iEstates.com

A Techcrunch story last week passed through the domain name community without comment but it caught my eye since the story was about a tec company not only building their brand around a .Me domain but a Web 2.0 misspell or hack of what other call a true hack

So the domain at question is Recmnd.Me which of course is a misspell of recommend.me, a Flickr.com type of domain if you will

It wouldn’t all be that surprising except that as you might have guessed already the Recmnd.Me folks don’t own recommend.me

Nor do they own Recommendme.com

Recommend.me is going to a placeholder at Godaddy and looks to be for sale, so why they didn’t try to buy it is anyone’s guess.

What makes the story really interesting is that the CEO of the company is by no means a newbie.

Matter of fact Jesse Gant has been involved in some highly successful sites including  Ancestry.com, Buy.com, and RealtyTrac.com.

So when this kind of guy goes with a .Me and especially a Web 2.0 kind of domain in the .Me extension I think that says something about the extension.

For the record the site is a “recommendation and ranking system that might actually help companies find the best candidate for a job”.

 …

Sedo just  announced the next .Me branded auction of registry owned  premium .ME domain names.

The auction begins on May 26, 2012 and runs until May 31, 2012.

In all there are 200 .Me domain names included in the auction

As in the previously couple of .Me Sedo auctions, the list is light on call to action or verb domains and has a lot of keywords and Geographic domains.

Here is the full list

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.