John Gotts, the entrepreneur who agreed to pay $3 million for the domain name Wiki.com and reportedly told people he was “going to kill Wikipedia” may have thrown in the towel after just a few months. Instead of launching the promised Wiki site with MindTouch software, the Wiki.com site now simply redirects to Wikia, another wiki service affiliated with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.
When asked for a comment, Wikia CEO Gil Penchina said only that Wikia does not currently own the domain name, and wouldn’t speculate on whether or not a deal was closed with Gotts. The original deal that Gotts did to acquire the domain required $10,000 monthly payments to the original owner, with the bulk of the payment to be made down the road. Perhaps Wikia is just covering those monthly payments for Gotts, while his lawyer tries to find a way out of the original contract. We’ll see.
Update: The Whois information for the domain name is still showing Dynamo, the entity that supposedly sold it to Gotts.
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While I certainly don’t know what happened with the deal, I am sceptical as to the importance of owning the wiki.com domain.
I’d like to think people who want a wiki are smarter than just jump on whatever they find through wiki.com. They would do a little investigation, at least read a few comparative posts ..etc.
So I just can’t see the $3M value.
Maybe Wiki.com could be sold for $6 million some time later. But it doesn’t mean it could be a good wiki service, unless some wiki giant acquires it.
Tech Tutorials: http://www.hotcoding.com
Yay for Mike writing his blog again
This is the most speculative TechCrunch post ever. Gotts “agreed to pay” $3 million (it’s not clear if he handed over the money yet) for the Wiki.com domain, and “reportedly” (not confirmed) said he was going to “kill” an inanimate web site (he crazy).
Now he “may have” given up his alleged plans (or not). Meanwhile, Wikia CEO Gil Penchina had no comment, a whois lookup shows the domain is still with its original owners. and the whole writeup ends with the ringing conclusion: “we’ll see”.
Why not throw in a bigfoot sighting while you’re at it?
It’s not surprising that the whois information has not been changed. In deals like that it usually isn’t changed until full payment has been made.
Where is Natali? Was she booted? Is Michael trying to save some money by doing it all by himself?
Well…He still hasn’t given up on trying to “kill Google” with searching.com. Next he will to buy all torrent sites….What an A$$!
I think this is a case where you have a guy with a bunch of money and plan he cooked up after reading an article about wiki’s on Digg.
This is a case where you have a guy with a bunch of money that was no doubt inherited from someone who earned it, who is basically a moron making other, much smarter people rich in the process.
that squatter is laughing all the way to the bank. what a lucky guy.
Lot of money spent there I dont think its worth it either. Someone pay me a million for this domain. http://www.targetwatcher.com
Who could have seen this coming? Despite all the BS that “direct navigation” players (formerly known as “domain investors” and “domain squatters”) give you, the vast majority of generic domains don’t generate the insane types of traffic that some might expect. I’ve seen these people try to sell very generic domains for six and seven figures when they get as little as several thousand unique visitors a month.
But kudos for the person that sold this guy on it. A fool and his money are quickly parted. When John Gotts sat down at the table to negotiate this deal, he should have asked himself “Who’s the fool at the table?” and when he didn’t see the fool, should have realized that it was him.
Almost exactly when Wiki.com started I myself have started w wiki-farm —
- almost exactly the same idea: let people create their Wikis and provide community-related tools,
- a domain never known before, instead of throwing away 3m$
- no news at Slashdot, Digg, even TechCrunch
- total development and early marketing cost: 6 000$
But somehow I had it “more right” than Wiki.com and the results are:
http://www.alexa.com/data/deta.....ikidot.com
- nicely growing community (did Wiki.com care about its community?)
- over 6000 registered users in a few months and over 2000 _active_ users
- more than 5000 visitors daily
- 3000 page edits daily
- the numbers are growing 30% monthly
IMHO creating Wiki solutions is NOT about the money you put in the domain, but about an idea you have about functionality and building communities. You have to give users creative tools too.
OK, IMHO Wikidot.com vs. Wiki.com: 1:0
michal frackowiak
http://www.wikidot.com
BTW: could I be covered by TechCrunch at least?
“# ginchy
January 3rd, 2007 at 6:46 pm
This is the most speculative TechCrunch post ever. Gotts “agreed to pay” $3 million (it’s not clear if he handed over the money yet) for the Wiki.com domain, and “reportedly” (not confirmed) said he was going to “kill” an inanimate web site (he crazy).
Now he “may have” given up his alleged plans (or not). Meanwhile, Wikia CEO Gil Penchina had no comment, a whois lookup shows the domain is still with its original owners. and the whole writeup ends with the ringing conclusion: “we’ll see”.
Why not throw in a bigfoot sighting while you’re at it?
”
Ditto. the original article was of the same caliber.
Wiki is huge. Humonguous efforts are put to create it, and it has been so long and has brand equity. Difiicult to beat it at its own turf.
http://www.tekno-world.blogspot.com
There’s a lot more to this story, which I found out by accident about six weeks ago (but was asked to keep in confidence). One would think TechCrunch could keep prying….
Well, the competition is huge in the area of Wiki farms. I personally love http://Wikidot.com — tried lots of other services but Wikidot is simply the most functional one.
