Want To Own Your Name? dotME and Namejet Give You A Chance

As a believer in .ME and someone who has actually spent time with real people other than those in our industry talking about the extension I can say from first hand experience people get .ME, and more important remember .ME. And as such I was happy to see the .ME team announce an auction being run by Namejet.com for first name and last name .ME domains.

I own Bruce.me (will be rebranding my blog to this in the near future) and Marler.me and actually bought several other first name .ME domains when they were released in the past. There are many I will be grabbing from this auction as well and look forward to adding to my first name portfolio.

I personally look forward to re-branding my blog to Bruce.me because I think when it comes to personalization and branding .ME does it better than any other. Bruce.me just works.

That said, here is a sampling of the more than 300 names being released on April 5th:

Andrew.Me

Adam.Me

Brian.Me

Daniel.Me

Douglas.Me

Eric.Me

Jack.Me

James.Me

Jason.Me

John.Me

Kevin.Me

Lindsey.Me

Maria.Me

Paul.Me

Peters.Me

Scott.Me

Shawn.Me

Steve.Me

Ryan.Me

William.Me

Here is the full press release for your enjoyment:

LIKE YOUR NAME? HERE’S YOUR CHANCE TO OWN IT ONLINE

More Than 300 Names & Surnames Up for Grabs in the Next .ME Auction

Podgorica, Montenegro – March 2, 2010 – The .ME Registry and NameJet announced the Internet’s largest online auction of personal names today. If you’ve ever wanted your own name as a domain, now is your chance! More than 300 personal names and surnames with a .ME extension are up for auction, starting April 5, 2010.

“We’ve had phenomenal success working with NameJet in the past. Their online auction platform is a perfect venue for this upcoming auction of personal names -- the biggest online auction event the .ME Registry has ever held,” stated Predrag Lesic, Executive Director of the .ME Registry. “The popularity of social media makes this an opportune time to create a personal presence online and, as we’ve told the world from the start, dot-ME is as personal as it gets. Dot-ME is all about YOU!”

Here’s a glimpse at some of the many popular names available in this auction:

Andrew.Me

Adam.Me

Brian.Me

Daniel.Me

Douglas.Me

Eric.Me

Jack.Me

James.Me

Jason.Me

John.Me

Kevin.Me

Lindsey.Me

Maria.Me

Paul.Me

Peters.Me

Scott.Me

Shawn.Me

Steve.Me

Ryan.Me

William.Me

For the full list of available first names and surnames, go to www.PersonalNames.Me.

“This is the first time in the history of domains that more than 300 premium personal names have gone to auction at the same time. It’s so rare to gain control of your very own name with any domain extension. Imagine having it with a dot-ME – the ultimate personal domain,” said Steve Brown, General Manager of NameJet.

“Dot-ME is the ideal personal Web site domain,” noted Lesic. “Imagine the power of being the ONLY person in the world to own your first name or last name through dot-ME, even though millions of others have the very same name.”

.ME is proving to be extraordinarily popular for so many reasons. More than 350,000 .ME domains have been registered in the two years since the domain extension’s launch and a number are used for online call-to-action and catch phrase branding by businesses worldwide. One noteworthy example is Facebook, which is using FB.Me as its URL shortener. For other examples and articles about the many clever uses of .ME, visit ExploreTheWorldOf.Me.

To learn more about the .ME Registry, developing a .ME business idea through non-auction allocation of a .ME domain, or to find out how to register a .ME domain, go to www.Domain.Me.

About the .ME Registry:

.ME Registry (the d.b.a. of doMEn, d.o.o.) was chosen by the government of Montenegro to operate the new .ME domain name extension. .ME Registry partners include ME-net, GoDaddy.com and Afilias Limited. Me-Net is located in Montenegro and its principals have been leaders in the ICT sector in Montenegro, including the privatization of its largest ISP. GoDaddy.com is located in the USA and is the world’s largest domain name registrar and the largest paid hostname provider in the world, according to Netcraft Ltd. Afilias Limited is headquartered in Ireland and is a leading registry services provider, supporting more than 15 million domains worldwide.

About NameJet:

NameJet^® is a domain name aftermarket auction company that consolidates an exclusive inventory of expired and deleted domains from top domain name registrars and makes them available to their customers. NameJet's auction services include the ability to place backorder requests on any domain name and a "last minute board" that allows customers to closely watch an ending auction.

FB.me Launched By Facebook And Puts A dotME In Front Of Millions

Well Tweetmeme.com used a .ME as a URL shortener (Retwt.me) and as a dotME fan I was obviously pleased since it put dotME domains in front of the millions of visitors to Tweetmeme.com.

