Flicker.com Receives $600k Offer
Monday, June 11th, 2007
Not-so-typo domain of popular Flickr.com service accepting offers.
I’ve never understood why these Web 2.0 companies have such horrible domain names. It’s hard enough getting people to remember your web address. So why drop vowels out of your domain? In January I wrote:
As a domainer, I look at a lot of these web 2.0 companies and laugh at their domain names. They are perhaps the worst domain names a company could ever choose. Flickr.com? (A Yahoo! company (NASDAQ: YHOO). Talkr.com? Frappr.com? The only thing these domains are good for are sending traffic to Flicker.com, Talker.com, and Frapper.com.
Well, the owners of Flicker.com have put it up for sale and have turned down 14 offers in the past two months. The latest offer was for $600,000. According to a notice on the Flicker.com web page, the site attracts over 150,000 type-ins per month. I believe it — it has an Overture+Ext score of 4,301. Although most of these visitors are looking for the popular photo sharing site owned by Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO), the Flicker.com notice doesn’t mention the site and goes out of its way to point out that Flicker is a generic term.
The final sale price will depend on if someone is willing to take on any legal risk associated with this domain name. Sure, the domain predates the Flickr service and Flickr is a horrible name, but that doesn’t mean someone can’t sue if the domain is used for a similar purpose.
I totally agree with your comment about “these Web 2.0 companies have such horrible domain names”. If you read TechCrunch, there are countless Web2.0 startups with terrible domain names popping up everyday!
“As a domainer, I look at a lot of these web 2.0 companies and laugh at their domain names.”
Andrew,
Did you see this ?
http://snipr.com/CrazyNames
Patrick
Thanks Patrick. The folksonomy.org article hits the nail on the head.
Stumbleupon, tripover,fallaround……………rollyo, bebo, crusty.
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[...] Domain Name Wire: Flicker.com Receives $600k Offer Sphere It [...]
For the fun of it, I purchased the name “staffr.com” and without marketing, I fear type-in traffic will continue to virtually flatline.
Oh! Well, domaining and exploring the limitless possibilities is still a lot of fun ; )