Symbolics.com was the first domain name ever registered on the modern Internet on March 15th 1985.

Symbolics.com is the first, and the oldest, registered .com (dot com) domain. Symbolics, Inc^. was a computer hardware and software manufacturer based in Massachusetts on the East Coast of the US. It designed and produced Lisp programming machines to run the Lisp language. The company went bust, and the domain name purchased in 2009 by XF.com, and is now used as the personal blog of XF’s owner Aron Meystedt.

But it was a slow start for .com names: 6 by the end of 1985; only 10 in total in the first year; and over two and a half years for the first 100 domain names to be registered - and registered for free in those days to help encourage more names!

The .com generic top level domain (gTLD) was originally created and run by the US Department of Defense, in the days of ARPANET. From January 1985 there were 7 gTLDs, the others being .net, .org, .gov, .edu, .mil, and .arpa. From 1991 it was run by Network Solutions, which was later bought by Verisign. To this day the .com remains the Daddy of all TLDs.

After 25 years of domain registration there are now nearly 200 million registered names, and about 85 million of those (43%) are .com.

The Symbolics site is recognising the important birthday and its 25 years.

Sold for £91,500 this week, in a Sedo public auction, the transaction is now contested by the seller. They have tried to cancel it, but can they? And if so what does this mean if they can? Read the background.

mobilephones.co.uk

Auction of the name is big news by itself: the opportunity to buy a premium 2-word domain name of exact match to the search term of a high volume high value market sector - [mobile phones] - is a seismic force 7 on the Richter scale.

But now the official sale is being disputed by its current owners, it has become an unparalled force 10, nearly off the scale, unrecorded in domain history.

Because of our own work in the Teleco sector, we’ve had the name on our radar for a few years, and understand that a 200k bid was turned down a few years ago, before the recent recession when domain prices were still high. It appears that owners of the .co.uk also own the .com, and they have quietly sat on the names for a few years.

Auctioned last week, the name received 58 bids from 10 bidders, on Sedo. Well done to Angie Barrow’s ANY-Web for having the forsight to purchase the name. £91,500 is widely recognised as a good price for such a high potential domain name. While there doesn’t seem to be any formal notice by Sedo on the issue yet, Angie herself reports the sale is being contested. Rightly, domainers are up in arms.

(Whilst buyers sometimes do not pay in domain auctions they have won - poor practice, but something we’re all familiar with from eBay auctions for example - it is rare for the seller to renege. Indeed we’re not aware of any for such situation before, particularly for a high value domain name >> please comment below with any you know of or have experienced.)

Mistake by the Seller?

It appears that a bid of £25,000 triggered the auction last week. The case for the sale being in error is supported by such a low initial bid meeting the reserve price, and the subsequent timing of the end of a 7 day auction being late at night (seasoned eBay’ers would be suspicious of a late night auction finish).

But there are numerous confirmation steps required in accepting a bid in Sedo and then releasing it for public auction. It is difficult to understand how this could be done in error, by honest mistake. There are numerous warning and update emails a seller receives during an auction, even before the public information about the auction. Neither an out-of-date email address to Sedo for alerts nor being off-line are plausible excuses, they reacted to the initial bid. Regardless they used Sedo services, and agreed to Sedo’s terms.

Sedo’s Role

Interestingly the name wasn’t given much profile on Sedo during the week - as those many of us who were watching the auction of such a name like hawks can confirm. Sedo was aware plainly aware of the sale, as those who signed up as premium bidders to enter the auction will also confirm. You would imagine Sedo’s own procedures are to perform due diligence behind such a premium sale, to authenticate and to provide the seller with customer service (given the 10% brokerage fee it makes).

Contract for Sale?

Could this series of events happen in error? IF the acceptance of the initial bid, AND the release to public auction, AND the auction house validation, AND the awareness of the auction by the seller, ALL went wrong, then perhaps. Hard to imagine, but perhaps.

Even if these unfortunate events culminated in the auction proceeding and completing, with Angie Barrow’s final successful bid, does it matter? They entered into a legal contract.

Whilst Sedo are only the broker, the terms and conditions of their domain auction spell out the binding agreement by the seller and the potential buyers in a legal contract. Claiming an auction is in error is the same as backing out of it if you don’t like the price you’ve achieved. This case could test the legality of the commonly used domain auction process.

Precedent

We are in unchartered domain-waters. If such a public sale can be made void, reneged on during or after the bidding process, then the outcome in this ’sale’ of mobilephones.co.uk could set a precedent for ALL future domain auctions. If a name can be put up for auction, the auction run, and won, but then the sale cancelled, why bother bidding?

It would make a mockery of the notion of reserve price, and has enormous ramifications, not just for integrity of the seller and the domain houses running the auction, but the trading of domains as an activity and domain industry as a whole.