Then shortly thereafter WP.me launched as the Wordpress shortening service, that put .ME in front of million so of more users.

Well, it just got better for dotME fans, Facebook (with over 350 million users) has now launched their URL shortener on a dotME, FB.me was announced today. One thing to note is that two letter .ME domains are only available to those that present a plan to the registry, at this point they have not been made available through landrush auctions or general registration.

Obviously a company like Facebook, with their very large user base, using .ME helps with the acceptance of the extension and helps with user awareness. So far the reports are that it is starting to show up more frequently in Twitter links and other social media services. But with the user base of Facebook once they fully launch the penetration their URL shortening service gets will be huge.

Right now it seems that Facebook is using the FB.me service extensively for mobile applications and it also works for Facebook usernames and pages as reported at Mashable.com.

Thanks to Facebook for helping along the .ME extension. I have never had any issues with customers accepting the extension but when a brand like Facebook starts using it for a service that really helps awareness along.

Jack Rickard Gets dotME And Electric Cars

Sorry for not posting yesterday, but I had the pleasure of spending what was one of the more enjoyable nights of conversation about the history of the commercial Internet and life in general tonight. I am starting to think there is a technology mafia in Southeast Missouri as more and more I run into people or stories that surprise me to be in my own backyard.

Tonight I spent 6 hours with Kevin Cantwell (President of Big River Telephone) and Jack Rickard, now for people that had not started their professional career at the time that the commercial Internet really took off (mid 90s) or were not involved in the BBS world you may not be familiar with Jack, for me though this was a surprise connection that took me back to the inception of my professional career.

Jack Rickard founded Boardwatch magazine, the magazine was initially focused on BBS systems but during the mid-90s became the DE FACTO resource for information on ISPs and companies building out what is now the Internet you use everyday. Although the Internet had started well before the mid 90s it was really during that time that companies began investing heavily to make it what it is. Well, Jack was the one responsible for building the most popular magazine of the time, I can honestly say I remember anxiously awaiting for the magazine to arrive each month so I could analyze and read the details of the IP backbones of the various service providers like UUNET, PSI, BBN, ATT (I was helping to build this one), and others.

This was my monthly Internet bible until it was acquired in the late 90s. Kevin had set the meeting up since he knew Jack and I would have some great conversations, and we did, talking about everything from great Whiskey to service providers trying to hide network details from his team.

As luck would have it Jack, who would have to be considered one of the leaders of the industry at that time, lives just 85 miles from me in Cape Girardeau, MO. So, one of the leaders of the building out of the commercial Internet happens to live in the same town as Aron Meystedt who owns Symbolics.com which was the FIRST dotCOM every bought. I know that may not seem like a big deal, but for someone who is both a domainer and who worked hard in that era that is pretty neat stuff to me.

OK, now for the domaining twist. I have to point out that first off I had no idea who Kevin was setting me up to meet before I read the email for setting a time, and then when I saw the domain that Jack was using a big smile crossed my face. Jack uses a dotME as his primary address. He chooses too. Keep in mind we had not spoke before tonight so for me to see an END USER choosing dotME who happens to be a very successful business man AND a technology guy from the early era of the Internet. So, kudos to him for recognizing the potential for branding of a .ME.

A bit more about that, keep in mind this is a guy who has been around this little thing called the Internet for as long as anyone and was better connected than virtually anyone and he feels that dotME was the first extension to come out since .COM that had legs. He said he was sold the first time he saw it. He feels that .ME will always be more memorable than .NETs, .ORGS and others since it is so catchy and memorable, and only 2 letters. As you well know I agree, and I did not even coach him to say that, as you can imagine I was smiling the whole time.

Jack is currently using his passion for converting cars to electric to create a series of videos on EvTv.me, check out his 1957 Porsche 356 Speedster, got to see it tonight, it flew down the road without making a noise, amazing.

Anyway, although meeting Jack may not interest some of you, if there are any of you out there that were helping build out the interconnected backbones that are the Internet in the mid 90s or were into BBS dial ins before that you likely read Boardwatch and can appreciate the history we shared.

