Leap-day-marriage-domains

Here's an interesting domain-related twist on the age-old connection between the calendric anomaly of the leap day and marriage. It seems that couples nowadays are not only naming the event of their wedding as a 'leap day marriage,' but also registering domains to that effect. Check out these leap day marriage websites. Congrats to:

Heather and Tim
http://leapdaywedding2008.com/

Erin and Steve
http://steveanderinleapday2008.com/

and Cathy and Stephen
http://leapday2008.com/

For those domainers out there, leapday2012.com is not taken!

LinkedIn goes mobile; VCist owns dotcom wordnumber

LinkedIn, the business-themed social networking site, has gone mobile. The site's mobile address m.linkedin.com is pretty laughable considering only one of the letters in 'LinkedIn' can be typed out with a single tap; the rest are multiple-tap letters for non-QWERTY cell phone users. LinkedIn takes 18 taps to execute w/o the 'm', the dots and the 'com'. The grand tally: 28 taps in total - phew!

So much for LinkedIn being at the forefront of the convergence of technology with business networking. By the time a user types out LinkedIn's entire mobile URL, he/she will forget the name of the guy - 'Bob Johnson, or was it John Roberts? ' - they just met whom they wanted to view the corresponding LinkedIn profile.

It would behoove LinkedIn to obtain its dotcom wordnumber, 54653346.com, and that brings us to a nice surprise. Finally, Jamptap is pleased to report that a dotcom wordnumber is owned not by any of the half-dozen major wordnumber investors that have more-or-less dominated the market. 54653346.com is owned by this guy, a venture capitalist and private equity investor. So, wouldn't you agree that this is an interesting development, signaling that the VC community may be (quietly) getting in on the wordnumber action? The 54653346.com registrant, owner of just 93 other domains, has forwarded his domain to a parking page. For now.

If you start drooling on your cell, maybe you should see a doctor.

Cell phone-cancer link found by Tel Aviv University scientist
February 21, 2008
Newsmax.com

An Israeli scientist, Dr. Siegal Sadetzki, has found a link between cell phone usage and the development of tumors.

Dr. Sadetzki, a physician, epidemiologist and lecturer at Tel Aviv University, published the results of a study recently in the American Journal of Epidemiology, in which she and her colleagues found that heavy cell phone users were subject to a higher risk of benign and malignant tumors of the salivary gland.

Those who used a cell phone heavily on the side of the head where the tumor developed were found to have an increased risk of about 50% for developing a tumor of the main salivary gland (parotid), compared to those who did not use cell phones.

The fact that the study was done on an Israeli population is significant....

"This unique population has given us an indication that cell phone use is associated with cancer," adds Sadetzki, whose study investigated nearly 500 people who had been diagnosed with benign and malignant tumors of the salivary gland.

Controlled Study Reveals Link

The study’s subjects were asked to detail their cell phone use patterns in terms of how frequently they used one, and the average length of calls. They were compared to a sample of about 1,300 healthy control subjects.

The study also found an increased risk of cancer for heavy users who lived in rural areas. Due to fewer antennas, cell phones in rural areas need to emit more radiation to communicate effectively.

Sadetzki predicts that, over time, the greatest effects will be found in heavy users and children.

While anecdotal evidence has been substantial, the consistency of the results of this study support an association between cell phone use and these tumors.

....Parents should be vigilant about their children’s using speakers or hands-free devices, and about limiting the number of calls and amount of time their children spend on the phone.

"Some technology that we use today carries a risk. The question is not if we use it, but how we use it," concludes Sadetzki.

...Her research is part of the international Interphone Study, which attempts to determine an association between cell phones and several types of brain and parotid gland tumors.

Gold mining - numeric domainers get your pans ready

While we are watching our previous list get whittled down daily, we thought to help build the momentum for NNNNNN.com's, 6 digit numeric domains, with the mac-daddy of all NNNNNN.com lists. Here's a list of the most common 6 letter words that we found as compiled by Princeton University. That list yields 2,891 words and of that amount 2,156 words are not registered in their dotcom wordnumber. For example, the wordnumber for the 6-letter word 'Genius' is 436487. Genius is indeed a brand of a company and its dotcom wordnumber (domain) 436487.com is not registered; it's available. So are over 2,000 wordnumbers for generic words that are currently brands and others that may be brands one day.

