92466.com out with a cold

Quick news: WordDial-owned domain, 92466.com, which spells Yahoo, is not resolving to its SEARCH portal 732724.com. The SEARCH portal list, however, still includes a link to Yahoo. Interestingly, 663732724.com (ONESEARCH) is still being forwarded there. Yahoo stopped paying??

Related post about 92466.com

Ymail.com goes live

Update: ymail accounts will be 'freed' up starting at noon on the West Coast in the U.S. That's 3pm on the East Coast and who the heck knows elsewhere.

Update2: Find the NEWLY designed page for Rocketmail and YMail addresses at http://new.mail.yahoo.com/addresses.

Ymail.com, a domain that Yahoo Inc. purchased in late 2007, will go live today and is for those who have found out sometime between the 1990s and now that their preferred or favorite email address at Yahoo.com is taken. Starting today, Yahoo is encouraging email lovers to line up at the starting gate for an unprecedented address-landrush for @ymail.com accounts. The best ones apparently will be auctioned, for charity, at Ebay.

When we blogged last December we speculated that Yahoo Inc. bought the domain www.ymail.com - a much unpublicized event in aftermarket domain sales - to provide users with a tap-savings entry point to their email accounts. Since purchasing the ymail.com domain, Yahoo has forwarded it to mail.yahoo.com and we didn't think things would change. We didn't conceive that Yahoo would actually create a new @ymail.com email platform separate from its existing @yahoo.com platform.

Still, whichever email service users choose, Ymail.com is - at best - one tap less than Yahoo.com (the latter URL sends users to a page that is an extra click away from Yahoo Mail). Both are mobile friendly but not tap-friendly mobile URLs.

Can Yahoo do better?

Yes.

The two better choices for Yahoo is to buy 92466.com (yahoo) and 96245.com (ymail) from their respective owners. Those URLs are 6 and 5 taps (w/o the .com) respectively on any mobile device, and require about 50% less tapping than Yahoo's current Ymail and Yahoo URLs.

Links:

Ebay page for auction through June 30

Yahoo Mail blog

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.

ChaCha's 242242.com goes live

When we checked yesterday, 242242.com didn't resolve.

We checked today and that changed.

242242.com now resolves to a webpage at ChaCha.com at the following URL, http://www.chacha.com/textchacha, which discusses the basics of ChaCha's 'mobile answer service' and its shortcode, 242242.

Although ChaCha has not yet launched its mobile website and so no pages on the ChaCha website are optimized for mobile, ChaCha's decision to finally resolve 242242.com - its dotcom wordnumber - to its website further demonstrates that ChaCha intends to incorporate its dotcom wordnumber into its overall mobile strategy. It is quickly becoming more believable that when ChaCha Mobile launches any cell phone user anywhere will be able to enter 242242.com into their cell browser and be connected directly to ChaCha's mobile web site. 242242 is a 50% 'savings' in taps over the word 'ChaCha' and, pending adoption of the wordnumber idea among its users, ChaCha stands a chance of leveraging its dotcom wordnumber to catch up to its competitors.

How much more market share ChaCha can gain through its incorporation and implementation of the wordnumber concept is the million dollar question. Two of ChaCha's competitors, Live and Yahoo, are at the mercy of WordDial, which owns their dotcom wordnumbers and apparently will perpetually insist on resolving those domains to one of its portals. Therefore, both search engines' users will always be an extra screen away from any mobile destination. That is a somewhat significant disadvantage when compared to Google, for instance, which owns its own dotcom wordnumber, 466453.com, which has resolved directly to Google.com (and its mobile version) for many years.

When ChaCha.com goes mobile, ChaCha's 242242.com will stand toe-to-toe, tapwise, to Google's 466453.com. Although Google has more experience as a search engine company, a mobile search engine service and as innovator of mobile tools such as Google Number Search, ChaCha has two advantages over Google. ChaCha, as a young organization whose founders are playing an active, daily role in its growth, is nimble; it can react more quickly to demands and forces in the marketplace. Second, ChaCha is more apt to take risks since it has less to lose than the search engine juggernauts. Not weighed down by fears of tarnishing its reputation or eroding shareholder confidence, ChaCha can take risks and do what Google hasn't done in more than six years: advertise its dotcom wordnumber. Although 466453.com resolves to Google, that is a fact not advertised by Google for many reasons including one we discussed in May 2007 that 'It's a daring move to associate a nearly billion dollar asset to a string of un-trademarkable numbers.'

