Digital.com goes up for sale.

Technology giant HP is offering the domain name Digital.com for sale, but it’s going to cost you.

The domain name has been listed in Moniker‘s upcoming live domain name auction taking place in Prague October 6. Reserve price: somewhere between $1 million and $5 million.

HP got the domain name when it acquired Compaq.

Moniker will auction off 80 other domain names during its DOMAINfest conference live domain name auction.

Among the domains are “me too” domains. I call them “me too” because they obviously hope to capitalize on recent big dollar sales.

But in this case the me too domains are good ones. It’s not like they’re trying to sell MyGunsOnline.com because Guns.com sold for $800,000 earlier this year. Instead, it’s Gun.com. Also on the block is SlotMachine.com, trying to capitalize on the $5.5 million sale of Slots.com.

Gun.com has a $750k-$1M reserve, and SlotMachine.com is above $1M. These seem lofty, but you never know.

IdeaLab is also getting in on the action, offering Tools.com for somewhere over $1M.

Here are some of the domains in the auction that I like within the stated reserve range:

ETFs.com $50k-$100k
LiveStock.com $10k-$25k
Megan.com $25k-$50k
PackandShip.com $2.5k-$5k
Retailer.com $25k-$50k – would be good for a magazine or retailers’ consortium
ShortSale.com $50k-$100k – I’d love to see a site with all of the listed house short sales in the area
Shout.com $250k-$500k – I like this at the lower end of the range

© DomainNameWire.com 2010.

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2. Meetup.com Founder Puts Cloud.com on the Block
3. Stars May Align for Moniker Domain Name Auction at 3PM Today

My thoughts on last week’s conference in Seattle.

I’ve re-written this blog post a couple times as I try to get my head around the Epik Developers Conference last week in Seattle. I’m reflecting on what it means for Epik as well as for the domain community. This is no easy task.

So I’m going to punt and go with a stream-of-conscious. Let’s get the easy stuff out of the way first.

Professionalism – this is something often lacking in the domain name community. But it defined the Epik conference. First class hotel, food, and meeting space. More shocking was that everything started on time. It was like clockwork, never off by more than 10 minutes. That’s rare at a domain conference.

Content -Epik DevCon was a user conference. This means it focuses on giving clients information they need to have a mutually beneficial relationship with the company. About 60% of the content at DevCon was specific to Epik, including how its products are working, how people are getting the most out of Epik, and what’s coming in the future. The other 40% was more general, including SEO and social media.

People – as the first ever user conference for a startup, I guessed about 50-60 people would show up. I was wrong. 88 people registered, and a handful more came to the open events. That’s very strong. But more importantly was the quality of people. They were all open-minded. So energetic about the future. No egos in the room. OK, so I was there. And there was Chris Pirillo (I’m joking, Chris).

I made more new contacts and had more sit down conversations at this event than in most domain conferences. Attendees are still buzzing on the social networking site for the event. It was also great to see GoDaddy sponsoring the event, and I got to meet my GoDaddy account rep. I attend conferences for the people, and I was happy with the results.

Now let’s think about what this event means for the industry.

Epik has some of the right elements of a successful company — a respected leader, funding, strong customer base. Where that leads is hard to tell. I saw some really innovative ideas for web sites at the conference that can be leveraged into full-fledged web properties. And the energy of attendees was much higher than I’m used to seeing at a domain conference.

Some people will call what Epik does “mass development”. In the history of the web there has never been a mass development effort that hasn’t flailed out after a few years. Google killed them all. But I don’t look at Epik as a mass web site developer. Instead, I look at it as a platform. A platform that gives users the ability to create meaningful, user-friendly web sites that add value. Epik can deliver part of the puzzle, but clients need to run with it. Hopefully both pieces of the puzzle will click.

I can say that the attendees at last week’s conference are some of the most open-minded and energetic in the industry. They aren’t looking at the past; they’re looking at the future.

It gives me a lot of hope.

© DomainNameWire.com 2010.

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Related posts:

1. Are you Going to Epik Developers Conference?
2. Epik Domain Developer Conference Taking Shape for September
3. Epik Conference Kicks off in Seattle

Company offloads key web site and domain name.

Live Current Media has concluded the sale of Importers.com for $165,000, Domain Name Wire has learned.

In the company’s most recent 10-Q filed with the Securities Exchange Commission, the company alluded to a domain sale that included 3 payments:

On April 6, 2010, the Company entered into an agreement to lease one of its domain names to an unrelated third party for $165,000 less $15,000 in commission. The terms of the agreement provided for the receipt of the net amount of $150,000 to be paid in equal instalments due April 15, 2010, May 15, 2010 and June 15, 2010. The Company leased the domain name to the purchaser exclusively during the term of the agreement. Title and rights to the domain name were transferred to the purchaser when full payment was received at the end of the lease term. All instalments were received and the Company transferred the domain name during the quarter ended June 30, 2010.

I speculated last year that the company was in the process of selling the domain name. But it looks like the sale didn’t happen until this year. In April the whois record for Importers.com changed to Sedo. Then by early July, after the last of the scheduled payments was due, the domain transferred to a new owner in Wisconsin.

© DomainNameWire.com 2010.

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Related posts:

1. Live Current Sells Cricket.com
2. Farsi.com Domain Name Sells for $75,000
3. Live Current Selling Importers.com?