pizza.com Sold For $2.6m

f8d noted a beeb bit on the fact that the pizza.com domain name was sold for a ridiculous 2.6m bucks. Can there be a bubble and a recession at the same time, or do the two cancel each other out like Penn & Teller?

You kidding?

That was a STEAL. Just think of the marketing budget of any of the standard delivery places (Pizza Hut, Papa Johns, etc). This is not even a blip on that radar. I just hope it was a pizza place. God help us all if it was a porn company.

Enhance Your Sausage!

If it isn't a pizza company, I say we abandon domain names and go back to numeric addressing.

Re:Enhance Your Sausage!

Frankly I've never used a "search" I just fire up my Intarweb close out a couple of advertisements and today's news then a couple more advertisements then another then spend some time changing my passwords on my bank accounts because my bank says they had to lock my account (thank goodness they're looking out for me because I didn't even remember about my account with the National Bank of Zimbabwe and I know its really secure because they ask for so much of my personal information to prove its me) and I am also lucky enough to get most of the shopping I need done from the mail in my Inbox (I haven't had to go to the store for medicine or vitamins or butt paste in ages) then type something into the "keyword" box and I get what I need but if it doesn't show anything then I figure it doesn't exist or I really didn't need it anyway.

LOLZ

Re:Enhance Your Sausage!

What I have found funny is that I work at a tech company, for the sake of this post let's go with "foobar", and I was over at a sales persons desk when I asked him to go to our homepage. "Just go to foobar.com", I told him. He goes and types "foobar.com" in the search box at the top of the Firefox chrome. "Wait wait wait, what are you doing?", I asked, "Why don't you just type it in the address bar and go straight there?". "What are you talking about, I am typing it in the address bar!", he replies. I grab the keyboard and show him how to type a URL into Firefox. "Oh, I didn't know you could do that with foobar.com", he said.

Apparently unless some people see something with http://www./ [www.] on the front, they have no idea they can stick it in the address bar. Google has become the gateway to the internet, even when you could get there directly..

Re:Enhance Your Sausage!

When I'm traveling for business I couldn't care what pizza place I get so long as they deliver to my hotel. If pizza.com had a standard order form for all the local pizza places (just enter an address and it'll give a map or something) then I'd be quite happy to pay them a $0.50 or $1.00 convenience fee. Maybe I'm an isolated case (traveling for work is a weird venture), but there are business models here.

Moral of story

Buying a ton of domain names on the cheap in the mid 90's would have been a sound investment.

Re:Moral of story

I'll definitely take that moral to heart for the next time the 90's come around.

Why is that so ridiculous?

I've PERSONALLY been so hungry I couldn't make it to google, typing "pizza" directly into the URL bar AT LEAST 50,000 times, spending $20+ dollars each time. If there's a couple of more people out there like me, they've already broken even.

To a big company it's a few dozen TV adverts...

A major pizza maker will spend more than that on TV advertising every month. It's nothing in the big scheme of things.

Re:To a big company it's a few dozen TV adverts...

Yeah $2.6 million dollars? No problem, I have a couple of euros in my pocket....

Unfortunately for the seller ...

... the domain transfer took more than 30 mins, so it was free.

They could have saved there money...

If only their was a homophone for pizza.

Two Americas

A recession and a bubble at the same time? Of course. When oil and bank corps, and the people who own & run them are bathing in record profits (above the records set every year for the past decade and a half, above the records set every year except maybe one or two of every twenty for the past few centuries), but literally millions of people are getting their homes foreclosed, millions more are always 6 weeks paychecks from losing their homes, income has shrunk over the past 25 years while prices have doubled, tripled or more (especially oil/gas prices and bank fees)...

Of course there's a recession and a bubble possible. Where do you think that bubble money comes from? And do you think that when it pops, everyone loses their shirt? Or maybe the rich people who run the country (*cough* Bear Stearns *cough*) will never see any real risk, while the poor are as free as the rich to sleep under a bridge.

The biggest lie about "the economy" is that it's "the" economy. There are separate economies for the rich and everyone else, shunted and fed back into each other separately. Except the rich economy has a siphon into the other economy.

Re:Two Americas

BEAR STEARNS COS THE (NYSE: BSC)
Last Trade: 10.47
52wk Range: 2.84 - 159.36

The stock is down 93.5% from its high last year. You call that "never ... any real risk"? I call you insane.

Re:Two Americas

*sign*

1: learn the difference between profit and profit margin.

