Yahoo has been active in the domain buying and selling space the past few months. Today, it was revealed to be the buyer of OMG.com, which sold last week for $80,000, according to Domain Name Wire.
It’s a great domain, and a really, really great price especially considering the image-centric TMZ.com-rival it has called yes, OMG. (Note: I had no idea it actually existed, at least partially because it didn’t have the omg.com domain — well, and also cause I’m not into celebrity gossip. But supposedly, it’s big.)
Of course, Yahoo has a history of obtaining good domain names and doing nothing or next to nothing with them. It sold contests.com in June for $380,000 after sitting on it for many years. It also sold WP.com to WordPress parent Automattic in April of this year.
Given the numbers for recent sales, it does seem like Yahoo scooped OMG.com for a bargain basement price. As we said, it sold contests.com for $380,000, which also seemed cheap at the time when you compare it to something like candy.com, which sold for $3 million in June. And in February, toys.com sold for $5.1 million.
Sure, “OMG” is not even really a word, but it has become a common phrase in pop culture and would seem to be worth more than $80K in a world where candy.com sells for $3M — especially since it’s only 3 letters.
[photo: flickr/quinn.anya]
Extremely good value, it has a lot of potential as a name that could really do well for a project. Hopefully it’ll get developed, eventually.
I’d like to grab a yahoo account in that domain. What’s the thing with gmail accounts not opening up in other domains? Seems like people must open up some freaking account named like jul1e01@gmail.com nowadays, something that looks much more like a password than a username. With both Android and Chrome OS tied to gmail, one would imagine they would let you have more choice.
Yes, that seems to be a worthy purchase. OMG.Yahoo.com looks awesome though, seriously they got skills to be the best!
That’s cheap, cheap. I thought OMG.com was an active site?
James F.
Owner, TwitterBackground.com
Exactly – what gives?
Why so cheap? OMG is fairly active and growing.
HollyM
http://www.thessayist.com
I know right? Exactly. Omg. Yeah. It’s great.
Annoying P.
http://www.i-sp...-promotions.php
Its probably because Yahoo can claim copyright over the “OMG Brand” and thus limited the potential of other buyers to create a business out of the domain. Someone who purchased it would not have been able to create a gossip blog. Perhaps they could have ventured into other female-oriented business like fashion, but the flexibility of OMG.com was really limited given Yahoo’s claim to the news-gossip name.
uhh Yahoo already runs a site called OMG, omg.yahoo.com, which is not only a TMZ competitor, but has more market share. Of course they will use the domain for that purpose. Do some research.
Not sure if you are being sarcastic, yahoo has a TMZ rival named OMG.
http://omg.yahoo.com/
heh yeah, i’ll make that more clear
my guess is it would be used for this:
omg.yahoo.com
http://omg.yahoo.com/
Never heard about that site? Obviously they are gonna use their new domain name for that site.
And Yahoo’s OMG is already getting more traffic than TMZ.com according to this report: http://www.nbcb...h-Than-TMZ.html
good stuff, added that in.
and it looks like John answered the question of “what is yahoo going to do with the domain”…..
I read somewhere last week that yahoo’s omg was bigger than tmz…..trying to find that story now.
check above, link is in comments (and added it to the post)
Any site that gets frequent links from the yahoo homepage will have huge traffic. I don’t think it’s fair to compare it to other sites.
Way to do your research. Such journalism!
i wish i read the article when it first came up, what did this moron write?
reading the comments sounds like he doesnt even know what yahoo even serves
is this the type of moron that writes for techcrunch, and doesnt know what the #2 site in the world even offers?
omg.yahoo.com
Yes, that’s what I got omg.com confused with. I knew I saw an active site using ‘omg’ as their main logo before.
James F.
TwitterBackground.com
yep, now we know what it’ll be used for.
They will probably create an URL shortening service there too.
agree, yahoo’s URL shortening service written all over it.
If anything, seeking out its own domain might indicate Yahoo wanting spin off and sell the property.
$80K for a true super premium 3 letter .com name such as OMG.com is indeed a very cheap (and certainly lucrative) bargain … wonder if the seller is kicking himself if he didn’t know at the time of the sale that the principal buyer in the domain was YHOO…
OMG
OMG was my opening word for many posts now. I will consider buying it from Yahoo!
I still don’t understand why they sold contests.com, it seems like something they could have used.
OMG is more self explainable than TMZ to me.
people, the popularity of easily recognizable domain names went the way of the dinosaur back when the tech bubble burst.
If you want to buy a book online I’m willing to bet you don’t go to books.com. You go to Amazon. Travel? Probably Expedia or Travelolicity – not travel.com. Generic names are not worth the millions paid for them. Building brands and good content ARE. By that logic “socialnetwork.com” should be a billion dollar domain and easily beat out facebook.com because it makes so much more intuitive sense for idiots that have keyboards but lack common sense.