Ummm, does this mean I am not a newbie:)

dotME Going Strong – Everyone Wants A Piece Of .ME

Thanks to the .ME team for the mention in their press release today. Here is the release below.

dotME

EVERYONE WANTS A PIECE OF .ME

Catchy ccTLD Sells for Big Bucks and Makes Bold Branding Statements

PODGORICA, Montenegro – Oct. 21, 2009 – The .ME Registry is celebrating significant success in its most recent online auction. NameJet® auctioned off 15 premium .ME domains between Sept. 25 and Oct. 2. The results certainly suggest .ME is a popular and valuable commodity in the world of domain extensions. Among the biggest sellers, Friend.Me sold for $21,000 and Host.Me sold for $15,200. The popularity and increasing value of the .ME extension is not surprising when you take a closer look at how people and businesses around the world are using this ccTLD to send a message on the Web.

WhyHire.Me is a Web site, launched in North America, to help students and graduates get noticed by potential employers. A college professor and two software professionals developed the site. Now, several universities are using the portal and curriculum to teach students about new media and online personal branding.
“As an educator and brand marketer, I seek out the clearest possible message,” says Patti Church, one of the co-founders of WhyHire.Me. "No one can dispute the value and clarity of what our brand name communicates or what dot-ME offers our students and subscribers who use it to build their own online brand."

Another Web site taking advantage of the “me” message is Missouri.Me. The U.S. geo-targeted site encourages Web visitors to use Missouri.Me as a “one-stop shopping” location for anything they want to know and any resource they need within that state. Localtek, the brains behind the Missouri site, is set to launch its second endeavor, Oklahoma.Me, within weeks and 25 other state-focused sites with .ME extensions are planned.

“Since we are focused on creating a connection between rural U.S. Internet users and their local communities, it is important for our sites to feel personal…dot-ME does just that,” says Bruce Marler of Missouri.Me. “Dot-ME is the greatest online personal branding tool that has been created. People feel they are really connected with the individual developing their blog, resume or other presence online and corporations, like ours, have the ability to use strong call to action dot-ME names to develop a Web presence with an individual connection.”
“These kinds of entrepreneurs are at the heart of dot-ME’s success,” notes Predrag Lesic, Executive Director of the .ME Registry. “Because we realize the infinite opportunities that exist for the use of dot-ME, the Registry is now encouraging anyone with a good idea and a strong business plan to approach us about using a dot-ME domain in an entrepreneurial venture. Sites like WhyHire.Me and Missouri.Me are prime examples of how and why dot-ME is a pivotal part of the Internet.”

For other examples and articles about the many clever uses of .ME, visit ExploreTheWorldOf.Me. To learn more about the .ME Registry, developing a .ME business idea or to find out how to register a .ME domain, go to www.Domain.Me.

About the .ME Registry:
.ME Registry (the d.b.a. of doMEn, d.o.o.) was chosen by the government of Montenegro to operate the new .ME domain name extension. .ME Registry partners include ME-net, GoDaddy.com and Afilias Limited. Me-Net is located in Montenegro and its principals have beenleaders in the ICT sector in Montenegro, including the privatization of its largest ISP. GoDaddy.com is located in the USA and is the world’s largest domain registrar and the largest paid hostlargest domain name registrar and the largest paid hostname provider in the world, according to Netcraft Ltd. Afilias Limited is headquartered in Ireland and is a leading registry services provider, supporting more than 15 million domains worldwide.

.ME Call To Action Domain Auction Favorites

Although most of my .ME investment is around geo domain names I also think certain verbs and call to action names work very well with the extension. I was just browsing through the 15 call to action domain names that are headed to the exclusive auction at Namejet.com and noticed that several were already over the thousand dollar mark and one over two thousand dollars. Not bad considering the auction has not started yet.

Here is the list of names that are headed to auction:

Chat.me

Photo.me

Monitor.me

Protect.me

Rescue.me

Answer.me

Drive.me

Rate.me

Know.me

Free.me

Review.me

Host.me

Link.me

Fix.me

Friend.me

Out of these, Link.me, currently has the highest bid "pre-auction". Although I think they are all great I personally like Photo.me, Answer.me, and Friend.me. There is obviously quite a bit of interest in the auction, many of these names have over 60 bids currently and I expect that to increase before the backorder deadline for the auction is here.

The deadline for backorder at Namejet for the first group of names is September 24, 2009 at 8am Pacific. Good luck to the bidders!!!

Interview with Steven Sikes Founder of YouAnd.ME and Domainer

Steven Sikes is co-founder of YouAnd.ME, a rapidly growing online dating site. He is also a domain investor who found domaining almost by accident after offers for names came in after he would purchase a name for a new business idea. After seeing the value of domains he began investing and has recently been successful with his .ME domain investments, but without further ado. Here is Steves interview:

Steve, I have to ask, what drove you to travel around the world at 18 years of age?  That sounds like an amazing experience.

