A look back at the domaining world ten years ago this month.
Remember 2007? It was go-go times in the stock market and we didn’t know what was about to happen. The great recession was knocking on the door.
I just took a look back at Domain Name Wire’s archives to see what I was writing about in August 2007.
The top story that month was news that CreditCards.com filed to go public. (The IPO would be delayed due to the market meltdown later that year.)
Back then I was also writing about the strong growth in domain name registrations. Verisign estimated there were a total of 138 million registered domain names and that was up 31% year-over-year. In 2017 we’re looking at low single digit growth but there are now about 330 million registered domains.
Domain parking was still a big deal in 2007 and I was reporting RPMs (revenue per thousand views) of over $100. Those were the days!
GoDaddy was making a bid to run .US, but Neustar ended up keeping the contract.
And there was talk of a bubble in domain names, but I don’t think people foresaw the big fall in domain parking.
Oh, and shares of Tucows were trading for $1.00. If you bought shares then you’d have a 50x return after just ten years! I forgot about a four-for-one reverse split. So the return is more like 13x. Still, not bad!
I believe that some time in the past tucows.com changed there shares to 4 for 1 share so it is about 13x return.
You’re right. I updated the article.