2: "millions of people" are not getting losing their homes. You're off by an entire order of magnitude - which makes it pretty clear that you're just spewing hyperbole

2.a: The majority of the people who will lose their homes *lied* on their applications. That's right. They lied so that they could get a $300k McMansion on their 30k salary. Had they been honest, they couldn't have gotten that big a loan, but then they might have had to *gasp* live within their means, and we Americans just can't have that, now can we.

Re:Two Americas

and why is this? millions of people took on a loan they couldn't handle. It has to do with the fact that many banks were forced to give out loans (by the government) to people that they knew were not making enough to pay it back.

No, that's not why.

Yes, millions took on loans they couldn't handle. Banks weren't "forced to give out loans". Unless you mean that they were forced by their shareholders natural profit motive to take near-0% wholesale loans from the government, which government eliminated requirements that the retail borrowers be able to pay it back, then mark it up to several percent, and jack that up to a dozen percent or more after the borrowers were committed to the loan (because they'd lose their house, and whatever they'd already repaid).

Yes, there were millions of people who took out loans they couldn't afford. I never said they shouldn't lose their houses, or otherwise take the hit. There were many people who got loans on fraud, too, though most of those frauds were encouraged by banks that didn't ask even for documentation - just asserting on a single form that you made $X a year was enough.

Hell, we just lived through the age of "NINJA" loans: No Income, No Job or Assets. Given happily by banks, hand over fist.

Why? Not because "the government forced them to". But because the government made them a delightful offer they couldn't refuse: make $BILLIONS on these stupid loans, marking up loans from the government, and then when lots go bad, the government will bail you out. The problem is that "the government" meant "politicians bribed by the banks" when it came to deciding to hand out the money, but "the government" means "taxpayers" when it comes to actually paying for it. Taxpayers who were themselves bribed by those politicians with "tax cuts" and even tax rebates, all so the entire cost could be put onto the public debt, which means it cost even more interest atop what the mortgage interest cost.

If you'd asked about what to do about the people who took loans they can't repay, you'd have found that of course they should bear the damage from failing under their risks. People who were sold loans by fraudulent banks should still have to repay the principal to those banks, and pay an interest rate set to the median fixed rate their neighbors paid in the financial quarter they all were issued their loans, but to a government liquidity fund rather than to the defrauding bank, from which fund new loans can be made if necessary and creditworthy. If they still can't pay, they foreclose like anyone else. People taking loans on true terms they signed should also have to pay, unless they go bankrupt like anyone else - at which point the judge can redesign their mortgage debt, along with all their obligations to creditors, just like anyone else. And everyone in the country should be allowed to tap their IRAs and other separate funds ordinarily unavailable to keep their homes from foreclosing. But since you were too busy inventing what I think about risk and consequences, you didn't bother to find out.

Blah blah blah about "rich vs poor is a lie". The fact is that the rich have every privilege. I didn't say that no poor people can get rich: some can, especially if they can help the rich get richer (helping the poor get richer makes practically no one rich in this country). I personally came from a middle class family, worked regular jobs starting at age 13, and made myself rich by working like a slave starting up my own company on my own savings and brains. I even helped some kids who'd grown up poor by training and employing them, and they're at least upper middle class, and some are rich. I don't say anyone should get extra privileges and opportunities because they're not rich, just that the rich have enough extra opportunities and privileges they can legitimately buy, without being subsidized in risk and profits by the taxpayers when they go wrong, more than everyone else gets protected. Being rich has advantages, but it's wrong for those advantages to themselves attract unmerited advantages at the expense of those without any.

I'm not talking about the kind of class warfare you'd like to say I am. Being rich itself is no sin. And it is possible for (some of) the poor to (sometimes) become rich. What is seriously wrong is that the rich bear so much less risk of becoming poor than the poor stand opportunity to become rich. The mortgage system is an outstanding example. How many $BILLIONS (if not $TRILLIONS) do you think banks will get to bail them out because they took risks they couldn't afford, while people taking those risks (or smaller) will get hung out to dry? One clue could be the bailout passed by Congress this week, which pumped $15B into the mortgage economy. $12B sent to banks, $3B sent to borrowers (people). That's 4x as much for the banks. That's 1/4 the risk taken by the banks as by the people. And of course that will just grow and grow, and doesn't include the $30B the Fed already gave JP Morgan to ensure buying Bear Stearns for dirt cheap won't be a risk (and the $30B in Bear Stearns debt to the Fed that was "forgiven" - paid by the taxpayers - to seal the deal).

