We attended the TRAFFIC East Conference in Miami this week and offered nine names from our Premium List during the live auction. The TRAFFIC conference is one of the world’s premier gatherings of domain name professionals. Many of these "domainers" are entrepreneurial; some are major corporations. Both are looking to develop content and leverage the power of domain names to generate revenue and to direct commerce between buyers and sellers of popular products and services over the Internet
This was the first time that I am aware of that a top-level domain registry has tested an initial offering of names direct to the public in a live auction setting. The names we auctioned were celebs, wow, gossip, stockquotes, flowers, hot, party, laugh and fun.
Some names did OK, but two did very well: fun.mobi earned $100,000 and flowers.mobi went for $200,000. That means dotMobi will have two entries in the top 20 domain sales for 2006.
The results indicate that the market believes in the mobile Internet and is bullish on our approach to improving the mobile browsing experience and eventual traffic that flows from such an improved experience. We look forward to working with the organizations and individuals that successfully bid for this first batch of premium names to generate relevant content to mobile Internet users.
