Archive for the 'Domain Names' Category

Pizza Hut to rebrand as The Hut?

Published June 21, 2009 in Domain Names and Marketing. 2 Comments

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Pizza Hut could slowly be rebranding as The Hut, according to several reports in marketing and media publications. The company has been adding pasta dishes to its menu lately, which also caused it to rebrand as Pasta Hut in the UK in 2008 (a decision I haven’t been fond of, either), so I can understand why Pizza Hut feels the need to change its name, in addition to appealing to a younger audience often referring to Pizza Hut simply as “The Hut”. However, Pizza Hut has been an established brand name for so many years, making me think dropping that name could alienate some customers. In addition to that, I also doubt that this is the right time for a rebranding.

Moreover, the company has again forgotten about buying its different company names as domain names prior to the announcement. As of this writing, TheHut.com is owned by an ecommerce company in the UK, and Hut.com is under whois privacy and forwarding to a parked page. The hyphenated version The-Hut.com is parked as well and marked as for sale. Pizza Hut/The Hut better be ready to fork out a lot of money if it wants to acquire these domain names now that everybody knows about the rebranding. Heck, it hasn’t even acquired any other variations, yet. Both Hut.net and TheHut.net are owned by iREIT (registered in 2000 and 2001 respectively). Hut.co.uk forwards to a custom parked page and TheHut.co.uk is owned by the aforementioned TheHut.com group. And don’t get me started on Pizza.com, which Pizza Hut should have bought in 2008, but which was later sold to National A-1.

I’m scratching my head over how a company with such a well-known brand could want to drop it basically overnight. The rebranding is even more risky given today’s unstable economic environment, where a valuable brand name, which is recognized by customers all around the world, is something you can fall back on. Anyway, Pizza Hut has already tested new, red pizza delivery boxes with the name “The Hut” on them, according to a BrandWeek interview with Pizza Hut CMO Brian Niccol. But it’s also important to say that no Pizza Hut spokesperson has officially confirmed the rebranding, yet, so maybe they will decide against it in the end given the mixed media coverage.

(Hat tip to Owen Frager.)

Lexus blocking GoDaddy commercial

Published June 21, 2009 in Domain Names and Marketing. 1 Comment

GoDaddyIn a rather surprising move, Japanese automaker Lexus is blocking a GoDaddy commercial that was set to air twice during the upcoming US Open. In the TV commercial named “Speeding“, GoDaddy model Danica Patrick is driving a custom Ford Mustang, an American car.

Lexus is NBC’s main television sponsor of the sports event and it has enforced that no other automakers shall be allowed to advertise on the channel during the US Open broadcast.

You can look at Lexus’ decision from two points of view. On one side, it was an unlucky decision, because blocking a US company from advertising during a major tournament held in the United States won’t bring positive publicity for the Japanese company. On the other hand, Lexus and Ford clearly are competitors, so blocking the marketing efforts of a company that is in trouble already could increase Lexus’ chances of gaining on Ford in the United States. The only thing is, it is not Ford but GoDaddy, an Internet company, that wants to air its television commercial. So Lexus is blocking a technology company it’s not competing with, only because there is another car in that commercial?

GoDaddy isn’t selling cars. It is selling domains, as everybody clearly knows, and the TV commercial is in no way misleading in this regard. The conflict with Lexus isn’t necessarily bad for GoDaddy, though. The domain registrar company has already started to capitalize on this by issuing a press release about it to basically further push its brand and identity as an “American company”.

Oh yeah, is it possible that this is just a publicity stunt by GoDaddy? In any case, GD is going to benefit from this the one way or the other.

What’s the value of a domain nobody wants to buy?

Published June 20, 2009 in Domain Names. 2 Comments

What is an asset worth if no-one wants to buy? That’s the title of a post I read on Reuter’s DealZone blog today. I don’t want to comment on that specific article here, but the title triggered an interesting question about a phenomenon one can observe in the domain industry every day:

Overpricing, or at least, different perceptions of value by buyers and sellers. So, what is a domain worth if there is nobody who wants to buy it? If there is nobody willing to pay your asking price?

