Twitch.tv was purchased this week by Amazon for $970 million, the little experiment that grew out of Justin.tv has become a major player in online video. For a long time it was rumored that Google would acquire Twitch. Now we know it is Amazon and two questions remain, 1) When will Amazon buy Twitch.com ? and 2) For how much ?
The UFC also had an issue with the .com getting spillover traffic from its UFC.tv and eventually purchased UFC.com. UFC.tv shows videos while the .com is the main hub for the UFC brand.
This situation has some similarities, although not identical to Flickr and Flicker.com. The similarities exist in the fact that both Flickr.com and Twitch.tv were acquired by one of the major players online and both were leaking a substantial amount of traffic to other domains they did not control.
Flicker.com was registered in 1998 and Flickr.com was registered in 2003. Flickr went on to be wildly successful and was acquired in 2005 by Yahoo. Flicker.com was acquired by Hong Kong business Ashanti for $55,000 in 2006. Back in 2007, Yahoo reportedly offered the owners $600,000, but was turned down. Yahoo then filed a lawsuit against Ashanti for cybersquatting, trademark infringement, false designation of origin, dilution, and unfair competition. The case was dismissed last week by Yahoo after the parties came to some sort of agreement. (via Petapixel)
Flicker had posted in March of 2006 that it was not for sale and provided a link to those looking for Flickr. At the end of June 2006 the site was updated to say that a new website would be up shortly at the beginning of July. On July 7 there was a new homepage but it was just a parked page.
Then in May of 2007 the domain that was not for sale, was for sale.
So from the 2006 stats we see Flicker was getting 5,000 unique visitors a day.
By 2009 the stats looked like this:
So now back to Twitch, in a story that was done in the New York Times, the writer spoke to Peter Kay the owner of Twitch.com:
Peter Kay has owned Twitch.com since the mid-1990s. Before Twitch.tv, which was started just three years ago, he had barely any traffic to his site. Now, he routinely gets 40,000 unique visitors a day for his site, which promotes his music educational apps; on Tuesday, he got 60,000 visitors. Yesterday, he sold 10 apps about Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” at $5.99 each.
“I had no master plan,” he said. “But it keeps me in beer money.”
It would seem to me that a company with the size and status of Amazon should want to purchase Twitch.com and get those 40,000 daily unique visitors coming back into the fold.
If you owned Twitch.com what would your asking price be knowing that the buyer is Amazon ?
Why buy Twitch.com when they can buy Twitch3D.com Games are in 3D not 2D smart move is to buy the 3D.com when the 3D Monitors are out this will fit perfect.
They would buy Twitch.com for the traffic.
Let me guess, you’re selling Twitch3D.com?
I would find a better way to monetize the site – maybe something along the lines of UTube.com – and not put a price on the domain but just tell inquirers that offers are being considered. How much I would accept would then depend on how much the site is making, my estimate of future traffic, my cash flow position, what I could do with the funds I would receive, and my guess, from any clues I have, as to how high the most interested party will bid.
You are right Jon, certainly not the best way to monetize, now I wonder if Mr.Kay is choosing that so there is no confusion.
Good job, awesome parallelism, and nice tie-in research, Hackney.
I wanted to add that:
Somebody has managed to multiplex domain names; basically Twitch.com is separate and different from http://www.twitch.com and yet different from http://www.twitch.com, and yet separate from http://twitch.com; domain registrants are basically being boxed in the shadows.
I don’t know exactly who’s doing it, if it’s the registrars, or big search engines, or even ICANN’s employees themselves. But, Registrants own nothing no matter how much they pay for domain names. The domain names are manipulated to yield very little.
I can prove it.
Another lesson in Domains and Branding/Marketing.
Pay Now or Pay Later.
a HEMORRHAGE of 1.2 Million is a serious thing by choosing the wrong extension in addition to most likely added marketing costs …
the Low conversion on the .com is not a surprise since they are looking fro whatever the .TV it offering..
Today Morgan Linton reports the pruchase of decoded.com by decoded.co… I wonder why?
And the hits keep on coming:
o.co deli.cio.us twitch.tv decoded .co …
sooner or later Madison Avenue will speak about this.
In the meantime newbie investors/ domainers are still blinded by the New gTLD tabloid press…
highly touting the 2 Million ‘combined registration mark’ when as of today there is 10 Million .org’s (5 fold) and 5 Million .info’s (2.5 fold)
wake up and smell the coffee.
Yeah I wrote that story on MorganLInton, Domo and yeah even with all this choice if people get some money they still pay up for the .com. I don’t that trend is changing for awhile.
sorry I missed that, you are all over the place…