ONLINE WALL STREET SOMETHING OF A WALLFLOWER (Update)

19 October 2007

Despite all the pre-auction hype, domain bids fail to meet reserve price


With experts, auctioneers and analysts alike speculating on a new record price for an auctioned domain, there was keen interest in the offers on WallStreet.com when it went up for sale this week (see previous InfoPowa reports)

But disappointingly the highest bid that auction house Monicker.com received for the domain - once an online casino - was only $3 million, which failed to meet the reserve price range of $4-$5 million. The asset was last sold for around $2.3 million, it is believed.

The WallStreet.com Web address failed to sell at an auction in Florida after bids fell below owners' expectations. The current owners are said to be European Internet entrepreneurs, who will now seek higher bids through a Web-based auction.

While the site carrying the Wall Street.com domain registers between 2 000 and 4 000 hits a day, it can be difficult to build a brand around a site with such a generic name, according to Jupiter Research media analyst Barry Parr.

"There's not a lot of inherent value in either the name or the existing business," he said. "So what you're looking at is building something on top of that. You'd need to have a pretty clear vision of what you want to do with a domain name like that.''

Online Casino News courtesy of InfoPowa