New-Zealand based WordDial has registered tens of thousands (or more) numeric domain wordnumbers for GENERIC WORDS. Many of these generic words below probably are duds, but like the good ol' days of panning for gold, you gotta keep swirling the sand and you're certain to find a few nuggets.

For a bunch of reasons including our efforts to try to keep all blogposts to a consistent length, we decided to take down the list and provide a short sample instead. At some juncture in the future, we'll repost the list in its entirety.
222837.COM abater
223828.COM abduct
225328.COM abject
225283.COM ablate
225293.COM ablaze
226273.COM aboard
226863.COM abound
227233.COM abrade
227623.COM abroad
227368.COM absent
227672.COM absorb
227873.COM absurd
222368.COM accent
222378.COM accept
222673.COM accord
222783.COM accrue
222873.COM accuse
223842.COM acetic
224464.COM aching
224342.COM acidic
227848.COM acquit
227677.COM across
228825.COM actual

NNNNN.com full-buyout

Late last night the full buyout of NNNNN.com was completed. Credit must be given to those who played significant roles in this unprecedented and major accomplishment in numeric domaining history:

The grand prize goes to rkbdomain, who officially started the buyout 'campaign' and, through long days of hard work on his blog and domaining forums, carried just about everyone over the river of doubt to the other shores of NuDom-don. The second prize goes to another domainer who actually predicted (last month) that February 2008 would be when the numeric domain floodgates would burst open. That person said something to the effect that 2/08 would be when domainers 'on the fringes' will 'scurry in an effort to own a piece of the numeric domain rock' after the dam broke. Would that person care to step forward and claim credit for predicting that a buyout would occur before even rkbdomain did and also offer up any more predictions? Finally, we shamelessly would like to take the third prize for predicting the buyout would happen by Friday - which was more or less true depending on which time zone in the U.S. you were in when it happened. There are many 4th, 5th, 6th, etc... prizes but those folks will get their rewards in the long-term through appreciation of their recently acquired numeric domain portfolios.

Perhaps even more significant than the full-buyout of NNNNN.com's is the recent explosive growth of the numeric domain community. Dozens, perhaps more than a hundred, new domainers now have their fingers in the numeric domain pie and, naturally, they will be seeking more information and updates about trends in this field. Already, questions on NamePros.com are being asked about prior sales history of NNNNN.com's, the future aftermarket picture of NNNNN.com's, how to determine which numeric domains spell words (on a phone keypad) and if there will be a market for those dotcom wordnumbers.

What efforts can help maintain this momentum in numeric domain acquisition after the NNNNN.com full-buyout? What catalyst can serve to reinject the domaining community with vigor and reason to continue portfolio building and discussion? In our opinion, significantly more attention would be given to the numeric domain industry if the financial details of content partnership deals and sales was made public or, at the very least, better known in even vague terms. Most of the hot deals surrounding dotcom wordnumbers, for instance, are happening privately and account for more than $100,000 annually exchanging hands between investors, companies and through content partnerships. Investors and mobile directory content firms can help invigorate the marketplace and the perception of this niche field by increasing transparency. Utilizing press releases and providing details on their websites concerning successful sales or trades, partnership details and plans for numeric domain development could serve as the catalyst to take the current momentum with numeric domain speculation to the next, exciting level. The NNNNN.com buyout was mostly driven according to the principle of scarcity - that since LLLL.com's and NNNN.com's are gone/scarce but appreciating/selling for nice amounts, therefore so will NNNNN.com's. Little attention (and thought) was focused on the dotcom wordnumber arena - numeric domains that spell words. Looking around at other blogs by numeric domainers (actually there is just one 'other' blog for now), it is clear that this is where the most money can be made. However there is no proof. There are arguably no full details on dotcom wordnumber sales - that state the actual domain and actual sales price. What the numeric domaining community needs is for the top-players to share more details to give their colleagues a rationale for investing in NNNNNN.com or 7+N.com wordnumbers. Without provision of data that is needed for investors to benchmark, appraise and valuate, we predict there will likely be a slowdown in numeric domain speculation.

