Ron Jackson reported the news today as part of his weekly report on DnJournal.com, that the domain name Dolphin.co sold for $48K.
The seller was the .Co registry.
The buyer was Dolphin Energy which is a big oil company out of the United Arab Emirates.
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, January 26, 2012:
“”Dolphin Energy Limited today announced that it has acquired the Internet domain name ‘dolphin.co’ from .CO Internet S.A.S., the company that manages the .CO root domain.”
“The company will use the domain name ‘dolphin.co’ to enhance its existing online presence with a short, memorable domain that will help the company to engage with its stakeholders locally and across the Middle East region more easily.”
“The company has also taken the opportunity to register the both ‘dolphin’ and ‘dolphinenergy’ names under the Arabic .emirates and .qatar root domains respectively.”
“Dolphin Energy transports natural gas from Qatar to the emirates of the UAE and Oman. The move to acquire the ‘dolphin.co’ domain name comes at a time when there is an increase in the number of companies acquiring .CO domain names.”
“”Dolphin Energy was established in March 1999 as an initiative of the Government of Abu Dhabi.
The founders had always conceived Dolphin Energy as a force for international cooperation – one that would unite the vision and resources of the region with multinational capital and expertise. Total of France was accordingly invited to become a shareholder in Dolphin Energy during 2000. After a further selection process, Occidental Petroleum of the USA became the company’s second international partner in 2002.
The three Dolphin Energy Limited shareholders are Mubadala Development Company with 51 percent, and Total and Occidental Petroleum with 24.5 percent each. Mubadala Development Company is wholly owned by the Government of Abu Dhabi.
Now that the price has been released it another nice .Co sale to a major company.
Congrats to the .Co registry and Dolphin Energy
Registry sucks for hoarding all the good names, greedy pigs
.Co is now officially your new King.
Price all your one word premium .Co domain names accordingly.
.Co really is better in many ways than .com
it combines the best of both worlds, .com and mobile
.Co = .com + mobility
wow, I am genius
sometimes I even amaze myself.
.Co = .com + mobility
would be a great banner advertisement.
If Calle and registry uses this, I claim first copyright and trademark rights on the above phrase. The phrase is got to be worth $100k right ?
I claim rights to all above permutations as well, like
.Co = .com + mobile
.Co = mobile + .com
.Co = mobility + .com
but the concept is got to be mine.
this is a new world folks.
adjust or be left out.
OK. I was waiting for some great .co news and here is some! Thanks for reporting this MHB! They didn’t hoard all of the great names. I have a lot of good ones.
Quick question. I own Coincidence.co and if you go to Coincidence.com it goes to GE healthcare site, any reason why GE would own that name? Just seems weird to me.
there are hundreds of
.Co
sales happening everyday, unreported.
what is reported here by for sedo and afternic is probably <1% of actual sales that go on in the world.
for example
I have sold
gev.co for $3,000.00
gvn.co for $1,500.00
and 12 other .co name sales I have made recently have not even seen the light of day in getting reported.
I would say congrats to the registry, but I really don’t have any idea why Dolphin.co was reserved to start with.
Too bad other extensions don’t get the same publicity across the domain world based on a handful of isolated sales.
Brad
When I saw the headline I assumed this would be another Mike Mann sale. I don’t think any domainer would have thought dolphin.co could go for so much.
That’s good news again for the .co registry, congratulations to the buyer and seller.
@Ron
Tha’s not true, i have at least 60 one word generic names that i managed to pick up from the beginning of .co.
Brad@
you have a point, that was not a domain name that you hold on because its powerful.
I have,
charges.co
We had few .co sales up to 20,000 and know some people who has similar ones.
Unfortunately they were not public.
.co overall has been a bust, with the amount godaddy has pushed this, the registry seems to have timely sales, to keep the suckers buying.
