- Impact
- 4
I Picked up:
http://JapaneseDomains.wiki.com
Pennsylvania.wiki.com
AtlanticCity.wiki.com
By Joanna Glasner| Also by this reporter
15:00 PM Aug, 14, 2006
Domain name speculator John Gotts set off a wave of online speculation three weeks ago when he agreed to buy the Wiki.com website for $2.8 million.
Now the guessing is ended, to no great surprise, with the unveiling of a website for creating -- wait for it -- wikis.
Launched over the weekend, Wiki.com joins the already populous field of do-it-yourself wiki sites, which allow anyone to add and edit content on a specified topic.
In its first day live, visitors have been snapping up subdomains with topical words, like soccer.wiki.com, or common first names.
Currently, anyone can register a subdomain on Wiki.com. Registrants must give permission to allow others to add or edit content on their sites. Gotts envisions making money through keyword advertising at first. He's also considering letting registrants co-own their subdomains, enabling them to develop popular wiki sites and then sell them.
But that's a ways off. For now, Gotts is giving Wiki.com six months to prove viable. Rather than buy the site outright, he's agreed to pay the owner, business naming firm Dynamo, $10,000 a month for six months to use the domain. The deal gives Gotts an option to buy it for the full $2.8 million at the end.
"When you get into the millions of dollars, it makes absolute sense to test it out before you buy it," Gotts said. "Otherwise, you're doing nothing but gambling."
Whether the internet needs another wiki-making site is a matter of debate. Free and subscription sites, including Jotspot, Wikia, Socialtext and PBwiki.com, already proliferate online.
Gotts is betting that the obviousness of the Wiki.com domain, which generated about 100,000 hits a day as a blank site, will set it apart.
"I consider it a bad domain name if you have to teach people what it means," said Gotts, a Washington entrepreneur who became interested in domains through his previous business, Adware.com, now a site for anti-spyware downloads. Other domains he owns include Searching.com and iSocial.com.
Wiki.com is the startup equivalent of instant cuisine. According to Gotts, a team of engineers put together most of the site's backend in a caffeine-fueled span of 48 hours. The site runs using technology from MindTouch, a Washington wiki-software and hardware startup founded by former Microsoft employees.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/internet/0,71591-0.html?tw=wn_technology_1
http://JapaneseDomains.wiki.com
Pennsylvania.wiki.com
AtlanticCity.wiki.com
By Joanna Glasner| Also by this reporter
15:00 PM Aug, 14, 2006
Domain name speculator John Gotts set off a wave of online speculation three weeks ago when he agreed to buy the Wiki.com website for $2.8 million.
Now the guessing is ended, to no great surprise, with the unveiling of a website for creating -- wait for it -- wikis.
Launched over the weekend, Wiki.com joins the already populous field of do-it-yourself wiki sites, which allow anyone to add and edit content on a specified topic.
In its first day live, visitors have been snapping up subdomains with topical words, like soccer.wiki.com, or common first names.
Currently, anyone can register a subdomain on Wiki.com. Registrants must give permission to allow others to add or edit content on their sites. Gotts envisions making money through keyword advertising at first. He's also considering letting registrants co-own their subdomains, enabling them to develop popular wiki sites and then sell them.
But that's a ways off. For now, Gotts is giving Wiki.com six months to prove viable. Rather than buy the site outright, he's agreed to pay the owner, business naming firm Dynamo, $10,000 a month for six months to use the domain. The deal gives Gotts an option to buy it for the full $2.8 million at the end.
"When you get into the millions of dollars, it makes absolute sense to test it out before you buy it," Gotts said. "Otherwise, you're doing nothing but gambling."
Whether the internet needs another wiki-making site is a matter of debate. Free and subscription sites, including Jotspot, Wikia, Socialtext and PBwiki.com, already proliferate online.
Gotts is betting that the obviousness of the Wiki.com domain, which generated about 100,000 hits a day as a blank site, will set it apart.
"I consider it a bad domain name if you have to teach people what it means," said Gotts, a Washington entrepreneur who became interested in domains through his previous business, Adware.com, now a site for anti-spyware downloads. Other domains he owns include Searching.com and iSocial.com.
Wiki.com is the startup equivalent of instant cuisine. According to Gotts, a team of engineers put together most of the site's backend in a caffeine-fueled span of 48 hours. The site runs using technology from MindTouch, a Washington wiki-software and hardware startup founded by former Microsoft employees.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/internet/0,71591-0.html?tw=wn_technology_1
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