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Porn.com' Record May Be Shattered at `WallStreet.com' Auction
By Ville Heiskanen
Oct. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Forget the randy jokes. The question of whether money is hotter than sex may be answered today as the WallStreet.com Web address goes on sale.
The reserve price range is $4 million to $5 million, said Monte Cahn, chief executive officer of Moniker.com, which is managing the auction in Hollywood, Florida, and acting as broker. The final price may exceed the $9.5 million paid earlier this year for Porn.com, he said.
Anything close would make the virtual Wall Street worth more than a spot on the real Wall Street. A seat on the New York Stock Exchange is valued at about $7 million, based on the terms of its 2006 merger with Archipelago Holdings Inc. and today's closing price of NYSE Euronext shares. The exchange, the world's largest equity market and Wall Street's best known symbol, sits in the heart of New York's financial district.
``Domains are virtual real estate,'' said Jeremiah Johnston, chief operating officer at domain broker Sedo.com, a unit of Montabaur, Germany-based Adlink Internet Media AG. ``If you want to have the Park Avenue address, it's going to be expensive.''
The value of Web addresses is appreciating 20 percent this year, according to Cahn, whose Pompano Beach, Florida, company is the largest U.S. organizer of live Internet domain auctions. That beats the performance of the Standard & Poor's 500 Index, which is up 9.6 percent.
The growth comes as Internet use and online advertising surge.
Billions of Searches
More than 750 million people age 15 and older used search engines in August, making 61 billion searches, or almost 81 queries per person, according to Reston, Virginia-based ComScore Inc., the second-largest supplier of Web-site viewer rankings after Nielsen//NetRatings. The Web advertising market in the U.S. will climb 29 percent this year to $21.7 billion and then more than double by 2011, according to EMarketer Inc., a research firm in New York.
The Inter@ctive Week Internet Index, an index developed by the American Stock Exchange and Ziff-Davis Publishing Inc. to measure the performance of Internet infrastructure and access companies, gained about 35 percent over the past year.
The expansion doesn't necessarily mean easy profits for those owning one of the 138 million domains already taken or those coming up with an appealing new address.
``Domain names are not that important anymore,'' said David Card, an analyst at JupiterResearch in New York. ``Seven or 10 years ago, it made a difference. Nowadays, because search engines are so good, it's not nearly as important.''
Sought-After Domains
The most sought-after domains are short and generic ones ending in ``.com,'' the most common suffix, said Johnston, 31. Barnes & Noble Inc. has Books.com, Johnson & Johnson owns Baby.com and GlaxoSmithKline Plc has Asthma.com.
Johnston's firm last year brokered the $3 million sale of Vodka.com to a Russian brand that is seeking to expand in North America.
The number of sales commanding prices of $10,000 or more is ``significantly'' higher this year than last year, Johnston said.
The average sale price of domain names is about $300-$500, Cahn said. That compares with an initial cost of as little as $8 to register one at sites such as GoDaddy.com and Moniker.com., which is part of privately held Seevast Corp., based in New York.
Computer.com and Taxes.com may each fetch $1 million or more at today's auction, where 251 addresses may be sold for a total of as much as $20 million, Cahn estimated. His firm arranged the Porn.com sale in May.
Caribbean Casino
WallStreet.com has been idle since it was sold four years ago for $2.3 million by a Caribbean-based casino, Cahn said. That company paid $1 million for it in 1999 and ran it as a gambling site, letting people bet on the stock market's movements. The casino decided to sell after the Internet bubble crashed, said Cahn, 42.
He said the name is being offered at auction by a European Internet entrepreneur and two other investors, whom he declined to identify.
While the real Wall Street, named for a defensive stockade built by Dutch settlers three centuries ago, symbolizes the U.S. finance industry, it is in some ways a shadow of its former self.
In the 1950s, most of the New York Stock Exchange firms that had offices in the New York region were located in lower Manhattan. Today, following the migration of firms to midtown that began in the 1970s, American Express Co., American International Group Inc., Bank of New York Mellon Corp., Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. are among the few big names left.
Even idle, with just links to other Web sites, WallStreet.com is a big draw, Cahn said. It attracts as many as 2,000 visits a day from people looking for banking, investment or tourism information, he said.
``It has great brand value because it's Wall Street.''
To contact the reporter on this story: Ville Heiskanen in New York at vheiskanen @ bloomberg .net STORY
____
Peace!
