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Ive been reading over Andrew Allemann’s postings (DomainNameWire.com) about the Thought Convergence lawsuit against Jay Westerdal. Frankly it amuses me to see some of the claims that Thought Convergence makes. Below are two I want to focus on very briefly.

1. “TCI says that Westerdal told it he had a $60M cash offer on the table”
2. “Westerdal said the second and third installment of the purchase price for NI would “easily paid by the net profits””

Jay Westerdal, the founder of Domaintools.com has officially been fired from Name Intelligence LLC (which was purchased some time back by Thought Convergence). An email went out to quite a few people suggesting that there might be some bad blood and that money is still owed. Im sure more will come out in the next 24 hours.

NamePros.com is one of the more popular forums in the Domaining world. Today they unveiled a brand new layout which is a huge improvement over their classic vBulletin design. Check it out, I think you’ll really like it, it just takes a few minutes to get accustomed to.

The TRAFFIC auction is still currently running, but only a few minutes ago did they close the lot for Ad.com which sold for a whopping 1.4 million. Bare in mind this sale has not been finalized, however this will sale will likely close.

Some great domain names at some very fair reserves. My personaly favorite is the no reserve Announced.com. I love the possibility of this domain name and with a no reserve tag, it will sell. Good luck to all the bidders out there, if your not already registered had on over to Snapnames real fast.

TRAFFIC Auction

Just wanted to let my readers know that I will be the Expert Commentator today in the Bido.com chatroom. The auction starts at 1pm and they will be auctioning off ZWM.com with $1 to start and No Reserve. Feel free to come in and say Hi.

Justin

It seems like each time Domaintools puts an auction together, its always last minute, poorly advertised, and down right dissapointing. There was no exception this time around. The list of domains for sale wasnt even finalized until days before the actual auction, giving no time to bring in potential end-user bidders. Below are my notes, which I thought interesting:

StorageFacility.com sold for $5,000. It sold for $18,700 last year.

I hate when Auctioneers pretend they know what they are selling. "This is a tremendous oppertunity"

Jobless.com sold for $14,000, about where I expected it. This was my favorite buy of the auction.

There were only 80 or so online viewers durring the auction, NamePros ususally has more.

Overwhelmed.com sold for $3,700. It was listed last month in an email from RickLatona.com at $2,200.

Voodoo.com sold for $300,000 but no one was sure if it actually sold. This sold for more then all the other sales combined and probably turned a profit for Domaintools.

We have been waiting to report this sale now for nearly two weeks. Today we recieved the confirmation that we had been waiting for. FreeQuotes.com sold for $210,000. This domain sold via a Network Solutions certified offer. This is the largest Certified offer that we are aware of. Network Solutions charges a $69 fee plus 5% of the offer price (to the buyer) and 5% of the sales prices (from the seller). Meaning they are pocketing around $20,000 or 10% of the total sale.

Considering the state of the economy, this sale is a nice indicator that end-users are still out there and are still spending money on quality domain names. Congrats to the sellers, Jeb and Jason.

DotWeekly reported today that Tucows will no longer send its expiring domain names to Afternic. They will instead be sending them to NameJet, one of the newest but hottest Drop Auction sites. Many domainers have flocked to NameJet as they auction off Network Solutions and Enom domain names (which make up a sizeable bulk of the drops each day).

Afternic simply didnt have the technology in place to really accomodate a drop auction. It was confusing and frustrating for any user attempting to bid or buy Tucows expired domain names. I think this was a solid move for Tucows who is doing their best to capitalize on what many of the other big registrars have been doing for some time.

Today at NameJet, four of the domain auctions we were watching did better than $5,000.

SkinDisorders.com - $5,500

Zigo.com - $11,301

Hairbraids.com - $9,200

WebSchools.com - $9.100

Some strong sales, especially considering the state of the economy. It just goes to show that Drop Houses are still drawing in the customers who arent afraid to bid.