If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Why not follow me on Twitter, too? Thanks for visiting!

Lots of money. Yet another domain-related article in a major publication. The International Herald Tribune covered last week’s DOMAINfest live domain auction as well as last year’s developments in the domain industry:

Last year, 106 domain names sold for more than $100,000, including porn.com, which went for nearly $9.5 million. In 2006, only 70 domain names sold for more than six figures. Millions of generic domain names, pointing to sites with little more than automated Google or Yahoo text ads, brought in untold more millions of dollars.

As a result, over the past few months, private equity and venture capital firms have poured money into the largest companies in the industry. Last year, Demand Media and Oversee.net, two companies based in Los Angeles that own hundreds of thousands of domain names each and offer hosting and advertising services to other domainers, raised nearly $400 million from investors.

“We think this is definitely a legitimate industry and a legitimate business,” said Robert Morse Jr., a partner at Oak Hill Capital Partners, which invested in both companies and is backed by the oil-rich Bass family of Texas. “As with many early-stage markets, it is going through a transformation to professionalism.”

Continue reading here.