Masterlist of dotTLD wordnumbers

Masterlist of dotTLD (com/net/mobi/co.uk) brand wordnumbers owned by internet companies; only hyperlinked TLDs are set to resolve:

ChaCha - 242242.com/net/mobi/co.uk
3663 First For Foodservice - 3663.co.uk
Expedia - 3973342.net
4Info - 44636.com/net/mobi
Gmail - 46245.com - doesn't resolve
Google - 466453.com
GoogleMail- 4664536245.com/net - doesn't resolve
Sony - 47669.com/mobi
Reuters - 7388377.mobi - doesn't resolve
Yahoo - 92466.mobi/.net/co.uk
Where 411 - 94373.net
WordDial - 96733425.com

This list - currently under construction - is for informational use only and comprises soley brand (non-generics) wordnumbers.

Unprecedented. Unparalleled. Unpadded crash-landing.

6pm:






Noon:

758 remaining potential NNNNN.com wordnumbers

By the time you read this all NNNNN.com's will be gone. On the afternoon of February 12, 2008, we put up a list of 3,034 potential wordnumbers, each with a link to Google Number Search like this 74894.com

Below is what we also wrote for people scanning the list:

Dotcom wordnumbers are pure numeric URLs that spell generic words or brands on a phone keypad. Popular .com wordnumbers include 466453.com (Google) and 242242.com (ChaCha).

Use phonespell.org or DigitURL.com to determine if a numeric domain is a wordnumber for a popular brand or generic word.

Numeric domains should contain at least one 2, 3, 4, 6, or 8 to be a potential wordnumber (and spell something). Three consecutive digits not containing one of these vowel-digits is probably a dud wordnumber - not worth buying.

Here are the NNNNN.com's and hyperlinks to the 'allnum' function in Google, which is the best method for determining if a numeric domain matches with a brand/generic wordnumber or, if not, some other popular use of that number. (see footnote at bottom about 'allnum')

NONE LEFT

Footnote: the 'allnum' operator will apply Google Number Search (GNS) to a numeric string. After poor user adoption of the premature mobile product launched in 1999, Google discontinued Google Number Search in 2000. 'Allnum,' a leftover experimental function from that era, matches queries to an outdated lexicon (stored on a computer at Google, Inc.) that contains common words from the year 2000. The lexicon hasn't been updated since then. For instance, 24648527 won't translate to Cingular, which was formed in 2001. Therefore, companies and some generic words 'launched', 'invented' or popularized since 2000 will not show up using 'allnum'. Allnum, however, is still the best method for ranking wordnumber translations for numeric domains.

Numeric Domain of the Month - you won't be disappointed

On this Valentine's Day, we thought to invent a new designation - The Numeric Domain of the Month - and we have a very special domain in mind, indeed. In honor of this love and romance themed holiday, and also on the heels of the rapid evaporation - nearly 2,000 disappearing per day - of NNNNN.com's that dedicated domainers are devoting discussion to around the clock at NamePros.com, we would like to announce that the Numeric Domain of the Month goes to....

143247.com!

Congrats to the owner! For those out there who aren't in the know (and apparently there aren't a lot of people in the know about this one), 143247 actually means something. As explained by the domain's current owner recently on a NamePros.com discussion forum:

it i love you 2 4 7 ..many ppl use that..

After one reader was lost on this explanation, another forum member on NamePros added a much-needed clarification:

I is 1 letter, love is 4 letters, you is 3 letters. 143(I love you). Then 247 means 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

143247 had its origins with pager codes invented in the 1990s and nowadays is usually written out as 143 24/7.

So on this Valentine's Day, instead of the commonplace and non-imaginative three-word phrase of affection that is expected for you to blurt out whether or not you mean it or want to say it 'that way', express how you feel in a brand new way. Say 143247. Or, better yet, 143637.

Buckle your seat beats. NNNNN.com's are gonna crash thru 10K this afternoon!

Want to get in on the action?

How many NNNNN.com's ought you purchase?

Domain Magnate put together a basic buyer's guide for NNNNN.com's in his post today titled 'NNNNN.com Countdown Approaching 10k,' which Domaining.com has linked to:

20-50 NNNNN.com's - not sure about your perspective; don’t have enough funds

100-400 NNNNN.com’s - will be a small shareholder in the NNNNN.com market

1,000+ NNNNN.com's - potentially bigger risk; considerable returns; serious share of the market

5,000 NNNNN.com's - be ready to pay the renewal fees in worst case scenario; it's recommended to sell some of the NNNNN.com’s after buyout

Clearly, buyers won't be able to buy a full 5,000 NNNNN.com's by tomorrow or Thursday.

Last count of available NNNNN.com's: 10,696

Masterlist of dotTLD wordnumbers

This post moved

"I just bought 400 NNNNN.com's. Now what?"

