DomainInformer Editor's Desk

.Me domains become the hottest new destination
Derek Iwasiuk September 02, 2008

Presently .Me domains are gaining momentum as the hottest new destination for Web addresses that have hit the market. Due to their universal appeal and quality to be easily remembered they have become essential to brand yourself or a company in the online market. Furthermore, some “premium” names such as. Contact.ME, Drive.ME, Kiss.Me, Youand.Me, Insure.me have the potential to create a completely new perception of the websites.

The .me domain names have surpassed everyone’s expectations when it comes to popularity. There were tens of thousands of .Me domain names registered within the first registration day. The world’s giant registrar GoDaddy reported that they received over 20,000 different registration requests within the first 24 hours. Recently, the .ME Registry revealed that it has registered more than 100,000 domain names so far. The main interest comes from English speaking countries including the United States (71%), the United Kingdom (6%), Canada (4%), and Australia (2%).

The people and brands have foreseen the huge potential of the new .Me domain names and snapped them up at a price of $99.98 during the opening bid period in June. However, many domain names received more than one application and were put up for auctions.

More than a thousands auctions are currently open for popular and it is not inexplicable why .many of them are going so high and why so many trademark domains are being auctioned.

However many of the landrush auctions have ended, and we’ve already witnessed some high sales. Toyota.me was sold for $90,025, while the attractive domain name of insure.me scored the very impressive $68,000 price. Other big sales include:

only.me $33,405

aweso.me $24,189

skoda.me $20,010

brand.me $18,540

lasvegas.me $15,105

chatwith.me $15,035

korea.me $15,015

solve.me $13,116

picture.me $10,240

recruit.me $10,155

onlinecasino.me $10,005

tag.me $10,005

secure.me $10,005

In all likelihood, it is only a matter of time before we see domain names that will reach six figure final bids. Moreover, the major bidding is expected to happen in September when many of the premium domain names are scheduled to come up for bidding. So stay tuned to find out whether .me will break the internet record for new domain name registration and will pave the way for the new domain extensions that are coming onto market over the next couple of years.

Update:

Beginning Sept. 25, the .ME Registry will commence two auctions for its premium domain names.

The lists of premium names for the live and online auctions read here.