What is Bido.com? We now have part of the answer.
Bido, a new domain company founded by DNJournal editor Ron Jackson, Recall Media founder Sahar Sarid, and a couple other Recall Media employees had its official launch party in Las Vegas last night. After a couple months of suspense, we now know what the guys are up to. Well, sort of.
It appears that Bido will be a platform of services for domainers. According to a post at DNJournal, the company will roll out daily live auctions in which only one domain is available “to give sellers the maximum possible exposure for their high profile domains.” The commission will be only 8%.
Also, domain management system DNZoom will be part of Bido. It’s not clear what the exact relationship will be, but Jackson wrote “the team that developed [DNZoom] have both been brought under the Bido.com umbrella. The company believes that move will ensure it has the right people and technology in place to roll out the additional services planned for the months ahead.”
I didn’t put two-and-two together when Jackson recently profiled DNZoom. He mentioned that he was contemplating a business relationship with the company, which I found surprising. Jackson says he doesn’t have time for new ventures, so I assumed Bido was the exception to the rule. It would have been odd to also have a relationship with DNZoom, but by combining the two this makes sense.
So, do we know what Bido is? Auctions, domain registrar management and parking management…what does this add up to? My guess is a complete platform for the entire lifecycle of domains: registrations, monetization, and sales.
I am very positive about a new auction venue. There is definite room for improvement and innovation in this area. The guys involved in Bido.com have creativity, integrity, and experience behind them. So good things are on the way it is safe to say. A+!
As Obama says we definitely need change. We would welcome a new auction platform that truly markets special names and gives them the professional treatment they deserve. If this is done right it could change the current playing field which definitely favors buyers not sellers. The advantage deserves to go to pioneer domainers not spec
buyers.
Regardless of the features embodied in
Bido.com, it appears that Ron Jackson may have
crossed the line on DNJournal where his famous
dispassionate journalistic commentary has now
partially become self-serving promotion. Sad.
I applaud Ron Jackson for crossing the line and placing his passion in an area where he can truly help the domainer community get the respect and yes share the financial rewards for pioneering a process that will actively focus on marketing THAT SPECIAL DOMAIN. The problem with auctions is there is no immediacy to buy any one name, because of all the other choices that distract the buyers. Auctioneers cannot concentrate all their salesmanship efforts on every name.
There is a marketing law that is widely accepted as being a principle. That principle says, that if you give buyers too many choices they value them all the same and therefore hesitate to buy with any conviction. This is the current situation auctions of late offer.This market dynamic hurts domain sales values.
I think Bidos strategy for selling one name at a time is an absolutely brilliant marketing strategy. Bravo
Quoting a so-called marketing principle is irrelevant. The shifting priciples of marketing, and the relatively static ethics of journalism generally come from different planets. RJ is a journo and built his DNJ reputation on the best elements of jounalistic ethics. That doesn’t involve product-placement in a news column, or what in the past has been a news column. If RJ wants DNJ news columns to evolve into vehicles for his business enterprises, so be it. He must also wear any loss of reader interest and associated opprobrium for masquerading product-promotion as a news item.
Ida, I agree whole heartedly. What you wrote above is pure genius. It is sad that Ron got sucked into what is obviously a lackluster idea. Gee whiz,have never heard this ” life of a domain idea before?” Of course we have! Bido is doomed to failure before it starts, and will take Ron’s career with it.
I like Ron and DNJ but let’s face it, DNJ has never really been about journalism in a true sense. It’s hard if not impossible to be in this business and really be a true journalist. Ron has always had a stake in making the domain business always look good hasn’t he? It’s hard to write anything negative or even insinuatingly negative when the people paying the bills are who you might be writing about. Trades always run in to this problem because their core advertiser base happens to be the same people/businesses that the articles will be about.
By running ads or articles about businesses he’s involved in he is doing the right thing and pointing that out in the articles. Sure it’s self-serving but so is the whole site and at least he’s being transparent early enough in the article that a reader can take the words with a grain of salt. IMHO if he wanted great coverage about bido, he also should be tapping other bloggers like Andrew to do more in-depth takes on the story. In the end the reality is Ron won’t be sacrificing anything imho.
This is an interesting reaction. It’s not like Ron will bash competing services since he never writes anything bad about anyone (point me to an example if I’m missing something).
Is DNJournal biased? Ron is an industry supporter. And yes, there’s no chinese wall between Editorial and Advertising when it’s just one person. This is something I battle with as well. But if you’ve read this site for a while you’ll notice that I say good *and* bad things about most of my advertisers. If there’s negative press about them, so be it. It’s my responsibility to write it. But when I write something good, every once in awhile someone will accuse my of playing favorites.