If there was a retail store for only NNNNN.com's, that store would now look like the 3pm state of BestBuy on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving sale) with its unstocked shelves and depletion of on-sale items. Shoppers will find that it is too late to get in on that SanDisk 4 Gigabyte Cruzer Micro USB Flash Drive for $5.00. And those 2 for $2 DVDs are gone too.

If you are just learning about the impending full buyout of NNNNN.com's, pure numeric domains consisting of five digits, then you're about 7 hours too late for the early bird specials. What's left in the quickly evaporating inventory is something south of 13,570 12,764 12,405 NNNNN.com's, down from 19,346 a week ago. Using data being (nearly hourly) updated by Domain Magnate here, it is not hard to imagine (see the graph above) that a full buyout will happen within a week by Friday.

So, what if you have a few hundred or thousand of these numeric treats? First, park them. Second, wait for the prediction of Domain Magnate to come true: 'it’s highly believed that [once] these are all registered the minimum reseller price will go up within weeks.'

That's economics, baby! The law of supply and demand. If there's dwindling supply, then as long as demand doesn't dry up anytime soon, the prices will soar.

The third step? Keep buying - because the sale will end at midnight, figuratively speaking. Our suggestion: register any NNNNN.com without a zero or one; those numeric domains are potential wordnumbers. You never know when a Web 2.0 startup named GoFun or IMeTo will approach you for 46386.com, which is not yet taken.

NNNNN.com: Common Short Codes are calling

We can't resist tipping off domainers to this one: of the more than 450 U.S. common shortcodes that are five-digits in length, several dozen aren't yet registered in the dotcom. In the history of US CSCs, almost a dozen NNNNN shortcodes were registered by the companies themselves in the .com, .mobi, .net or .info TLDs. (One example is WHERE 411 Mobile's 94373.net.) That's not a bad statistic considering how relatively few numeric domains are owned across the 'net by U.S. companies (and even less than that as dotTLD wordnumbers).

In the following disclaimer sentence, we provide a hint to our readers for a really good domain to register: Many shortcodes that you'll find on the official shortcode directory or the various unofficial directories aren't active or aren't being used actively even though they are being renewed. Jamptap shall not be held liable for any risk of loss of or damage arising from (95483.com!) or in respect of any use or misuse (95483.com!) of reliance on the information delivered herein (95483.com!) for the purposes of domain investment .

UPDATE (Feb. 10): NNNNN.com's are being bought up like hotcakes. At the rate they're going, there'll be no more by March. 95483.com is now taken too.

A NNNNN.com case study: 95539.com and Google

Over the past few days, a buzz has been going around about NNNNN.com's, dotcom domain names consisting of five numbers. (A website, listed in our NuDom Roll, which we just created on the (right) sidebar, has even been launched to devote discussion just to the topic of the 'countdown' to the day when there are no NNNNN.com's left.) There are all sorts of reasons why domainers are registering NNNNN.com's, however the most common reason has been for zip codes. Internet companies, such as Marchex, Inc., have been, for years, buying up NNNNN.tld's that correspond with U.S. zip codes and incorporating them into online directory networks. On the product listing page of Marchex's website, it states that the company 'owns and operates a network of more than 200,000 local and vertical Web sites....Example Web sites include...tens of thousands of ZIP Code Web sites, such as www.90210.com covering 96% of all ZIP Code areas nationwide.'

Adding our 2 cents to this buzz, we remember when, in 2006, Google, Inc., owned the five-digit pure numeric domain 95539.com, which redirected to Google.com. The mystery of why did Google own that domain hasn't been solved - at least to our knowledge. We did research - way back 'then' - and figured out that it had something to do with the Chinese marketplace. 95539.com fell within a range of popular (registered) domains beginning with 955**.com that were being developed in China. Those dotcom five-digit numeric domains corresponded with the five-digit telephone 'shortcodes' for many service hotlines of Chinese banks, insurance companies and so on. Those Chinese companies were registering and developing (or redirecting) numeric domains that corresponded with their hotline/shortcode. Chinese companies were building on a trend that U.S. internet companies had begun early on but hasn't caught on. One example in the U.S. is 47669.com (47669, or 4SONY, is the shortcode owned by SONY).