Associating a brand with a string of numbers that is a shortcode is one thing, to tell the world that your online property IS a set of numbers is another. ChaCha may not be burdened by these 'large cap' internet company concerns and so has all the trappings of the little search engine that could climb to the top of the mobile search world. Having decided to purchase and resolve its dotcom wordnumber and also register a near-complete set of numeric domain variants, ChaCha's next step is to navigate the dance floor with the daring move of marketing 242242.com to the masses.

A first: ChaCha invests in its dotcom wordnumber variants

ChaCha Search, Inc., the internet corporation known for its human-powered search engine at ChaCha.com, which recently launched a 'mobile answer service,' appears to be the first company to apply the traditional corporate domain acquisition strategy of registering trademark-domain variants to dotcom wordnumbers.

The dotcom wordnumber for ChaCha is 242242.com (242242 spells ChaCha on a phone keypad), which Scott Smith of numericdomains.com said earlier this month on his blog was owned by a family member who received an anonymous offer through a broker late last year. Smith believed, at the time, that the broker was the proxy for ChaCha, and made the decision to sell. Smith turned out to be right - it was a broker for ChaCha - and ChaCha added 242242.com to its portfolio of numeric domains relating to its wordnumber that it had been building that included 242242 in 'TLD and CC extensions including .net, .org, .co.uk, .info, .biz, .mobi -and potentially others.'

Jamptap has just discovered that last week ChaCha Search, Inc., bought two typo-variants of 242242.com. Those domains include 2242242.com and 2422422.com, which were registered on January 14, 2008. While researching domain registrations, we also learned that in October 2007 ChaCha registered 224242, 242422, 244242, 242224 and 422242 in the following TLD extensions: .com, .net and .org. Other permutations may exist.

Also, we found that last week ChaCha registered 8002242242 (800-2-ChaCha) in at least 5 TLDs, which may indicate that ChaCha is considering providing a breed of toll-free voice-activated search in the future.

What does this all mean? As we learned from the happenings of New Zealand-based WordDial, when a company realizes that a domainer/company/investor beat it to its own dotcom wordnumber, then they tend to over-react. When Yahoo, Inc., discovered that WordDial registered (before it did) the domain 92466.com , which spells among other things 'Yahoo' (which has several definitions in the dictionary, not just 'a leading search engine'), Yahoo, Inc., proceeded to buy 92466 in every other TLD and an incredible array of ccTLDs as well.

Our impression is that ChaCha reacted in a similar fashion. ChaCha even succeeded in purchasing its dotcom wordnumber. Yahoo didn't but has a continuing content partnership with WordDial.

The difference between the ChaCha and Yahoo 'case studies' is that ChaCha bought not only its dotcom wordnumber in various TLDs but also mistypes of its numeric domain. This is a development in the numeric domain field that is significant for two reasons. First, by registering the many typo-variants of 242242.com whereas no other company is known to have done this (with dotcom wordnumbers), ChaCha is demonstrating an elevated intention of actually using 242242.com as a mobile portal since the company is apparently concerned with redirecting (type-in) traffic from mistyped URLs to its mobile webpage. Second, and perhaps most interesting, this new piece of information may mean that since ChaCha is registering these typo-variants, then there could be a market for dotcom wordnumber mistypes in the foreseeable future.

ChaCha's actions indicate that its dotcom wordnumber is not some 'crazy' idea but that it is serious about using 242242.com as a key part of its mobile strategy. ChaCha's actions, therefore, may serve as a catalyst to the numeric domain land rush and inspire investors and internet companies alike to not only put their money into numeric domains but, like ChaCha has done, also numeric domain variants.

Ymail.com bought by Yahoo, Inc.

Ymail.com is now the quicker gateway to mail.yahoo.com.

It is even mobile friendly.

Maybe Yahoo is getting sick of the fact that the easiest way to mobilly access Yahoo is via WordDial or WordDial or WordDial, etc... I can't imagine how much the content partnership with WordDial (aka Domain Numbers Ltd) will cost Yahoo in the long run with all of the portals that Yahoo has paid to get listed. Yahoo execs must be thinking, 'There's got to be a Yahoo-owned domain property that will get our users to yahoo mail in a similar number of taps as search.' Yahoo - w/o the .com - is 12 taps. Ymail.com is 11 taps w/o the dot, which is a huge savings compared to mail.yahoo.com's 20 taps w/o the dots.

Okay. So 11 taps for Ymail, 12 taps for Yahoo search...not too cumbersome.

Now just wait, watch and see the Alexa web rank for ymail.com to drop from 11 million down to a few hundred.

Worddial's 732724.com (SEARCH) page gets cleaned up

WordDial has just cleaned up its 732724.com portal, perhaps one of its most visited portals (92466.com, the dot com wordnumber to YAHOO, resolves to it). Before this weekend, the three top slots were all reserved for different Google mobile urls, but now there's just one Google mobile address.