Tell me about the people who borrowed money who got that kind of bailout. I'll tell you about the banks getting bailed out for so much more, and the even huger profits they made for years for supposedly taking risks they never took.

What I do to better myself is to make myself rich. I don't take risks I can't afford just because I expect some rich privilege to bail me out - so I didn't buy an unsupportable mortgage in the past year. Why should I pay to bail out either those who did, or the banks who profited more than they're now standing to lose? And since the banks are the ones really looking to pick my pocket for the most, why should I whine about the smaller amount that the borrowers want covered, when it's the banks robbing me?

If I thought that way, I'd never have gotten as rich as I have. Though I supposed if I'd gotten bank rich, that's exactly the way to think, because that's exactly what always works.

Now, what have you done to "better yourself"? How does making up crap to defend the privilege of the banks over the protection of everyone else better you? Or does it just better your imaginary life as a bank, that you'll never have?

You gotta be kidding me

I was discussing this at lunch yesterday with some coworkers, and most of us thought it was an incredible waste of money. How many people do you know that when they want something, they open up their browser and just type what they want plus .com right into the address bar? Only complete fools do that and I'm honestly sure that population subset is very small and made up of old people.

One guy was defending their position rather well though, he basically said that whenever you do non-internet advertising, such as on television or the radio, having a very simple URL is a necessity for having people remember it for later on.

Bubble & Recession?

Can their be a bubble and a recession at the same time, or do the two cancel each other out like Penn & Teller?

Of course there can, and that's exactly what is happening. There is too much venture capital out there and few good places to invest it. There is a recession because oil and other commodities have cut into corporate profits and a bubble because billions of VC funding is available, due to GWB's tax cuts for the rich.

Reagan's trickle-down policies caused a simiilar bubble (in derivatives) in 1987, A decade later, more easy Fed money caused Venture Capitalists to invest in high-tech stocks, causing the famous dot-com bubble and bust.

A recession is when lots of poor and middle class people lose their jobs; a bubble is when a few VCs all decide to put their money in the same place at the same time, driving up prices but not value or production.

Which is what's happening now.

Why ridiculous?

Why is 2.6M for one of the most recognized words in the English (and other) languages ridiculous?
Dominos Pizza Market Cap: $843,000,000
Papa John's Market Cap: $725,000,000
Pizza Hut 2007 Sales: $26,000,000

Re:Awareness

Your problem is that you are too smart to understand the business model.

I am a webmaster and I run a few high traffic web sites. I see people hitting my sites all the time who type in www.mydomain.com into GOOGLE rather than their address bar.

Not to mention the search engine possibilities. While having pizza.com does not guarantee that you'll be #1 for the search term "pizza" it will help a lot. Especially with the PR it's getting it wouldn't surprise me if it's already #1 due to all the news sites linking to it.

Also, while I am not a domain squatter, I have read up on the business model. It's not uncommon for people to type things like "bubblegum.com" into their address bar just to see what happens. I heard that the guy who owns bubblegum.com or gum.com or something makes a grand / DAY just having a spam page up (might be a myth but imagine having a few thousand such domains making SOMETHING every day even it's pennies).

So yeah, 2.6M for pizza.com is a steal, and it's pennies for a big chain like Pizza Hut. And as for your "it's still going to cost something in advertising", assuming it is a big chain that bought the domain, all they have to do is change their flyers and tv ads so that instead of "pizzahut.com" it prints "pizza.com". Their ad budget stays the same.

Re:Awareness

How are you going to get the public aware of the fact that pizza.com even exists?

Post a story about it on Slashdot?

Re:no their can't!

People who cant spel don't care that they can't spell. Ridiculing them is a waste of time, first, because they don't care, and second, because they can't tell that you're mis-spelling stuff.

Re:d'oh!!

If it makes you feel any better, FTFA: "Mr Clark registered the domain name in 1994..."

Re:Actually, it really does make sense

First, America is going through a recession because of our debt, combined with our realizing that we have overspent. OTH, Europe, japan, canada, etc are all picking up speed while the dollar continues to plummet due to our federal and trade deficits. Hopefully, the next president will be responsible.

Don't worry, the Republicans are certain to make sure we hold the next president responsible.

Re:Actually, it really does make sense

... the housing bubble/bust was the product of a free market,

Mmmmmm, no, the Fed made credit too cheap. HARDLY the product of a free market.