We could never figure out if Google was going to set up a hotline number at 95539 for Google China. In 2007, 95539.com redirected to cs-air.com, a website for China Southern Airlines whose HotLine number in China is (8620) 95539. (Cs-air.com now redirects to Csair.com, the main website for Chinese visitors to China Southern Airlines.) In 2008, 95539.com appears to be owned by a domainer in China who is building a website portal for airlines.

Indiana-based ChaCha has plans for ChaCha India? UPDATE1

Warning: you may be occasionally tongue-tied when reading the below blogpost

ChaCha's mobile answer service, textChaCha, is currently provided on a free trial basis to consumers in the U.S. only. Although plans for launching textChaCha in other markets haven't been announced, that isn't stopping some bloggers from speculating. The folks at WatBlog.com - an India-centered Web 2.0 blog - are quite excited about the possibility of a future launch of textChaCha in India.

ChaCha Search, Inc., headquartered in Indiana, already has a presence in India. In addition to its 60 employees in Carmel, Indiana, ChaCha Search, Inc., has 'two support sites in India,' according to WatBlog contributor Rupesh Mandal. This idea of a textChaCha India launch isn't, however, mere speculation. ChaCha apparently has plans to launch ChaCha India at some point - it owns the domains ChaCha.co.in and ChaCha.in, which presently redirect to ChaCha.com in its English language version, the only such version known to exist. We didn't find ChaCha in other ccTLDs during a quick search of other international domain registrations.

Our readers are well aware of the fact that ChaCha's shortcode '242242' is registered across many tlds and that ChaCha Search, Inc., also registered various typo-variants of 242242.com, which redirects to and is the unannounced mobile portal for ChaCha.com. We now are pleased - although others may not be so pleased - to announce the fact - get your domain registrar passwords ready - that 242242.co.in and 242242.in are available. Those numeric domains would be good companions to ChaCha.co.in and ChaCha.in when ChaCha Mobile - the mobile browser version of ChaCha.com - is launched in India.

Update: ChaCha Search, Inc., registered 242242.in on February 7, 2008. The domain 242242.co.in may be in the process of being 'requested' by Key-Systems GmbH, ChaCha's choice of registrar.

$20 Amazon card in the offing for selected ChaCha mobile customers

Over the next few days, a percentage of ChaCha's mobile users will be given the opportunity to take a customer survey over the phone in exchange for a $20 Amazon gift card. This is according to Chacha's Guide Blog, which is open for the public to peruse.

ChaCha's survey of a 'statistically significant' number of users this week (and possibly next) could help the company's statisticians figure out the following question: How much would a typical mobile user pay for ChaCha's mobile answer service? Some survey-takers might veer slightly off the road upon hearing this question since many users of textChaCha, as the mobile answer service is also called, don't know that the service won't stay free. In fact, ChaCha's mobile answer service will go 'premium' later in 2008, available for a monthly subscription.

The survey will help ChaCha's experts hone in on a better price expectation for their mobile answer service than they currently have pegged, which is somewhere between $5 and $10. ChaCha's Director of Guide Management, Esther Friend, wrote today on the Guide Blog: "The surveys are being conducted to gather useful feedback and relevant pricing information to guide us in the coming months on our strategy and priorities for a successful commercial launch."

Nearly all of ChaCha's competitors in the mobile search market offer free mobile search via SMS. ChaCha, however, is the only such SMS search service that is not based on automated search. Freelance 'guides' hired by ChaCha search the internet and various databases for customers who are away from their PC computers and need assistance. Cell phone users can send a text message - in the form of a natural language query - to 242242 and receive an answer in seconds or minutes. Currently no ads are presented on the service.

While a $20 gift card on Amazon.com is a perfect 'price point' for successfully luring in just about any customer to take a survey, ChaCha's executives may find that users will think that that price point of $5-10/month is a bit much for premium textChaCha, at least for now. During this nascent phase of mobile search, users are finding that no service, Google included, is the undisputed leader in mobile search. In this kind of market condition, users will be mostly 'test driving' services and not buying. They'll wait until a highly trusted source (in the non-mobile search market, examples include Consumer Reports, Car and Driver, New York Times Book Review, etc...) reviews, ranks, and rates the range of products and services. Until that happens with mobile search, it is unlikely that people will flock in signficant numbers to one specific 'dealer' and sign on the dotted line.

466453.com bouncing back

Companies concerned with their website's popularity know that success, as far as radar charts are concerned, can be measured by how close they get to the nexus of the 'web'. Google's numeric domain 466453.com is getter there mighty quick.


