BrandBucket to sell emoji domains?

[Chris Hydrick]

Hold up. Wait a minute. Not confirmed just yet. But weirder things have happened...

tagging @margotb

 

[Keith DeBoer]

I'm at NamesCon with Margot and Zeena and Christine who are pictured in the photo. There is no plan to begin accepting emoji domains. This photo and tweet is just part of the NamesCon fun.

At present BB has 99% dot com and a some dot LY and a few dot IO and dot ME. Emojis are not on the radar

 

[Chris Hydrick]

At present BB has 99% dot com and a some dot LY and a few dot IO and dot ME

Why?

Do customers come to BB looking to buy a .IO domain? I understand .IO has been trending amongst tech start-ups, but brandbuckets unrefined internal search isn't necessarily TLD friendly.

Mock Scenario:

Tech start-up has needs a one word domain. One word .COM is out of budget, and they don't want a made up brandable. Though, they have heard good things about BB, so they visit their site to search for brandable .IO domains...search= .io

Not a single .IO domain is returned in .IO search...

What the deuce?

Before giving up, they decide to 'refine' the search. Praise Jesus, there is a .IO filter!

...and BOOM = 100+ keyword.IO domains for sale!

I get that this is probably a bug. But sometimes it feels that BB search hasn't been QA'd from a buyers perspective. Not trying to grill, but really, if somebody searches .IO, and receive 0 .IO results, can you count on a prospective buyer clicking the small print refine search before giving up?

Granted, the .IO filter will gain some eyes when filtering internal search, as buyers might not have been aware that BB offered .IO domains until they refined their search. Especially considering the broken ".IO" search.

Emojis are not on the radar

Why not?

Not saying it's a good idea, nor am I saying it's bad idea, simply wondering why. I get that there are IDN concerns. Have you ever received an email from an IDN domain? Gmail flags it. So outbound email may not be recommended. However, email forwarding for inbound, should have little to no concern.

Emoji domains might not be the best for a business to build a business on, but they really are some cool digital marketing assets. Great visual for campaigns, and redirects. Choosing which emoji ccTLD's could raise individual challenges in itself.

 

[Keith DeBoer]

Thanks for the feedback on the dot IO search, I'll pass it along