I received an academic scholarship to my university, Vanderbilt, and took high level science classes like organic chemistry, theoretical physics and molecular biology my freshman year; and I'd enrolled at the age of 17.  Like many others in my dorm, I was pre-med.  But I was overwhelmed by the course load, while also participating in intramural sports.  

When I returned home for the summer, I worked as a construction worker and read travel books at night. Books by Graham Greene, Hemingway, Bruce Chatwin, and Paul Theroux.  So I decided to break the news to my parents that I was going to take a leave of absence from the university and that I was giving up "pre-med" to pursue a life as a "writer".  Of course, this was some romantic notion and foolhardy at the time.  But my parents always let me follow my own path, so they agreed and I sold my car and used my summer work money to pay for this trip around the world.   I first boarded a Polish freighter ship in Wilmington, NC and went across the Atlantic and got off in Le Havre France.  The "around-the-world" ticket allowed the passenger to use it within one year, with the stipulation that you had to move forward or diagonal in flight, and never back-tracking.  So I combined this global journey with ship, train, bus and air travel, and the occasional hitchhiking.  All in all, it was a fantastic experience and highly educational.  I definitely made it on less than $10 per day, mostly by living in hostels or camping outdoors and cheap eats.    

Care to share any stories from your travels or any or your other outdoor adventures?

The trip opened my eyes to the world and other cultures.  When I enrolled back in the university, I had a new global perspective and increased confidence.  After graduation, I worked at an array of jobs - while trying to write novels - a rare wine buyer, free-lance journalist, teacher, football coach at a prep school.  I soon moved to Paris and enrolled in a graduate cinema program affiliated with the Sorbonne. I lived in Paris for over a year and worked a variety of jobs such as an English teacher, a crewman on a boat that went down the River Seine to Marseilles and eventually through the Mediterranean and the Dardanelles, and did some free-lance writing for local magazines and even worked as a private tutor to a billionaire's daughter - and we got to take her dad's private jet to their country house in Ireland where I got to ride racehorses.  Actually, one of these horses was world-famous and won the Irish Sweepstakes and another won Belmont.     

I then lived in other countries - Mexico and Brazil - and lived in the jungles in Chiapas and the Amazon, and settled in for one year living in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. I supported myself there by writing, working on documentaries, teaching and translating.

 You have a wide and varied background, what drove you to domaining and web development?

Purely by accident.  I had returned to teaching at a few universities, and I took a sabbatical of sorts (non-paid) and hiked part of the Appalachian Trail with my golden retriever who died just last year.  I was tired of my erratic lifestyle, so I decided I would start a business, even though I had no knowledge of business.  I read all these books on writing business plans and starting your own business. This was when Silicon Valley was hot in 1998 with all these start-ups.  So I thought I'd use my language-learning and cross-culture skills to start an e-learning company focused on language learning and cross-culture training.  I learned how to file patents and trademarks and I wrote a business plan and put together a team.  Then, right before I received my first term sheet from investors, a major telecom company contacted me and said they wanted to buy my intellectual property (domain names and trademark). I turned them down over a period of several weeks, but then they made me an offer I could not refuse, so that's how I learned the value of intellectual property. So, now when I start new ventures, I make sure we have solid trademarks, domains, and patents.

I'm currently the co-founder of two telehealth software companies and a Web 2.0 overseas adventure living site, and we have world-class management teams (I'm not one, just a founder) and board members.  I've been very diligent about our IP issues - domains, patents, and trademarks.  For one of the software companies, we had to make a very costly domain acquisition because our company name was already trademarked in a country where we intend to do future business.  So we bought the name and filed a trademark, strictly for this country. 

Care to share some examples of your domain investments?

I really stayed away from investing in domains, because it seemed so arcane and I really did not understand it.  I continued to buy domains, really only as potential names for future companies. And to my surprise, I would receive offers for these names from companies worldwide.

Then I began reading the domain blogs and joining the domain forums and I leaned about the value of premium domains, so I started investing in arenas that I liked and considered to be future trends - mobile technology, apps, green energy, clean tech, and Geos.  Like you, Bruce, I love the GEO space, as it seems to be one of the safest paths to monetization. And maybe this love for Geos is related to all my travels and peregrinations.

My domain portfolio is quite diverse - DOTCOM, DOTME, DOTMOBI, DOTORG, DOTINFO, DOTNET, and some names in other extensions.

