A trillion-dollar stock market crash occurs, and planes are grounded. Sounds familiar? This may somewhat mirror current happenings around the world, but this is what happened in May 2010. A trillion-dollar stock market crash occurred over 36 minutes and things were slowly returning to normal after flights were grounded in much of the world after Eyjafjallajökull erupted in Iceland.
In the domain world, Verisign hosted the “25 Years of .COM” gala where Aron Meystedt was recognized as the owner of Symbolics.com, the first .COM ever registered.
I think it’s often interesting to look back at the past to see just how much as changed, and how much has stayed the same. From a domain perspective, it’s also fascinating to see what has happened to domains since they were sold. So, here are some notable sales from ten years ago in May 2010, and what has happened to those domains since. These sales come courtesy of DNJournal’s archive, and domain history data is courtesy of DomainIQ.
Gifted.com – $94,000
Gifted.com was acquired by The Hut Group, a British e-commerce company that was valued at £2.5 billion in 2017, making it one of the UK’s only unicorn companies. The domain was acquired to become home to The Hut Group’s venture into the online gifting market.
However, by 2013, the domain started to redirect to IWOOT, another or The Hut Group’s online stores. It has been this way ever since.
955.com – $30,200
How many of you have read the sales price of 955.com and wished you could travel back in time? Good, it’s not just me then! That’s right, in May 2010, $30,200 is what it took to acquire the 955.com domain. Purchased at Sedo, the name looks to have been acquired by someone in China. Since then, the domain doesn’t look to have been used for much, so it was likely acquired as an investment.
And what an investment it was! By 2015, three-number .COM domains were regularly trading for six and seven-figure fees. Also sold in May 2010 was 778.com for a meager $23,000.
Photo.com – $1.25 million
This seven-figure deal became the fourth largest sale of 2010, but why did Photo.com sell for such a high price? Sold at domain registrar Moniker with the help of marketplace SnapNames, Photo.com swiftly became an online business offering photo prints.
The venture doesn’t seem to have lasted long since the name started showing a parked page by 2014. Also in 2014, the domain was hit with a UDRP, which was denied. Today, the domain still hosts a parked page.
MathsGames.com – $54,729
Sedo closed the sale of MathsGames.com for $54,729 in May 2010. The name was acquired by Blue Duck Education Ltd of London and by 2011 it was developed into a website for math games. MathsGames.com looks very similar now to when it was launched as the company looks to have all but abandoned the site and put all their resources into MangaHigh.com – a site that predominantly offers, yes, you’ve guessed it… maths games.
The similar name MathGames.com sold in 2013, three years after MathsGames.com, for a far higher price of $725,000.
XAD.com – $10,000
Do you remember when ultra-premium three-letter domains such as XAD.com could be acquired for as little as $10,000 by an end-user? This domain was sold at Sedo by XAd Communications, and acquired by xAd, a provider of location solutions for advertisers shortly after they were founded.
Fast forward to 2017, and xAd has rebranded to GroundTruth, and operate on the GroundTruth.com domain name. Today, XAD.com is redirecting visitors to an internal page at GroundTruth.com explaining the rebrand.
Since the rebranding happened three years ago and XAD.com is all but redundant now, would XAD.com be sold for the right price?