Sedo.com announced today that brokered the sale of the domain name Me.Me to Yahoo!.
The domain name was previously owned by the .Me Registry.
Yahoo! has acquired the domain name to enhance the brand of its social networking site, meme.yahoo.com, which allows users to connect and share their common interests.
“Thanks to Sedo’s services and the consultation of Sedo broker, Jeff Gabriel, we were able to obtain the Me.Me domain name, which is an essential component of our online branding strategy,” said Antonio Silveira, director of product development and engineering, Yahoo!. “Sedo went the extra mile by proactively recommending the domain for our campaign and utilizing their existing relationship with the .Me Registry to quickly and securely acquire it on our behalf.”
“We are delighted to extend our relationship with one of the Internet’s most recognized brands, and help Yahoo! determine the best domain name strategy to fully engage its social networking audience,” said Jeremiah Johnston, chief operating officer at Sedo. “It’s clear that Yahoo! understands the value of domains as part of a highly effective online marketing campaign, and we are confident that Sedo was able to help Yahoo! secure optimal names for their current and future online campaigns””
Good to see one of the leading internet companies in the world embrace the .Me extension.
“Good to see one of the leading internet companies in the world embrace the .Me extension.”
If anything, Mike, I wouldn’t characterize this single purchase as anything more than a “toe in the water” one-off purchase.
Now; if they own (I haven’t checked) and/or buy perhaps 20-100+ .me domains (which if they haven’t already done probably never will), that might constitute an “embrace.”
Steve
My understanding is that Yahoo has plans to make this into a “big site”.
If so, its a huge boost to the extension.
Steve,
Its not the number of .ME names that matter, that only matters to domainers and domainers only. Its the way they use the name that matters and show they understand the brand.
Awesome news, I remember hearing rumblings of this and thinking how big this could be.
Bruce
That will be good news for .me, if more companies like that use them then it may get somewhere, any idea how much it was bought for ?
Anyone buying .me with the use “middle east” in mind ? I’v seen a couple of people using them for that before, one was a marketing company as far as i remember.
PS – Yahoo bought the middle east website maktoob.com in 2009, wonder if they will use it for that market ??
In fact, M.E. also stands for Middle East, and for few things more.
Now, what would you do about me2.me?
be2.be is a good-going dating site in Belgium.
There is a special programme for premium .me domain names. You either provide the traffic, or $20k. Whatever you find cheaper.
Now, let us start guessing which option did Yahoo! chose, and how was the Sedo paid if that was the traffic.
Or meme.com
me.me or meme.com – whoever is the owner of the latter, he should be planning for long vacations by now.
Brands
The guy who owns meme.com wanted a LOT of money for the domain before the announcement.
So does the owner of mimi.com.
They had something cooking already in January with its.you:
http://ofcour.se./dot-me/2010/01/02/yahoo-is-going-for-ou/
“Its not the number of .ME names that matter, that only matters to domainers and domainers only.”
Disagree, Bruce. The number of .me in existence; and even more important the number in actual, real (read: selling products, services; blogs, news sites, etc) use are in fact critical factors in the success (read: sites that make money and/or have huge visitor/user counts) of an extension.
Which has virtually nothing to do with domainers.
“My understanding is that Yahoo has plans to make this into a ‘big site.'”
Yea; that does matter, Mike.
But if this is the only site Yahoo promotes in a big, measurable way; and especially if few other large/high-visibility cos do the same; .me will, as I believe, never be any bigger than the .biz.
In fact, as bad as .biz is, it’s still far better than .me for product/service-selling sites.
Just more free money to those who hold the same words in .com.
meme is twitter clone !
3 more of those Big Players joining the extension in the next 10 years and
they will have something serious going on for them …
msn.me is owned by microsoft and goes to a bing page, sounds nicer than me.me too 🙂
@Steve M – My point was it is not the number of .ME sites YAHOO buys which is the point you were trying to make in your initial comment. So my comment stands still. The number of .ME domains bought by Yahoo only matters to domainers.
Me.Me…would have done better with hoo.me or Iam.me.
Anytime a big wig company publicizes a new trend or direction such as using the .me domain, it drives the real estate up…by how much…we will never know.
Personally – the best kept and most succesful ventures remain private until they are ready for release, so i think Yahoo is in trouble and are hoping to get as much exposure from this as possible.
if it were me, I would have opted for something different