It appears that domain names are still an asset.
Domain names are still an asset, but only if they are established websites first. Aside from when it was purchased, who the hell uses business.com for any real reason? All it is is one of those spammy web directories. Again, another example of a widely publicized, completely speculative domain purchase, followed by the application of a questionable business model. Anyone see a trend here? If someone else buys up a common-word domain on spec, then I have a domain to sell you: oceanfrontpropertyinarizona.com.
-Dave
“Domain names are still an asset, but only if they are established websites first. Aside from when it was purchased, who the hell uses business.com for any real reason? All it is is one of those spammy web directories. Again, another example of a widely publicized, completely speculative domain purchase, followed by the application of a questionable business model. Anyone see a trend here? If someone else buys up a common-word domain on spec, then I have a domain to sell you: oceanfrontpropertyinarizona.com.
-Dave ”
If you only knew..
p.s
laon.com (yes, typo) was sold couple of days ago for a little over 500k.. no site.
$3 million for wiki.com, a highly recognizable 4-letter domain name, is a very good buy. Check out some recent sold domains at http://www.dnjournal.com/domainsales.htm
The man who made millions by selling spyware and spam killers at Adware.com is less “serial entrepreneur” and more “massively parallel entrepreneur.” While running his first site, along with Searching.com, FightClub.com, and others, Gotts recently bought Wiki.com for about some millions. I am not quite sure whther it is $2.86 million or $3 million cause i have not found the exact cost anywhere on the site.
I think john gotts is not new to this he has been there and done many sucessful deal in the past , but surely not as big as this (wiki), i think this shall payoff soon or later but for sure.
John Gotts’ father, John Wright Gotts, was the key to the success of pcsafe.com and adware.com because he developed the anti-spam and anti-spyware software sold at those sites. John Gotts’ (the son) success, with sites like searching.com, fightclub.com, isocial.com, and now wiki.com, remains to be seen…
The media is missing the story; who knows how many wikis are scheduled to disappear in a matter of hours!
Wikia apparently knows nothing about what Gotts is doing according to executives at Wikia. It looks like Gotts could never get the new and improved wiki software up and running and this Winter apparently lost MindTouch’s support.
In the meantime Gotts made the following statement today (1/15/07):
All wikis will be removed in the next 72 hours.
We are sorry to say that this did not work out.
Kind regards,
John
In response to Marc’s comment, and another email I had from a wiki.com user saying the same thing, I have created http://rescued.wikia.com/ where wiki.com users can find out how to migrate their wiki to Wikia.
Despite the current redirection of wiki.com to Wikia, we are not affiliated with this site, but hope to help wiki.com users if this unfortunate rumor turns out to be true.
Frankly this all smacks of bad showmanship and possible collusion.
John Gotts “test drives” wiki.com for $10,000.00 per month for six months …. with option to bail there after.
Immediately wiki.com is discredited and driven into the ground as incompetent.
Meanwhile wiki.com is re directed to wikia.com …..
The shining knight, Prince Jimmy professes no relation to wiki.com yet wiki.com re directs to wikia.com ….. please.
For some $60,000.00 “someone” may have the ability and opportunity to put “on the stink” to competitors and to perhaps be a savior at the same time.
My …. how “for profit” can possibly change things.
This is worthy of National Politics or the Church.
Very clever but it smells bad.
We are here to help you……sigh.
If it smells, it usually rotten Richard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:DekiWiki
Greetings All,
As many of you have likely heard, Wiki.com is shutting down by January 25, 2007. If you are one of the thousands of users who registered a Wiki.com site have no fear. Your content is safe. You will be receiving an email shortly from MindTouch regarding this issue. The gist of this follows. John Gotts, the owner of Wiki.com, has agreed to transfer all wiki sites to MindTouch. The agreement does not include the Wiki.com domain. We at MindTouch have already begun migrating the wikis to new servers. Your ability to preserve your content is very important to MindTouch. We too were concerned and are very glad Gotts has kindly allowed this transfer. We agreed to this transfer with such short notice because our technology powered Wiki.com from the beginning and we are intimately familiar with the backend. That’s why we are confident we can restore the site in time and make improvements to it over time. Our most immediate concern is, of course, preserving what you have created. We’ll be providing additional details shortly on the new domain, features, and services. MindTouch will take care of you and your community.
Aaron Fulkerson
Free Knowledge.
Not quite the hero that the above post would suggest. It seems that Gotts is accused of ripping off his backers (see http://files.ww.com/files/28308.html for full details) and the courts have issued restraining order against him (see http://files.ww.com/files/28309.html for full details). Gotts wasn’t kind to anyone, he simply drove it to the limit with money he didn’t own, and muddied the water for everyone else.
This guy isn’t a serial entrepreuneur, he’s a parallel disaster, perhaps a contender for the worst thing that has hit the internet this year (and last for that matter).
Mindtouch appear to have earned quite nicely out of their association with Gotts, and it looks like they are now using code they were paid for by Gotts (if they ever got paid) on the new site. I suspect they are taking care of themselves as opposed to taking care of any community, but that is what business is all about
But what about the poor people who were conned into financing Gotts?