I buy lots of domains on the secondary market. In fact, I purchased three solid DOTME GEOS yesterday, and I made an investment in premium DOTME names. I've also sold part of this portfolio for low six figures, which covers my initial investment. Many of the buyers were and are end-users who contacted me, and one buyer acquired several of my names and he and I have become good friends, but since these were private transactions, I think it would be better not to reveal his name and/or contact information.

You have cofounded several online businesses, what have they taught you about marketing online?

They've taught me how little I know. I've learned from my mistakes, and that's why I'm so happy that my current partners are experts in this arena. I'm more of an innovator - I actually enjoy creating apps, algorithms, patents, etc - but I'm re-reading SEO for Dummies. My partners have taught me a lot about text, key words, placement of text, etc., and much more. I'm still a novice in this area. 

You have been a big proponent of .ME on Namepros.com, what drove your belief in .ME?

Some of the reasons I invested in DOTME - it just seemed to mesh with the direction of the web - more personalized and more user-generated content.  I thought the GEOS were great for DOTME  because you could develop sites with reviews, recommendations, etc, and I also invested in DOTME group names such as Teens, Teams, Family, Latinas, Boomers, Baby Boomers, Celebs, as I thought they could be great blogging sites.  I thought diary.me fit the extension well, as well as Hollywood.me and several call-to-action verbs I have like chart.me. 

You have recently had a very successful launch with YouAnd.ME, a tough Niche to crack but you have had success, can you tell us about the project and launch?

The founders and team come from diverse countries and continents (U.S.A, Canada, Europe, India), and we had some solid domains and wanted to start a social media site.  Originally, we were going to create diary software (SaaS) for diary.me, but then we saw all these articles about the online dating boom during the recession,  so we decided to go with that - and we worked a deal for the name YOUAND.ME.  A recent news release states the site YOUAND.ME was started as a way to find ME a date - not exactly true, even though my girlfriend and I did recently break up.

Why has YOUAND.ME been successful to date (pardon the pun)?

• Work, work, work
• YOUAND.ME - the name has been very catchy and it's allowed us to create a brand
• Innovate, innovate, innovate - we keep creating more features, games, widgets, etc
• Extensive and strategic marketing costs and having two SEO experts aboard
• Personalization - engaging our users
• The YOU TUBE videos - seen by over 500,000 persons
• Security - we've invested a lot in creating the most secure social dating site
• Creating a new category - a SOCIAL CONNECT site - which combines dating, social networking and social media and social utility, and we realize this is very ambitious

There have been questions about .ME and SEO , looks like you have succeeded in proving that there is not an issue, any detail syou can share?

We're ranked high in all the search engines. Our traffic was so high that our servers crashed. We're up to about 100,000 page views per day, after launching less than 2 months ago.

We have many mini-sites and we do buy keywords and we also have purchased a number of high-profile dating domains and sites in multiple extensions, including YOUANDME.NET and ONLINEDATE.NET, but YOUAND.ME is the main site. 

You are going to be launching some Apple iPhone apps, facebooks apps, and others, whats your feeling on social network marketing compared to standard online marketing?

Excellent question. I know some "dating" companies have generated more revenues from their apps than their actual sites.  Our apps are very feature-rich, very innovative and we will be able to integrate them into our YOUAND.ME web and mobile sites.  With Facebook, you have a community of 200 million, Hi5 has over 80 million, and the iPhone apps really provide great marketing opportunities as well as revenue generators.  The same for Blackberry Apps, as well as Android, and the entire social networking companies that use www.opensocial.org.  Obviously, these sites and platforms enable you to tap into a large user base - bigger than most countries.  But the caveat - you must have engaging and compelling apps, or they won't catch on and stick.  I hope our apps will.   

One question that always comes up these days is the drop in PPC revenue, how do you plan to combat that in your web development and domain investments?

Another great question I'm not really qualified to answer.  I'm focusing on increasing the value of the company with more innovative and proprietary features, and we also look at indirect competitors who are getting major companies to advertise on their sites - because they've reached the sweet spots - large customer base and the desired demographics.  We hope we'll have 100,000 members on YOUAND.ME by the end of 2009, and at the present growth rate, we should be there.

Per the other domain investments with premium domains, you are right - lots if uncertainty there. It seems for sites and companies to succeed, you will need well-developed sites, a brand, and a tribe (a following).  But what do I know - I went around the world and I still haven't "found" myself...still searching for the answers...and a girlfriend (just kidding) 

 

Thanks to Steve for taking the time to answer these questions!  I hope you have enjoyed his story.