This is an interesting topic, because, technically, an asset doesn’t become completely worthless if there is no buyer for it in the current market. But the problem is, if there is no buyer, you will not be able to sell the asset and you will not make any money.

Domain valuations are always subjective. That’s the problem. Domains are still more complicated to objectively evaluate compared to real estate, for example, because there are no proven, commonly accepted appraisal methods. We have no appraisal standards in the domain industry and numeric factors of value, such as keyword searches and pay-per-click prices, are changing quickly.

That is one reason why you see hundreds, if not thousands of domains being offered for sale on domain forums or on eBay for prices a rational investor can only laugh at. I would argue that there are more meaningless low-quality domains on the market than there are buyers. So many domains no sane investor would want to buy.

But what’s the value of those domains? The buyers and neutral observers will say those domains are worthless, but from the owners’ point of view the situation is obviously quite different. There are still so many disillusioned domain sellers in the market that I can hardly believe it. If there are absolutely no buyers for a domain, chances are that its sale value is very close to zero.

If you just can’t find any buyer for your domain name, no matter how hard you try, carefully reconsider the asking price. If this still doesn’t help, maybe the domain isn’t as good as you initially thought it was, and you should perhaps find another way of getting rid of it.

The bottom line is, if there is nobody in the market you can sell the domain to and if you won’t turn it into a profitable project yourself, the domain is worthless. You shouldn’t hold a domain for investment that nobody else wants to buy. Don’t fall in love with your domains. Renewing worthless domains won’t improve your situation, it will only cause more headaches.

Yahoo sells Contests.com to National A-1 for $380,000

Published June 19, 2009 in Domain Names. 4 Comments

On Tuesday, the domain name Contests.com was sold for $380,000 in the Aftermarket.com live domain auction held at the Domain Roundtable conference in Washington, DC. It was sold by Yahoo, and went to National A-1, a well-known buyer of generic domain names.

Some bloggers and domain investors have already commented on the auction’s top sale, mostly saying the domain should have sold for more. TechCrunch, for example, said Yahoo was “selling killer domain names on the cheap“. I disagree with this statement.

I think $380,000 is a fair price for Contests.com in today’s market. The reserve price was set at $150,000, so the domain was ultimately sold for more than twice the reserve. This shows that the seller, Yahoo, was willing to let the domain go for much less than the final sale price. The buyer, National A-1, on the other hand, may have been willing to bid higher. But we will never find out, so speculating about this makes little sense. Instead, we should take this as a sign that generic domain names are still trading at good market prices, even in today’s difficult economic situation. In an ideal setting, maybe it would have been possible for the domain to go for $400k to $500k, but I’m no fan of “what if” debates.

National A-1 got a good domain at a fair price. It didn’t overpay, but it didn’t get a steal from today’s perspective, either. Yahoo was able to sell a domain that it would probably not have put to good use in the foreseeable future and turned it into much-needed cash. What’s not to like about this transaction?

Facebook Usernames, or Vanity URLs

Published June 13, 2009 in Domain Names and Internet. 3 Comments

FacebookToday, I successfully applied for my so-called Facebook username, which is actually a vanity URL. The new URL of my Facebook profile is Facebook.com/DominikMueller.

I think it’s been a great idea of Facebook to introduce these usernames, because the actual profile URLs are very long, cryptic and impossible to type in. Other social networking sites like LinkedIn and Twitter have been using vanity URLs for a long time.

According to Facebook, you can choose a username on a first-come, first serve basis. You can apply for your personal username on Facebook.com/Username. If I’m not mistaken, it’s also possible to secure generic keywords instead of a username or your real name. For example, it should be possible to apply for terms such as Facebook.com/DomainSeller, …/TravelAgent, …/Money and so on.

If you already have applied for a username, did you get your username of choice? And what is it?

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