466453.com, which redirects to Google.com, has jumped in Alexa's ranking system from 7,941,626 on January 23, 2008, to 2,362,583 on February 3, 2008.

ChaCha aka 242242 aka ChaCha aka 242242 is the Best Alt Search Engine in February '08

ChaCha was selected as the Search Engine of the Month by AltSearchEngines.com, a top-ranked blog that aspires to be 'the definitive destination for everything related to alternative search engines.' AltSearchEngines.com selects the monthly winner after compiling its ranking of the top 100 Alternative Search Engines at the beginning of each month. And that's no easy task. AltSearchEngines' editor, Charles Knight, tracks no fewer than 1,000 search contenders in all search engine categories (general or meta search, jobs, health, MP3s, people, games, charity, etc...).

ChaCha, which was AltSearchEngine's Search Engine of the Year for 2006, was chosen for the February 2008 title for their mobile phone text service launched last month that features the catchy SMS code, 242242. Other 'guided' or 'human powered' alternative search engines listed in the Top 100 Alternative Search Engines for February 2008 include Mahalo.com and Bessed.com.

ChaCha's SMS code, 242242, has taken on a life of its own since ChaCha's mobile answer service launched in early January. (In late January, ChaCha completed an aggressive round of defensively registering a multitude of typo-variants of 242242.com. That ChaCha-owned domain - 242242.com - redirects to ChaCha.com.) The 242242 moniker is now omnipresent in the world of ChaCha. On the blog of ChaCha's President and co-founder Brad Bostic, it is difficult to discern which is really the brand of his company, 242242 or ChaCha. 242242 is plastered everywhere Brad blogs and speaks and that's no different on blogs that report on trends in numeric domains. NuDom bloggers are wondering when will Brian - I mean Brad - make the bold marketing move of announcing 242242.com as the alternative web address for ChaCha.com on mobile phones or the PC. THAT move would guarantee ChaCha's place as the Top Alternative Search Engine for 2008, at least in our book.

When will the numeric domain industry follow suit?

The International Herald Tribune's February 2nd article 'In Web domain name game, players gain some respect' discusses the domain industry's transformation from the highly secretive - and oft illegal - 'game' dominated by offshore players to a booming field that is increasingly characterized by respect and professionalism.

New developments in the domain industry's transition:

More money is at stake. In 2007, 106 domain names drew more than $100,000 each.

VC money is in play. ' ...over the last few months, private equity and venture capital firms have poured money into the largest companies in the field. Last year, Demand Media and Oversee.net...raised nearly $400 million from investors'

Domain REITs are going public. 'Last September, NameMedia, a company based in Waltham, Massachusetts, which has a huge portfolio of generic domain names, filed to go public on the Nasdaq stock market.'

Financing is available. 'specialized financiers who will lend money and accept domain names as collateral.'

Domainers have their own trade group (although it's staffed by only one person)

Although the numeric domain industry has a way to go before one sees stellar sales, VC investment, REIT IPOs and niche financing, the formation of a trade group could be right around the corner.

During the last week of 2007, we reported on the idea of a professional association for numeric domainers, which was prompted by the discovery of several recently registered domains by a WordDial co-founder. The block of registered domains includes monikers that you'd associate with a professional association including the actual phrase 'Numeric Domain(ers) Association' and also 'forum' and newsletter.

Professional or industry associations generally serve to elevate the skill sets, networks, ideas exchange, and careers of its members and also promote trade and good business practices (ethics) in the marketplace. An industry association is the first place the public often goes to seek general information, consultant or business referrals, jobs, learning opportunities, license verifications, and even position statements. All of these services increase the visibility, professionalism and stature of the field.

A numeric domain association would help by educating the public about all the reasons why one ought to invest in numeric domain properties. It also could help match buyers and sellers via an online marketplace or auction events.

If numeric domainers want investors to realize the utility and worth of their properties or products and raise their industry's visibility, professionalism and stature, they should push for the obvious solution: a numeric domain association.

Ding Ding! Round 1: WordDial's challenger emerges UPDATE1

Mobile-Ventures, a northern California mobile entertainment distribution company, has launched two websites that appear to be the dotMobi equivalent of WordDial. WordDial NZ Ltd is a New Zealand-internet concern that pioneered the concept of a directory of mobile websites organized by dotTLD generic wordnumber portals. Mobile-Ventures's websites, FindByNumbers.com and its mobile 'sister website' 8e8.mobi, effectively aim to mimic WordDial's business model despite claims of otherwise on their website - 'Our niche, however, is truly unique'.

