iEstates.com

Sedo today announced an exclusive auction of premium .ME domain names. The company has successfully brokered the sale of more than 1,000 .ME domain names, totaling nearly two million U.S. dollars, including such premier names as Business.Me for €40,000, and online meeting platform Join.Me for $45,000. Global brands such as WordPress (wp.me), Facebook (FB.Me), Porsche (Porsche.Me) and Yahoo (ME.Me) have taken advantage of the .ME domain name extension.

Running in partnership with the .ME registry, Domain.Me, the auction begins on February 2, 2012 and runs until February 9, 2012. The auction will include a wide range of prices and a unique selection of premium .ME domain names such as:

• Hotel.Me
• Singles.Me
• Boats.Me
• Yoga.Me
• Creditcard.Me
• Gift.Me
• Movies.Me
• Webhosting.Me
• Friends.Me

The complete list of .ME domain names available for auction on Sedo.com can be found at http://www.sedo.com/ME.

Disclaimer: Managing Editor Frank Michlick of DNN also is working as a consultant for SedoMLS.

(c) 2011 DomainNameNews.com (8)

SEDO and the .ME Registry have announced they have partnered for domain name auction of registry owned .Me domain names.

The auction begins Feb. 2, 2012.

There are 179 .Me domain names in the auction and here they are:

Yet again another startup using a .Me domain name got covered by TechCrunch.com tonight; Secure.me

Secure.me was bought through Afternic.com in August for $7k.

According to Techcrunch.com Secure.me is “an online service that analyzes your Facebook profile for any data that’s putting your privacy at risk”.

The Techcrunch article details the service in depth and is another nice showcase for a verb .Me domain.

Visa just launched a site under V.Me and it looks like their “Wallet” solution

“”V.me is a new service from Visa that lets you shop without sharing your card account information with the seller when you pay.”"

“”Shop online or on your mobile device.”

“Get timely alerts for your Visa card. ”

“With one secure account and password, you can shop with confidence.”"

So using V.me you can according to the site:

“Make payments without sharing your card account information with the seller”

“Speed through secure checkout by entering your email address and password.”

“Pay with any card, including Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover.”

and its free.

Another great boost to the .Me extension.

The .Me registry is going to auction off 150 premium, previously unreleased registry owned .Me domain names at Sedo.

The auction which will start on October 27th and end on November 3rd (actually times to be announced).

The auction will include some great keyword domain names including RealEstate.me (realestate.com just sold for $8.25 Million).

.Me domains has become pretty popular with  startups receiving venture capital money.

Here are some teaser domains for you that will be included in the auction

vip.me
cam.me
dsl.me
job.me
lottery.me
names.me
property.me
realestate.me
golf.me
air.me
america.me
ant.me
apartments.me
arab.me
beaver.me
bike.me
baseball.me
basketball.me
beef.me
bogota.me
brisbane.me
cab.me
calls.me
camera.me
celeb.me
celebrity.me
cellphones.me
chicago.me
spring.me
state.me
steel.me
stuff.me
venturecapital.me
vitamins.me
vodka.me
washingmachine.me
wealth.me
wireless.me

According to TechCrunch.com, Google has very recently gained ownership over the domain Android.me.

“.me domain names are starting to get in vogue lately.”

“Google worked on the Ro.me project, for instance, and there are plenty of other examples such as About.me, which was acquired by our parent company AOL, but also Ask.me, Connect.me, txt.me, Blog.me, Blip.me, With.me and News.me, a joint project from bit.ly and The New York Times).”

“then there are startups like Tango, Kiip and Formspring, which also went with .me domain names.”

The list goes on: Facebook owns fb.me, WordPress owns wp.me, Yahoo owns me.me, Microsoft owns windows.me, AOL owns aol.me, VKontakte owns vk.me, and Time Magazine owns ti.me.

“Google was smart enough to register a couple of .me domain names from the get-go, including google.me, gmail.me, adwords.me, adsense.me, plus.me, blogger.me, orkut.me and youtube.me.”

Another nice story about .me domain names and further proof that an extension other than .com can be quite successful from both the registry and the domain holder level.

According to TechCrunch.com, a startup playing in the social and mobile spaces, Just.me, has just raised $600,000 in seed funding LLC.