Your grandma or your parents might have surfed the net that way, but we don’t.
Mark; the majority of internet users are the parents of us all. Sure, amazon.com is better than books.com for books, but if you were starting up a new company you’d surely go for books.com, easier to brand, much much easier.
I agree, I see a good domain name as a good phone number that people remember. But you need to have a good product and perhaps a good corporate identity so customers can trust you as a brand and not a generic domain name. Such as “books.com” brought to you by Amazon or BN. You still need a physical store mentality to connect with customers so that they don’t think you’re a mysterious hacky website.
Absolutely 100% Incorrect. A quality domain name is very valuable. Amazon is Amazon becuase 10 years and millions of dollars of advertising. Generic names still get targeted type in traffic and an SEO boost.
Also a quality name .com does have psychological impact over some crappy hyphenated .whatever name.
I.e. FreeComputerGames.com (Which I own) vs. Free-Computer-Games.info
But I not a big dog I’ve only sold 300K in names so far.
I’d think that “candy” and “toys” would be worth a LOT more than “contests” as a .com. I can’t think of a big name company who’d want that as a domain to bring in easy contest applicants… OMG for 80,000 does seem a bit cheap, but then again most people who use the net still probably don’t know what OMG means.
OMG.com would have been a good purchase for TechCrunch given the quality of its news lately.
OMG.com was the deal of the year. The previous owner of the domain (Object Management Group) really should have done some research before selling this off for less than $500k. The site traffic is up 80% from last year. What a winner for Yahoo! They syndicate content from US weekly and have a better domain (site eventually) then TMZ. Nice to see them pull this off, they need it.
Now that the cat is out of the bag I wonder how much the former owner ( Object Management Group) will want when it comes time to negotiate the deal on OMG.net since they own that too : P
In other news, Yahoo’s Jerry Yang is going back to the family business: Chinese food-to-go.
He will assume dual roles, both as a sauce-mixing apprentice (he’s only good with Moo Goo Gai Pan sauce so far) and as a delivery driver on the family 2001 Honda Dream 125 CC moped, specially equipped with a milk crate to on the handlebar to prevent the egg drop soup from dropping.
An innovator at heart, Jerry has already had some bright ideas today, officially his first day on the job, during which he engaged in a lengthy discussion with Mai-Ling, a veteran waitress, on the possibility of doing E-FortuneCookies. The idea is to send fortune cookie messages to dinner’s Blackberries, thereby avoiding the need to sweep up crumbs at the end of the night.
OMG !
Haha love this comment.
Ok… next up somebody needs to buy OMFG.com from the Official Meeting Facilities Guide (really?)
http://omfg.com/aboutus.asp
Yeah thats the truth yahoo getting cool stuff lately I like it.
lol @ omg, wtf?
It looks like the domain business is still alive and kicking.
Plenty of nice spellable names out there, even some fun ones like http://ba.be and http://cu.be
But maybe that’s for the short URL providers
people say omg all the time. this is key
Finally. I’ve been going on about them needing to get there properties on real domains for years now, right here in TC comments.
Better late than never. But it still won’t save them since they gave up search. They’re still doomed if that deal goes through.
OMG means Oh My God (obviously). Can someone tell me what TMZ means?
Three Mile Zone
“OMG that’s, like, so much more obvious.”
But seriously, seems like Yahoo really have bagged a bargain and perhaps they really *are* getting their head out of their arse after all.
Was change at the top all that Yahoo needed all this time?
I’ve never been a serious user of Yahoo products/services (other than Flickr), but I can see that this might change… and I wonder for how many other people this would apply?
Thirty Mile Zone
“The term “Thirty Mile Zone” originated in the 1960s, when due to the growth of location shoots, studios established a “thirty mile zone” to monitor rules for filming in Hollywood. The center of the zone was the offices of The Association of Motion Pictures and Television Producers, formerly at Beverly and La Cienega Boulevards in Los Angeles. TMZ reinvented the thirty mile zone and now serves as the Internet’s premiere address for entertainment news.”
I think the last decent 3-letter domain name that is still available is hum.com.
OMG.com was in my eyes a steal.
I would suspect the seller didnt know it was Yahoo who was after the domain or they would have seeked alot more cash.
Anyone interested in buying generic domains or has any questions about generic domains feel free to drop me an email – Im a broker and have lots of names to sell but Im happy to point anyone in the right direction for free – So any questions hit me up – homes(@)wea.la
Regards,
Rob
Great price for that domain name, however I think we will all agree it could have fetched more. regards Lisa
This is really a good value,which offers more people get interested in buying this generic domains.
Thanks for this idea!