The domain market relies on the ability to trade names between buyers and sellers, structured and facilitated by auction houses. Domainers and their industry have had a poor image - somewhat unfairly  - and worked to improve it. The precedent for reneging on auctions could set them back years.

Resolution TBC

You can only imagine there have been a lot of people busy all weekend on this one: the seller stating their case; the buyer evaluating their options (legal or otherwise); Sedo bringing the domain-sale-that-wasn’t to clean and clear resolution. Without it, where do domain auctions go from here?

As the story rumbles on into this week, we’re anxious to hear where it goes, and we’ll keep you posted…

Indeed a lot has been said, and no doubt a lot more will be said about this engineering achievement. In the ‘race for the sky’ this is truly a step-change, smashing previous records. Another…

In searching for news today, see ‘extensive construction’ within Google natural search: the top 10 search results for [dubai tower] covers 3 pages (scrolling twice) and contains 6 entries for ‘helpful Google snippets’ (aka Google Spam).



The ‘top spot’ sneeks in at the bottom. And scroll…

Wiki, real-time, video, you sort of expect. But it’s a long list…

Trends, a nice touch. Finish with related searches, no surprise. But 3 pages, a monster!

In keeping with the day, let’s think ‘pure measurement’ - can you beat this? What is the longest top 10 Google search result? Measured in: times of scrolling, and Google Spam entries. Send them in!

Until then, I claim the world’s longest search result!

PS. No tall-stories.

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There are authority sites you want to get links from. There are authority sites that, even if you can’t get the dreamed-of link, you should watch and monitor very carefully, and learn from. Here’s an example of both.

In a change to the ‘normal’ BBC new page format of:

{title, image, bold intro para, text (no links), bold subheaders, side links}

This is a new format page with in-copy links too. Making the news page:

{title, image, bold intro line, text (with links, i.e. in-copy links), no subheaders, side links}

The embedded links were to other related BBC news stories only (so calm your link-ninjas down). The page template then being more like the self-confessed ‘blog’ sections of the BBC (whose in-copy links do often go ‘outside the BBC’ to other sites).

The only examples of this ‘non-standard’ BBC news page (I’ve found) are in the Middle East section, so it could just be a renegade regional journalist that hasn’t read the internally published guidelines.

Whatever the driver, this illustrates cracks in the wall with the increasing pressure between’ traditional journalism’ and ‘citizen journalism’, and how main-stream journalism adapts to online.

Let us know examples you find.

I don’t know what Apple were thinking here.

Design is normally their strong suit, but to cater for users who download massive amounts of tunes here is the iPod Humongo.

And to suggest you can take it jogging, well, as sure as Apples are Apples, they’ll get hit for misleading advertising on this one.

(Being consumer-tested on South West Trains. Warning: very large iPods)

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The usual suspects: Halifax Online (to ‘Dear Valued Customer’, odd though not being a customer of theirs); Namejet (one of the big domain name aftermarket players, but I do use them and they always get spammed out); then the rude ones (that I can’t read out here); plus the weird ones (that I just can’t read); the frequent fluff, and then someone who does get spammed out but I do tend to rescue - laptopsdirect.co.uk .

Instead of offering me discount on my next laptop, the usual sender ‘Anna James’ this time screamed ‘Free Funerals From Laptops Direct’ ! Assuming it was about old laptop recycling, and obviously as being a green digital agency we’re keen for retailers to offer green services, well done I thought, I clicked - and no! It’s about real funerals! Urns, tombstones, hearses, the works! Strapped for cash in the credit-crunch? Here is laptopsdirect.co.uk willing to sponsor yours! A ‘win-win’ (perhaps a ‘win-gone’):

http://www.buyitdirect.co.uk/free_funerals_from_laptops_direct/page.asp

Not green afterall (But I was a shade jealous.)

Yes, I know it is April 1st. I also know they’ll get a bundle of traffic off it. As spoofs go, is anything off limits? Nah, death needn’t be morbid. And work has gone into this one, decent video production, even a the list of sponsorship options! Terrific.

Reasons this campaign is alive and well:

• the email send was to customer base, so not strictly spam (i.e. trusted sender)
• the subject line was strong and different, so good for click through (i.e. compelling)
• destination page was branded, simple and informative (i.e. familiarity and call to action)
• destination page interestingly, buyitdirect.co.uk (i.e. building traffic to newer site / owned brand)
• posted video on youtube (i.e. use of social media, viral outside of base)
• ’shock factor’ passed off as April Fool, so it is fun (i.e. timing)

Well done laptopsdirect.co.uk - you didn’t downgrade my last laptop properly and customer service needs resuscitating, but your virals are full of life. Good online marketing execution.

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