.Co will be a required domain for any legitimate business to have.
not having a .Co or .Co(s), or the .Co is suicidal.
all hail to the new King of the internet
.Co
many here will not forget this until death.
this is how life changing, life altering experience
.Co
has been to most people here.
it is no exaggeration to say that
.Co
has been transformative to every living person on this planet,
not having to even mention every single person that comes to this site.
the fact of the matter is
.Co
is where the future is.
godaddy already knows this.
without
.Co
godaddy has no growth, that is why when you go to
godaddy’s home page
.Co is prominently placed side by side, equal with .com
they know that their future growth is with .Co
period, end of story. no one can deny this.
@Robert
You are not adding anything to the conversation…just noise…please stop.
@Ron
a bust? by what measure? are they supposed to have 100 million domains out there already?
@ christopher
a bust is when people don’t renew their premium domains like the godaddy auction drop in august…..you never see .com names like that drop, people couldn’t be bothered to pay $30 renewal fees… .xxx is going to be worse, I guess the cheerleaders got you all worked up, keep buying, let’s see if you can pay your renewal fees, ask the best of the best, traffic is just not their as originally thought…
@Ron
“traffic is just not their as originally thought…”
you are about as ignorant as stupid can come. you give domainers a bad name.
traffic doesn’t just come.
you have to build a quality site and then they will come.
The great thing about
.Co
is that in all the numerous independent studies .Co ranks equally if not better than .com
for the same quality level site.
@Robert
It’s time to unplug your computer and step outside for some fresh air.
Really nice sale.
strange they haven’t acquired (also) the dolphin.com domain that is owned and run by a Dolphin Camp
and/or Dolph.in
@Ron
There may have been drops last summer (as you have in any TLD), but the namespace still has “over 1.1 million registrations” (source: DomainIncite.com), more than in June, a month before the expiration date, when the Registry announced the millionth registration.
@mr Cline
Stop your rant!
“Lightning Strikes” sale. These keep the believers believing, scratching off those lotto tickets…
If we were to add up all the net profit made by domainers selling .co names on the aftermarket and from that total, subtract the associated costs domainers bear to acquire and carry all the .co domains that are currently held in a speculative capacity, there would be a massive negative significant balance (Unless, of course, you’re the .co registry)
go.pro sold for $40K, per that same DNJournal report, yet I don’t see anyone running to flog the .pro horse. We all know the reasons why.
.co is not common in the UAE. Everyone will be typing in .COM.
many .com owners had to settle with getting a 2 or 3 word .com instead of the one word .com that they craved for…. many domainers know that feeling.
if you can’t have the .com, a shorter alternative that looks good….looks good.
Really interesting sale comp. Congrats to both Buyer and Seller. Thoughts on .co versus .me?
Full disclosure: we own energy.me
Just out of curiosity, how much would appraise the .com counterpart at?
@Robert Cline – “you are about as ignorant as stupid can come. you give domainers a bad name.
traffic doesn’t just come.
you have to build a quality site and then they will come.”
Traffic does ‘just come’ – quality names get it; .co names don’t. If you have to build a quality site to get it, then you can use any extension – .ws would do.
Congrats to dolphin.com for the increase in traffic they’ll get when people type it in wrong. Some random company in the Middle East bought a .co, stop the presses.
And it’s not like they’re giving up their main site, dolphinenergy.com
@Johnnie
What I find interesting is that, in UAE, they’re so aware of the extension: “The move to acquire the ‘dolphin.co’ domain name comes at a time when there is an increase in the number of companies acquiring .CO domain names”
zawya.com/story.cfm/sidZAWYA20120126095545
That’s just a press release. If dolphin.co wasn’t for sale, they would buy dolphin.something else. How many here have even heard of this company before they bought this domain? Probably nobody.
“increase in the number of companies acquiring .CO domain names”
You can say that with just about any extension. And .co is just too close to .com, will always be a .com leak.
Again, we’ll have to see what the do with this purchase. It might just be a redirect to their .com for all we know.
Actually, I just typed in dolphin.co, it’s exactly that. Just a redirect to their .com.
@Johnnie
“How many here have even heard of this company before they bought this domain? Probably nobody.”
Exactly. That’s why I find interesting that an unknown company in Middle East knew about .CO and was willing to spend all that money on an ‘unproven’ TLD.