“Just.me was founded by Keith Teare, a serial entrepreneur and a co-founder of TechCrunch”

“Teare previously co-founded RealNames Corporation, and The EasyNet Group.”

“When asked if just.me has any co-founders, Teare responded ‘it’s just me.’ Teare says that just.me will launch later this year.”

Nice to see another .Me getting traction.

Two registries are celebrating their anniversary today.

The .Me Registry is 3 years old today and in a blog post, says there are 530,000 domains .Me domain names registered in 200 countries.

52.92% of all .ME registrations are based the United States;

7.68% are from the United Kingdom.

3.82% were registered in Germany

3.81% in Canada, and 3.63% in Japan.

“During the Registry’s last fiscal year (July 2010-June 2011), the registration of .ME domains grew by 27%; which, according to VeriSign’s May 2011 Domain Name Industry Brief, is more than three times the average industry increase during the report’s measured 12-month period (7.9%).”

“”.ME has also become extraordinarily popular recently for its value in the world of mobile apps and as a URL shortener for some of the world’s biggest companies, such as WordPress (WP.Me), Facebook (FB.Me), Yahoo (ME.Me), VKontakte (VK.Me) and Time Magazine (TI.Me). ”

The .Co registry is also celebrating its first anniversary with over 1,000,000 domains registered in over 200 countries.

Of course as we all know some giant corporation has adopted a single letter .co domain including, Overstock which is in the process of renaming their company to O.co, and corporate users like Twitter (t.co), Godaddy (X.com) Google (g.co); and Amazon (a.co, K.co, Z.co and Cloud.co).

Congrats to both the .Me and the .Co registry.

The .ME Registry announced today that it assigned a premium domain name to Google for a web project called Ro.Me calling it a “Revolutionary Web Project”

The site, was launched worldwide on May 12,

Ro.Me is the destination of a new music experience called “3 Dreams of Black,” by writer/director Chris Milk. The site, featuring the revolutionary and open-source 3D WebGL browser technology, was developed in partnership with Google and takes visitors on a visual voyage through three dream worlds. The song, “Black,” comes off the album, ROME, presented by Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi and featuring Jack White and Norah Jones on vocals. ROME is soon to be released by Parlophone/EMI.

“Being identified as the domain extension of choice by innovative companies like Google shows exactly how valuable the dot-ME extension has become in the virtual world of brand messaging,” notes Predrag Lesic, executive director of the .ME Registry. “It creates a natural call-to-action and sends the most direct marketing message on the Web. You can’t forget domain names such as ‘Text.Me,’ ‘Find.Me’ or ‘Help.Me.’ Web users continue to recognize that a dot-ME domain is not only the most personal choice on the Web, it is also one of the most memorable. RO-dot-ME is a perfect example of that.”

Désirée Zeljka Miloshevic, chairwoman of the .ME Registry, adds, “I am delighted that half a million dot-ME registrants, bloggers, small businesses, tech start-ups and other social media and technology giants continue to find great value in the dot-ME name space, and use it creatively to best serve, promote and share their ideas and projects online.”

Well I don’t know if I would exactly describe this a revolutionary but its good to see some of the biggest Tech companies going with .Me domains.

.Me domain names are increasing being used for Apps and I would say are probably becoming the word of choice in naming Apps similar to how “i” has been used by Apple and other companies in the computer/Tech sector.

Blip.Me, Play.Me, Caddy.Me, Flirt.Me, Tango.Me are just a few of the Apps in which the developer also owns the matching domain.

We wrote about bit.ly new App News.me which just launched a couple of weeks ago.

The maker of Blackberry last week recently purchased the App Tungle.Me

Of course there are also a lot of Apps also named something …..me without the publisher owning the matching domains.

There are several “date me” apps,  “marry me” and “text me”apps,  for example, but I know the domain owner pretty well and the developer of the App doesn’t own the matching domain.

Likewise there are other Me Apps not owned by the App developer like “puzzle me”, “Trade me”, “Prank me” and “Strip Me” and “Talk To Me”

“Around Me” maybe the best known App ending in Me, but the domain Around.Me  is reserved by the registry as is Follow.me another popular App “follow me”

There is even Apps.me which “rates” the best smartphone apps.

There are App developers that use .Me domain names for there corporate site like Moop.Me and builditwith.me