches and the name with the same meaning -a 4 pin- got 16million searches. This tells me that a novice such as myself in Chinese names can still find names that could be potentially valuable in 5 or 10 years.

baseballworld · Aug 3, 2016

Could be good for future investors.

namerav · Aug 3, 2016

Pinyin domain names are becoming popular.

baseballworld · Aug 3, 2016

namerav said:
Pinyin domain names are becoming popular.

Might be something to invest some cash into.

namerav · Aug 3, 2016

baseballworld said:
Might be something to invest some cash into.

Good luck!

wot · Aug 3, 2016

Maybe they registered it because it was cheap, or that they got duff info on what a good pinyin version should be?

They have not registered the Chinese character version爱必应.com/cn ,assuming that is correct so not protecting the brand very well.

Would not something like Qingbian have been better, but they would have had to have bought that?

Just my thoughts.

DN.com · Aug 3, 2016

wot said:
Maybe they registered it because it was cheap, or that they got duff info on what a good pinyin version should be?

They have not registered the Chinese character version爱必应.com/cn ,assuming that is correct so not protecting the brand very well.

Would not something like Qingbian have been better, but they would have had to have bought that?

Just my thoughts.

Aibiying.com was purchased

wot · Aug 3, 2016

Cynthia said:
Aibiying.com was purchased

They purchased a name that was registered on 21st March 2016? Someone must have seen them coming?

wot · Aug 3, 2016

Bit long at 4 tier pinyin but Binzhirugui may be a perfect fit for what they say they offer,the .cn is available.

Again, just my thoughts.

London555 · Aug 3, 2016

Air BB is a company valued at approx $40billion pre IPO I think they know exactly what they're doing and exactly what kind of name they wanted.

wot · Aug 3, 2016

Much like Kassey's original question the Chinese that I have shown this to are asking the same question, why buy that name?

It meant very little to them,apart from the aforementioned Chinese characters,"always respond with love" and seems to bear no relation to the companies current business.

Maybe we will see something that makes more sense as to why they chose it when they finally launch.

DN.com · Aug 4, 2016

wot said:
They purchased a name that was registered on 21st March 2016? Someone must have seen them coming?

Maybe, but the price was quite ok, could be an coincidence.

wot · Aug 4, 2016

Cynthia said:
Maybe, but the price was quite ok, could be an coincidence.

How much more than reg fee was the price?
Being an old cynic I detect a whiff of insider trading methinks!

DN.com · Aug 4, 2016

wot said:
How much more than reg fee was the price?
Being an old cynic I detect a whiff of insider trading methinks!

That I never thought about, who knows? Price is confidential.

Kassey Lee · Mar 22, 2017

Kassey Lee said:
Could it be 爱必应 (always respond with love -- when welcoming your guests)?

Now we know the answer and that my guess was wrong. According to an article published today on Techrunch, Aibiying means 爱彼迎 (official translation: welcome each other with love) Details here: https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/21/airbnb-china/

Now that I look at the name again, I feel Aibiying was created to rhyme with Airbnb and to be more easily remembered than "Air" + "b" + "n" + "b"

Aibiying.com redirects to Airbnbchina.cn

Rinkuji · Mar 22, 2017

@Kassey Lee Can you pls PM Me. There is no PM option in your profile. I want to translate two sentences in Chinese.

Kassey Lee · Mar 22, 2017

Rinkuji said:
@Kassey Lee Can you pls PM Me. There is no PM option in your profile. I want to translate two sentences in Chinese.

Please write your question here so that all Namepros members can help.

news Airbnb just acquired a new Chinese pinyin domain name

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