Dan
By Ville Heiskanen
Oct. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Forget the randy jokes. The question of whether money is hotter than sex may be answered today as the WallStreet.com Web address goes on sale.
The reserve price range is $4 million to $5 million, said Monte Cahn, chief executive officer of Moniker.com, which is managing the auction in Hollywood, Florida, and acting as broker. The final price may exceed the $9.5 million paid earlier this year for Porn.com, he said.
Anything close would make the virtual Wall Street worth more than a spot on the real Wall Street. A seat on the New York Stock Exchange is valued at about $7 million, based on the terms of its 2006 merger with Archipelago Holdings Inc. and today's closing price of NYSE Euronext shares. The exchange, the world's largest equity market and Wall Street's best known symbol, sits in the heart of New York's financial district.
``Domains are virtual real estate,'' said Jeremiah Johnston, chief operating officer at domain broker Sedo.com, a unit of Montabaur, Germany-based Adlink Internet Media AG. ``If you want to have the Park Avenue address, it's going to be expensive.''
The value of Web addresses is appreciating 20 percent this year, according to Cahn, whose Pompano Beach, Florida, company is the largest U.S. organizer of live Internet domain auctions. That beats the performance of the Standard & Poor's 500 Index, which is up 9.6 percent.
The growth comes as Internet use and online advertising surge.
Billions of Searches
More than 750 million people age 15 and older used search engines in August, making 61 billion searches, or almost 81 queries per person, according to Reston, Virginia-based ComScore Inc., the second-largest supplier of Web-site viewer rankings after Nielsen//NetRatings. The Web advertising market in the U.S. will climb 29 percent this year to $21.7 billion and then more than double by 2011, according to EMarketer Inc., a research firm in New York.
The Inter@ctive Week Internet Index, an index developed by the American Stock Exchange and Ziff-Davis Publishing Inc. to measure the performance of Internet infrastructure and access companies, gained about 35 percent over the past year.
The expansion doesn't necessarily mean easy profits for those owning one of the 138 million domains already taken or those coming up with an appealing new address.
``Domain names are not that important anymore,'' said David Card, an analyst at JupiterResearch in New York. ``Seven or 10 years ago, it made a difference. Nowadays, because search engines are so good, it's not nearly as important.''
Sought-After Domains
The most sought-after domains are short and generic ones ending in ``.com,'' the most common suffix, said Johnston, 31. Barnes & Noble Inc. has Books.com, Johnson & Johnson owns Baby.com and GlaxoSmithKline Plc has Asthma.com.
Johnston's firm last year brokered the $3 million sale of Vodka.com to a Russian brand that is seeking to expand in North America.
The number of sales commanding prices of $10,000 or more is ``significantly'' higher this year than last year, Johnston said.
The average sale price of domain names is about $300-$500, Cahn said. That compares with an initial cost of as little as $8 to register one at sites such as GoDaddy.com and Moniker.com., which is part of privately held Seevast Corp., based in New York.
Computer.com and Taxes.com may each fetch $1 million or more at today's auction, where 251 addresses may be sold for a total of as much as $20 million, Cahn estimated. His firm arranged the Porn.com sale in May.
Caribbean Casino
WallStreet.com has been idle since it was sold four years ago for $2.3 million by a Caribbean-based casino, Cahn said. That company paid $1 million for it in 1999 and ran it as a gambling site, letting people bet on the stock market's movements. The casino decided to sell after the Internet bubble crashed, said Cahn, 42.
He said the name is being offered at auction by a European Internet entrepreneur and two other investors, whom he declined to identify.
While the real Wall Street, named for a defensive stockade built by Dutch settlers three centuries ago, symbolizes the U.S. finance industry, it is in some ways a shadow of its former self.
In the 1950s, most of the New York Stock Exchange firms that had offices in the New York region were located in lower Manhattan. Today, following the migration of firms to midtown that began in the 1970s, American Express Co., American International Group Inc., Bank of New York Mellon Corp., Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. are among the few big names left.
Even idle, with just links to other Web sites, WallStreet.com is a big draw, Cahn said. It attracts as many as 2,000 visits a day from people looking for banking, investment or tourism information, he said.
``It has great brand value because it's Wall Street.''
To contact the reporter on this story: Ville Heiskanen in New York at vheiskanen @ bloomberg .net STORY
____
Peace!
Dan