All that money? They’re in the oil business, this is a dinner bill to them. They’re Dolphin Energy, it’s not surprising they like the word Dolphin. They might/or will have that term in other extensions as well. What’s more interesting is that a press release (not a real news story) from some company we’ve never heard of in the Middle East is big news. How about a big company we might have actually heard of, like an Overstock.com or something.
I’d be a lot more thrilled if it were a fellow investor’s sale.
I’m invested in .CO, but I find it interesting that the Registry has put Buy It Now prices on a lot of the Premium Reserved/Restricted names. One could argue that it’s because they know priced names sell faster, but with good keywords, you’d think they’d be leaving money on the table. I don’t recall seeing a lot the Sedo/BIN links in WhoIS searches before. They’re either selling for faster visibility and higher sales volume, or they’re selling quickly to get out.
“but with good keywords, you’d think they’d be leaving money on the table.”
If you’re talking about the ones they recently listed at Sedo, which can be found at sedo.co, they’re priced so ridiculously high IMO, that if they get any sale at all, they wouldn’t be leaving any money on the table at all, they would be making some very nice sales. They have like 22 listed at $100,000 and up.
@ Johnnie
I’m talking about ones that are listed at Sedo for between $7,000 – $20,000. I don’t have a list because they’re just names I’ve run across doing (extensive) WhoIS searching. I agree the $100,000 prices are a little wacky.
@ Johnnie
I was able to find a few examples of their lower-priced names: Chef.co and Conversion.co, both for $7,000. Not
(the “not” is a typo). Pressed submit a little too quickly.
Ah ok, must be something they’re doing recently. The 726 they put up at Sedo recently (can be viewed at sedo.co) range from $10,000 to $150,000. Looking at them, I thought they were Buy Now as well, but those are listing prices and set to Make Offer. I see the ones you mentioned as Buy Now.
@Advermain
it is good to see that even you recognize the obvious
tangible benefits to holding the .Co domains.
you said it yourself:
It is shorter then .com
Abbriviation of company
just 2 of the obvious advantages but there are hundreds of benefits.
vsp.me and any LLLs in most extensions especially in
.Co, .com, etc. are very valuable.
dolphin.co sold for $48,000
ape.co
monkey.co
whale.co
kangaroo.co
elephant.co
moose.co
fox.co
coyote.co
chimp.co
raccoon.co
dog.co
cat.co
are all worth at least $48,000 now.
The never ending .co saga.
Started buying domains around the launch of .Co made all the mistakes that everyone makes regging some hand regs and buying into a new extension, namely .co. Fortunately I listened to what I read on boards like this and didnt go crazy with either mistake.
I used to read the comments of people saying .Com is king and a part of me would think along the lines of “these people are invested in .Com so thats why they are saying this” however the opposite is the truth. Robert Cline bangs the .Co drum because he is invested in it, not because his opinion is grounded in any reality.
I wouldnt reccomend .Co to anyone as an investment to sell on. Even though there is leakage to .Com I would say that .Co would be a good choice for building a website on, you can pick up a domain for £30-£500 and thats nigh on any domain name, forget these highlighted big sales they are smoke and mirrors. People say “then youre going to have to buy the .Com” well quite frankly if youre able to do so it shows that the .Co site has made money so that argument is moot for me.
So anyone my ten pence on this is that you should avoid buying .Co to resell and to put this into perspective, as opposed to having:
Every animal on the planet
Every plant on the planet
Every colour known to man
Every country on Earth
Every 3 letter variation
all in .Co
I would take:
One domain name like a forex.com or a finance.com.
Without blinking.
@ Robert
“ape.co
monkey.co
whale.co
kangaroo.co
elephant.co
moose.co
fox.co
coyote.co
chimp.co
raccoon.co
dog.co
cat.co
are all worth at least $48,000 now.”
Your logic is so flawed.
Brad
@real world
I too would trade all my domains for
finance.com
that’s and easy call there.
but all in all
.Co
is where to build and invest at the present moment.
calling it like it is.
Who heard of these guys before now?
No one!
So the price was worth it just for the exposure
A one page ad in a paper costs more
They got their moneys worth already!
I have tpu.co any ofers ?