Yahoo buys popular texting term.
Yahoo (YHOO) has purchased the domain name OMG.com for $80,000.
Domain Name Wire reported the sale last week on its weekly Sedo sales wrap, but we didn’t know the buyer at the time.
OMG.com, which commonly stands for “Oh My God” in shorthand and texting, does not currently resolve to a web site. As readers point out in the comments below, Yahoo has a popular celebrity gossip web site at omg.yahoo.com.
Yahoo is not only a domain buyer, but it also sells some of the domain names it doesn’t need. In June it sold the domain name Contests.com for $380,000 at a domain name auction in Washington, D.C. It appears the domain was acquired when Yahoo bought Broadcast.com, which owned the domain name. National A-1 Advertising bought the domain name at the auction.
This week the domain LMK.com, which stands for “Let Me Know” in shorthand, sold for $58,500. It’s unclear who the buyer is, as the domain hasn’t fully finished transferring.
Whoever sold this for 80k needs their head examined.
That is one big downfall with Sedo. Hard to find out who the buyer may be if you get direct contact via Sedo.
Yahoo current uses a Sub Domain for it’s “Celeb” style site OMG… http://omg.yahoo.com/ so it’s likely it will be used for this.
We don’t know the circumstances. But I’m not sure that this was a “bad deal” for the seller. If Yahoo didn’t buy it, would he have gotten anything close to $80k?
Excellent relevant domain purchase by Yahoo… seller most probably could have negotiated directly with Yahoo and sold for quite a bit more since, as Jamie mentions above, omg.com will most likely replace their current omg.yahoo.com domain.
Seriously..I agree with jb..80k..what is wrong with them…
omg , I thought for sure this would be an entertainment type of site. how dissapointing.
seriously, thats not a great price at all. Leaving several thousands on the table there. Shockingly, yahoo actually did a great deal here. Too bad they screwed up the msft deal.. lol.
yahoo deserved to get a deal…the selling of contests was a huge mistake…so much could have been done with contests.com
It’s a great domain and acronym, understood by the younger generation. They can’t go wrong with it IMO, a good buy.
While I also agree that $80K is very low for a domain such as OMG.com, it’s important to remember that we don’t know that the previous owner had paid for it. Perhaps they made a 500% return by selling it for $80K?
Perhaps the $80K was needed to scoop up a dozen similar quality names for bargain prices in some marketplace…
Great move by YHOO.
80K !?! OMG! The seller should be sentenced to spar with Brock Lesnar for that foul….Then Yahoo is able to turn around & sell contests.com for 380k.Like the brain of the average speller will go to that last “S”.Hi-fives to the domain brain trust @ Yahoo.
Seller is smart, sell a domain buy some stocks, turn 80k into 800k.
OMG 🙂 great one
Seller got taken.
@EvilMonkey – Seller is desperate. Selling a domain name, not known for losing value, to invest in stocks… ummm… reading the news lately?
OMG! How hard would it be to build out this site to a social network based on exciting videos, programs, websites, products, etc?
$80k? I hope the seller saw this cash as a “piece of a total financial pie” for something else he/she was investing in, and that the money is used for further investment.
By my appraisal methods, I would put a minimum value on this domain at around $200k. OMG is one of the most recognized three letter acronyms, across EVERY language, and all over the world.
All I can say to Yahoo for their score: OMG!
well this is not a very high price for such a good domain,nice deal for yahoo.
Wow. This interesting blog post suggests that domain names are big business. However, I think this also will lead and has already led to problems. I know that half of the domain names I have tried to register at Yahoo! have already been taking. When I perform further research it becomes apparent that these particular domain names are not even being in use; likely the work of domain squatters. That really pisses me off; however with prices this these ($80,000 for OMG.com) I could see how one could go out and buy a domain name such as LMAO.com in the hopes some dot com entrepreneur would pay big bucks for these types of domain names.
Just my thoughts.
Daniel Tetreault.
@Daniel T
Welcome to the decade long “land rush” on domain names. They’re not called “squatters” tho. They’re called “domainers” or “domain investors”. Nice of you to notice the value of domains when you get the right domain.