pizza.com Sold For $2.6m 243
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
Enhance Your Sausage! (Score:5, Funny)
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Search is the big winner not domain names, thats such a money laundering scheme by ICANN and just for suckers.
If something is GOOD then it travels by word of mouth, just like news.
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Re:Enhance Your Sausage! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Sadly, I think its likely a big chain bought it and will only advertise for them. Be nice if there was something to keep track of all the local places.
Re:Enhance Your Sausage! (Score:5, Funny)
LOLZ
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Domain names are very useful because they, unlike IP addresses, are location independent. This means that the Pirate Bay can move their servers from Sweden to some free country, and no one needs to care, since the old address keeps on working despite the packets now traveling somewhere else.
You could have completely randomized domain names and they still would perform a usef
Re:Enhance Your Sausage! (Score:4, Insightful)
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..
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> places (Pizza Hut, Papa Johns, etc). This is not even a blip on that radar.
They still have to advertise the domain to get any real value out of it. But it's a fantastically easy domain to remember, so if a major pizza chain wants to introduce online ordering, the purchase might make sense. An extremely easy-to-remember domain like that means you don't have to expend nearly as much of your advertising space/time/effort/whatever get
Moral of story (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Moral of story (Score:5, Funny)
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Why is that so ridiculous? (Score:5, Funny)
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you jest, but seriously Even In a Recession People Need To Eat. why do you think most of the small independent millionaire/billionaires founded their own regional food chain. consider, for instance, Wendy's founder Dave Thomas. Do you know ANY Other Way for a HIGH SCHOOL DROP OUT to become a billionaire? do you really? really? I'd like to know, because I have one year of college, and I'd like to be e billionaire too...
Well, it takes a university dropout [wikipedia.org] to enter the software field so I suppose high school dropout and food were inevitable?
Actually, it really does make sense (Score:3, Insightful)
Second, the net remains one of the best places to lower your costs. Far cheaper than having a building and ppl. 2.6M? That is nothing.
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Second, the debt you mention is of course the sub-prime business. Which was encouraged by the Democrats whining about the loan industry not loaning enough to those with bad credit. Of course they were more than happy to make the loans, collect the up
Re:Actually, it really does make sense (Score:5, Insightful)
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you know the ad, 'no reams of paperwork to sign'
yeah yeah, that one... who do you think SHAFTED people the most with insane loans they could never repay while working full-time as mcdonalds.
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where was i Oh yes, Oh Canada, the number one oil exporte
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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And you are?
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To a big company it's a few dozen TV adverts... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:To a big company it's a few dozen TV adverts... (Score:5, Funny)
Awareness (Score:3, Interesting)
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For a while, British Gas were advertising their website as house.co.uk [house.co.uk]. Now, call me crazy, but if I was looking for the British Gas website I would probably type in britishgas.co.uk [britishgas.co.uk] (which is what house.co.uk [house.co.uk] redirects to), or I would type 'British Gas' into Google.
And if I was typing in house.co.uk [house.co.uk] into my address bar without knowing who owned it, I probably wouldn't be expecting to see the website of a purveyor of piped fossil fuels.
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If I want Papa John's, I type in papajohns.com and if I want Pizza Hut, I type in pizzahut.com
I don't let an arbitrary domain name decide what type of pizza I want.
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Re:Awareness (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
Post a story about it on Slashdot?
Unfortunately for the seller ... (Score:5, Funny)
They could have saved there money... (Score:5, Funny)
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Prices lag recession (Score:2)
In any case, the article states nothing of the actual asking price. It could be that the even in a bubble, the asking price was too high, and the owner, seeing a recession, lowered the price. Or it co
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Auction.
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The whois for pizza.com still shows Christopher Clark as the owner.
I'd guess it's along the lines someone wrote earlier - it was bought by a speculator who has some idea of the true value of the domain name. US$2.6M is nothing compared to what those chains spend in advertising.
d'oh!! (Score:3, Interesting)
*bangs head on desk*
Re:d'oh!! (Score:5, Informative)
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My god (Score:2)
Two Americas (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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
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Sure, the stock is going to be worth less net now than it was last year. But that high was built on a bubble inflated by money lent from the Fed (taxpayers).