What's more interesting is the differences in the URLs (and the TLDs) of the links.
The link to Google is 'www.google.com'
The link to Yahoo is 'yahoo.mobi'
The link to Live search is 'mobile.live.com/Search'
The top search engine companies are more-or-less promoting different URLs than those listed above. On Google's site, users are encouraged to visit 'mobile.google.com,' however on a different part of the site Google promotes the shorter url: 'google.com'. On Yahoo's site, it encourages using 'm.yahoo.com'. Live is, however, the only consistent one; on mobile.search.live.com it lists 'mobile.live.com/search' as the mobile url.

A shortcut to Google on your mobile is 466453.com.

Wordnumbers and the electric car: good ideas never die

As we reported in March, a small part of Yahoo's emerging strategy to become the number one mobile search engine was an aggressive foray into the numeric domain name arena. In March, Yahoo struck a partnership deal with WordDial, a New Zealand company that owns hundreds of thousands of numeric domain names including Yahoo's wordnumber, which is 92466.com. (The wordnumber concept is one that never fully took off. The credit for its origin might go to Google, Inc., which owns their .com wordnumber - 466453.com - and actually put it into use back in 2001 when their Google Number Search free service was live for several months. Since 2001, every now and then a blogger resurrects the same old question - 'Why does Google own 466453.com' - and eventually learns anew the basic concept of the wordnumber and some of its practical benefits to the mobile search experience.)

Although Google hasn't profited in any measurable terms by owning 466453.com (466453.com had an Alexa ranking of 4,181,472 in October 2006), which Google simply forwards to its main search page, there still exists a very real possibility that wordnumbers could be winning tickets in the near future. As cell phone manufacturers begin to build in hot-keys (that can be programmed to add '.com' to a URL entry) or even add '.com' buttons to keypads, users will eventually realize that multi-tapping to spell out words on a mobile phone keypad will be a waste of their time and energy.

In March, Yahoo wanted to get in on the action and we suspect paid a premium price to get WordDial to activate 92466.com and resolve it to one of WordDial's premiere portals at 732724.com, which is the .com wordnumber for SEARCH. Back in March, Yahoo was the number one listing at 732724.com. We noticed this week that Yahoo's placement has fallen. It has not only fallen below three distinct Google mobile search links, but also the link to Live Search for Mobile.

The likely explanation for this change is statistics. There couldn't have been more than a thousand or two unique visitors in a one-month period to 92466.com. And when Yahoo execs scoffed at the poor stats, they probably decided it wasn't worth the money to be number one at WordDial's premiere portal. Yahoo hasn't given up; they still are listed on WordDial's SEARCH portal - at number five - and also listed on the nearly 10 other WordDial portals as we mentioned our March 31 post.

So, who's at fault for the lackluster experience of the 'wordnumber.' It is the same old argument: will a concept evolve into a trend because users demand it (i.e., demand an easier way to enter mobile searches) or because providers market the concept. Certainly, none of the three big search companies have done anything to market the idea of the wordnumber. A simple google or blog search will reveal that the only marketing over the past year or two of Yahoo's and Google's .com wordnumber has been us, Jamptap. So, then, why does Yahoo and Google, and other internet companies, bother to retain their partnership agreements with WordDial? Our best guess is that they want to penetrate the New Zealand mobile market and WordDial is one of the best places to do that.

What it all comes down to is marketing. Who wants a brand name - which in the case of Google or Yahoo accounts for hundreds of millions of dollars or more as Goodwill on the balance sheet - to suddenly be synonymous with a string of numbers? It's a daring move to associate a nearly billion dollar asset to a string of un-trademarkable numbers. However, Porsche, Disney and Levi's (jeans), among other companies, have accomplished this association without peril to their profits. The idea probably makes Yahoo and Google execs jittery for the above reason and also the likelihood that users will be easily confused by the association of a brand name like Yahoo to a string of numbers. But that is becoming less and less the case ever since those companies began marketing their SMS codes, 92466 and 466453, respectively. Note that Google's shortcode was 46645 for many years before Google recently changed it to 466453.

As Google and Yahoo plan to roll out a slew of new mobile products over the next few years, it is inevitable that efficiency of the wordnumber concept will prevail. Speaking of efficiency, who knew back in the early 1900s - after the energy-efficient electric car idea was killed - that in 2007 we would all be hyped about electric (or hybrid) vehicles? Good ideas, they never die.

