A short, serious walk with dotcom wordnumbers

Jacpar, a member of the domain discussion forum Namepros.com, has recently posted a sale listing for the domain 466453.mobi. 466453.mobi - which contains the wordnumber (aka spells on a phone keypad) for Google - is considered somewhat valuable (at least by us at Jamptap) for two reasons: Google, Inc., owns its dotcom wordnumber, 466453.com (that redirects to Google.com), and Yahoo, Inc., owns 92466.mobi, its own dotMobi wordnumber. Jacpar has indicated that he/she won't take less than $800 for the domain.

Is $800 a lot, or not, for 466453.mobi? For comparison, Scott Smith of NumericDomains.com has listed for sale (since late 2007) hundreds of his dotcom wordnumber domains - for some very popular brands like Google - at the flat rate price of $9,999 (for each domain). Our recent analysis has indicated that Smith hasn't sold more than a very small number of his listed properties.

With a paucity of actual dotcom wordnumber domain sales and virtually no data on the transactions that have happened, it is difficult to know who is right and what these domain properties are really worth.

Of all types of numeric domainers, the ones who are having the hardest time selling their domains are those who own pure numeric URLs that spell words and brands. Leading numeric domainers that invest in these domain types are feeling unease with a flat market situation and their hope now is that generosity will be the catalyst that will light-up a sagging marketplace for dotcom wordnumbers. These leading domainers plan to conduct bargain sales and even give away wordnumber domain properties in 2008. Can top numeric domainers realistically ignite this flat market with a few bargain sales and giveaways? Realistically, no, because dotcom wordnumber domainers are and have been listing their domains at prices that are extremely affordable to corporations but the bait hasn't been moving the fish. Giving them away, for free or cheap, isn't going to change a thing.

The biggest player in the dotcom wordnumber market, owner of an unbelievable number - in the 100,000s - of generic and brand wordnumber domains, is WordDial. The New Zealand firm has had a very difficult time in getting off the ground since being founded before Y2K. It doesn't help that WordDial has a very, very hefty annual domain registration bill for its cache of domains. Recent revenues data listed on a start-up business directory website indicates that WordDial's revenues may still be - 8 years after its founding - not enough to pay that total domain bill. Selling domains is not an option for WordDial, which is sticking - and hoping rather intently for success - with its original revenue model of content partnerships (charging fees to companies to be listed on its vast mobile web directory).

So how will things turn around in this flat market for dotcom wordnumbers? The ball may actually be in the court of a small number of large internet corporations that have escaped nearly all domainers' attention by quietly registering at least one dotTLD wordnumber each - that group of companies includes Google, Yahoo, Expedia, SONY, ChaCha, 4Info, and Reuters. All of those companies are silent players in the wordnumber business since they all own at least one dotTLD wordnumber domain; about half of them are forwarding their domains to their homepages. What is alarming is that NOT ONE of those corporations has taken the simple step of announcing to the public an association between their mobile/PC website and the wordnumber domain. None has said - not anywhere or anytime in recent internet history - that it even owns a dotTLD wordnumber or that the numeric domain resolves to the company's homepage. The easy-to-tap benefits of their wordnumber domains are denied to their combined billions of potential mobile consumers. What are the corporations waiting for? Most likely they're waiting for wordnumber domains to catch on, probably through some other corporation's efforts. Sadly, that is the very same thing the very small niche of dotcom wordnumber domain investors who have laid claim to a majority of the best wordnumber domain properties is waiting for. Nothing is happening. Hence the flat market. Since corporations that own wordnumber domains aren't even using their wordnumber properties, consumers and corporate-competitors aren't even bothering to look 'this way' and therefore domainers get no offers and find it extremely difficult to sell these properties for a respectable price.

Is there a way out of this stalemate?

What will happen with this depressed situation is really out of the hands of the corporations and also those domainers and companies that own dotTLD wordnumbers.

The watershed moment will happen when some well-known non-domaining blogger or journalist or economist 'discovers' this quiet, brilliant corner in the domain world and delivers a definitive assessment such as: that internet companies that are among the first to acquire and actually use their dotTLD wordnumbers will reap enormous benefits as pioneers of a new, global mobile standard.

'That' is exactly what happened with global warming. A small group of scientists and informed citizens have known and worried about the risks of climate change but no one listened to them in the 1980s, and 1990s, and up through late 2006. Then came the 'Stern report' - a significant set of unanticipated findings by a revered U.K. economist who basically said that we'd be very, very, incredibly fiscally (and morally) stupid if we don't act right now to curb CO2 emissions.

No one knows why Sir Stern was the catalyst or why people listened only to him at that point in time.

All that is known is that is the way history played out and how a revolution began.