And even more to the point, Bear Stearns (and its shareholders, brokers and execs) raked in so many $BILLIONS over the past 10-20 years (much of which ultimately came from the Fed - taxpayers) running the way that eve
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Let's assume that somehow the Federal Reserve has the power to simply take money from the "taxpayers", as you suggest, despite being, as someone else replying to my post pointed out, about as "
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I am suspicious that you do not have the credentials to be making these claims. Both of your posts use adjectives and vague numbers, suggesting to me that this info emanated from the wrong end of your body. Could you provide some concrete evidence? Not that I'm a cheerleader for the US banking system, federal reserve, fed government, plainly corrupt US markets, etc, etc, but you come off a bit delusional.
Do you think Bear Stearns should have crumbled? Do you want
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If you want some evidence of some specific statements, challenge them specifically and I'll supply them.
As for what I think should have happened to Bear Stearns, of course I think that it should have been regulated to prevent its irresponsible actions before it
Politics and economics are inseparable (Score:2)
Political bullshit, makes no sense. This is a financial problem.
Make no mistake, it sucks that we have to talk about this. But it had to be done.
Since you're apparently more of an expert on this than Ben Bernanke (who spent much of his career studying the Great Depression), let's hear what you would've done.
Three things:
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And of course you want to see it roll on. You make your living participating in the economy according to its rules. Of course you want to see
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And if you're going to say that's all made up, is it worth living in denial that it's true?
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So is it worth living in denial of that?
Re:Two Americas (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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"500,000s of people"...?
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Which lots of people "smart" enough to have stayed out will also see if that all comes down. And so the next time, the rolls of the exploiters will be full, and
Re:Two Americas (Score:4, Interesting)
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 ha
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I still blame the person signing up for the loan in this situation. If you lie about how much money you are making per year, prepare for the conse
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How could banks have risked 4x the mone
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an interesting way to end an argument. It reminds me of a little kid that's going to take his toys home because he can't get his way.
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Goodbye.
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What the fuck did you expect would happen?
Trying to blame everybody is an attempt to blame nobody. There are a few people who more than anyone else share culpability for this disaster, conspicuously including Alan Greenspan, and the purpose of the talking point that you are parroti
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Millions of people across the country suddenly turned into cheating morons, all at the same time? Doesn't that seem a little strange to you?
It's a typical response from the left: blame the faceless corporation or government rather than getting to the root of the problem.
Millions of people were the root of t
You gotta be kidding me (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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It's actually a huge market [wikipedia.org] worth hundreds of millions if not billions annually. I couldn't believe it when I first heard a
Simple URL (Score:2)
1) Some major pizza chain uses it as their modern, easy-to-remember "phone number". If I wanted to order a Domino's Pizza (which I don't), I wouldn't know whether to go to dominos.com, dominospizza.com, dominopizza.com, domino-pizza.com, etc. Putting pizza.com in their conventional advertising and repeating it for years would eventually get a lot of people going there.
2) An independent business makes it easy to find and order pi
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Now that I'm all grown up, the local job search using that same phrase is "Fargo Jobs dot com". "Fargo Jobs dot com: Long name
I hesitate to think what the owners
Bubble & Recession? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Are you "rich" or are you just speculating on the tax cuts. People making > $100,000 have to pay between 30-50% in taxes. This isn't fair for people that actually want to make money.
The US
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[Checks December pay stub] Oooh, what a giveaway. No way are you making more than $100,000.
This isn't fair for people that actually want to make money.
I like this. The "people who don't actually want to make money" are taking advantage of everybody else. That's rich.
Why ridiculous? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dominos Pizza Market Cap: $843,000,000
Papa John's Market Cap: $725,000,000
Pizza Hut 2007 Sales: $26,000,000
I know a TLD person (Score:2)
wrong opposition (Score:2)
Just one data point (Score:2)
Bubble and recession at the same time? Uh... this is just one company buying a domain name for $2.6M. Taken in isolation this information tells us nothing other than the fact that one company thought that particular domain name was worth $2.6M.
Besides, no bubble brings all prices sky high, and no recession ever brings all pricing to the floor. Whatever the larger economic picture, there will always be companies taking risks and companies playing it safe.
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therenottheir
Re:no their can't! (Score:5, Insightful)
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And this explains many of the contradictions of their 'ideology'.
Your statement made about as much sense as my paraphrase. This concludes my karma burn for the day. Thank you.