Yahoo poised to take the mobile lead

Updated: 4/1/2007

After some extra digging, Jamptap found out that Yahoo, Inc. has a number of other (very recent) content partnerships with WordDial that include a listing on their 36245.com (EMAIL), 2428.com (CHAT), 6277.com (MAPS), 102378.com (10 BEST), 7678257.com (PORTALS), 3473284667.com (DIRECTIONS), 462437.com (IMAGES) [Flickr is now the only link on the 746867.com (PHOTOS) portal; both Flickr and Yahoo Image Search are linked on the 74288737.com (PICTURES) portal], 6397.com (NEWS) pages and possibly others. It appears that Yahoo apparently didn't want to pay top dollar for a directory listing on WordDial's EMAIL page because YahooMail is listed 2nd after GMail (Google Mail). (To the best of our memory, YahooMail wasn't listed on WordDial's EMAIL page when we checked last month.) Also, the YahooMail link doesn't resolve to the YahooMail mobile page, but the YahooMail html page; perhaps that'll be fixed soon.

The domain number, also known as word number, for GMail (46245.com) is owned by Google, but is a dead link; so is the word number 4664536245.com (GoogleMail). The word numbers for YMail and YahooMail are not owned by Yahoo, but may be owned by proxy. The 3rd listing on WordDial's EMAIL page, Hotmail, whose word number is 4686245.com, is owned by WordDial and is forwarded to the EMAIL page. The Hotmail link resolves to the MSN Mobile page.

What is exciting is that the email services of the big three search engine companies (Microsoft, Google and Yahoo) can be easily accessed - for the first time ever - at one place on a mobile phone. Just type in 36245.com (EMAIL) in your mobile browser and pick your email service.

Also, WordDial, via its 7th acquisition fund - similar to venture capital funds - registered 663732724.com (ONESEARCH) on March 20, 2007, just one day after Yahoo officially announced the news of its new search application (OneSearch). When you type in 663732724.com in your mobile browser, it resolves to WordDial's SEARCH (732724.com) portal. Note that onesearch.com, which is owned by Yahoo, Inc., currently resolves to a 404 (error) page.

92466.com vs. 466453.com

The big news here on Jamptap, which has had a lame existence over the past year for no other reason than the big Internet companies have lacked the courage and ingenuity to try something new, is that Yahoo has apparently signed a lease with Worddial for 92466.com. WordDial bought 92466.com before Yahoo could. And this apparently pissed Yahoo off (when they found out) because Yahoo proceeded to buy every 92466 in every TLD around the world. When you typed in 92466.com on your mobile browser until this week, you were forwarded to the SEARCH (732724.com) page of WordDial, which provided links to Google, Motionbridge, Live search and others, but not Yahoo.

WordDial was smart. And Yahoo was holding out, but in the end knew that WordDial would never sell 92466.com to them. WordDial is a company based in New Zealand that owns over 1 million numeric domain names (dot coms) and has been developing a simple technology to allow easy access to information on the web using just the numbers on your phone keypad. They have little intention - although I can't be sure of this - of selling, since their business model is about 'content partnership,' which is a fancy term for charging fees to be included in a mobile directory listing. So...when I checked today, just days after the launch of Yahoo's new mobile search application, 'OneSearch,' there was one new link on the top of the list at 732724.com: Yahoo.

Brilliant. Yahoo knew that it needed to survive by at least matching Google at its mobile services, even if that meant paying whichever asking price for a content partnership agreement with WordDial.

So, where are the headlines? There aren't any and probably won't be any. This whole numeric domain thing has never had much success, yet. Google tried it in 2001 with their Google Number Search. Google's GNS was not used very much and so Google stopped updating a crucial part of their servers that link to GNS searches, which can still be performed if you type a series of numbers after allnum: or num: in Google. But Yahoo knows the wave of the future. Yahoo will never be a downloadable application that is menu-driven. Yahoo will always require the user to type in Yahoo in their browser. When it comes to cell phones, key-pad input is a big deal. It is cumbersome. But it is very easy to switch to number-mode and start pressing numbers, instead of multi-tapping to type out letters in a domain name. Thus, while Yahoo(.com) is 11 keypad taps, 92466(.com) is 5 presses. 466453.com is a 'savings' of 7 taps over Google.com. If you think of the millions of mobile users that will be accessing Google and Yahoo each day in the near future, they could be cutting their key pad entries in half using the numeric domains 466453.com, and 92466.com. A search engine that doesn't follow suit could lose customers for no other reason than it would take users an extra 5 or 6 keypad presses to get to that search engine's homepage.

So, the fight in the ring between Yahoo and Google is more vigorous than even it appears in the presses. Will both companies begin to advertise these numeric domain portals? Will other internet companies follow suit? Will domain speculators start buying up numeric domain names?