As stated on the pair of sites, Mobile-Ventures's dotMobi information service 'provides direct access to the mobile Internet via numbers, instead of words...Users can type in the numbers associated with the keyword you're seeking content or information on. For example, "MUSIC" is represented by the numbers 68742 on your cell phone's (non-QWERTY) dial pad.'

Mobile-Ventures claims it owns several of the most valuable .mobi wordnumbers. The FindByNumbers.com site provides a list of 14 .mobi properties, several of which are indeed premium generic wordnumbers, including (the dotMobi wordnumbers for) WIN, GAMES, MUSIC, BLOG, SPORTS, CASINO, and DATE. Currently each of the .mobi portal sites is under development, however they [as portals] will be 'developed with relevant, high quality, content and information.' It is unknown how many - hundreds? thousands? - of generic .mobi wordnumbers are owned by Mobile-Ventures and what kind of revenue model they'll adopt. It's also unknown what exactly is Mobile-Ventures. Only one business entity by that name is still active according to the California Secretary of State and that seems to be for a different entity - Mobile Ventures LLC, which was formed in Nevada and lists a southern California address. Mobile-Ventures, the WordDial clone company, is the creation of, it appears, David Uhalley of Novato, Calif., who has a number of 'infant-stage' online projects in the field of personal robotics.

Two questions come to mind right away concerning FindByNumbers and 8e8. Why would someone want to create a mobile start-up based on the same business concept as WordDial when that concept has experienced such poor user adoption? Certainly the interest and speculation in dotTLD wordnumbers is on the rise. Perhaps the powers that be at Mobile-Ventures have grown a portfolio of .mobi wordnumbers and simply want to test the waters, not making big commitments in staff, advertising or further domain acquisitions. If so, then, over the next few months, if they notice quick adoption of their mobile service, then they could make the decision to go to the next step and secure a first round of venture capital financing.

The second question is why didn't WordDial begin buying up dotMobi wordnumbers during the dotMobi land rush? WordDial has amassed a very impressive portfolio of domains in only the .com TLD. Our guess is that WordDial believes that .mobi will go the way of the .ws, and .com will always be the breadwinner for both the PC and the mobile internet company. Time will tell if WordDial's gamble was a good call and if Mobile-Ventures wants to stay in the boxing ring for 'Round 2.'

Going Dutch with numeric domains

SIDN, the domain registry for .nl (the Netherlands), announced in late January that the first domain registered during the sunrise period for pure numeric .nl domains, which transpired during early December 2007, was 9292.nl. That domain was registered by REISinformatiegroep, a Dutch travel information provider.

REISinformatiegroep was formed in 1992 in collaboration with Dutch government public transportation agencies and in late 1992 went live with the phone number 06-9292, which was serviced by 9 callcenters. More than fifteen years later, REISinformatiegroep, popularly known as '9292', still provides route descriptions, timetables and related information for all public transport in the Netherlands, annually answering more than 25 million queries from travelers of trams, busses, ferries, trains, metros and taxis. Although phone numbers have changed in the Netherlands since 1992, 9292 has stuck to its marketing philosophy. Its familiar, easy-to-remember brand '9292' is still part of its telephone hotline number: 0900-9292.

REISinformatiegroep currently uses the domain 9292ov.nl and stated, as quoted in SIDN's January 24 press release, that it will be switching to the pure numeric domain in 2008. ‘The new domain name will make things more straightforward for the consumer. Once it goes live, people won’t have to remember to include the letters ‘OV’ when they want to access our services. Since more than half of the Dutch population know us simply as 9292, that means we’ll be easier to find for computer users and mobile users. ' Currently, 9292's mobile URL is mobiel.9292ov.nl. The 'ov' in the url was a carryover from REISinformatiegroep's previous name, Openbaar Vervoer REISinformatiegroep.

9292 said that the pure numeric domain name of 9292.nl was something they had been hoping to acquire for the last four years. When 9292.nl goes live, the organization will be the second major concern, after 3663 First For Foodservice in the U.K., to 'cross-pollinate' its brand as its domain name and into its hotline phone number.

'We can’t wait for the opportunity to start making use of 9292.nl,’ said Communications Manager Aarnout Mijling.