News

Charting the iPhone hype by counting domain registrations

Two analyses of the rush to register something_iPhone domains show that a lot of people think they can make money out of becoming part of the Apple hype. Apparently, "more than 4,000 new iPhone domain names have already been registered, with another 4,000 expected by year's end."

Associated Press writer Anick Jesdanun quoted Name Intelligence as saying that "about 450 domains with the word 'iPhone' were registered on January 11 and about 375 the next day - just days after Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone at the Macworld conference in San Francisco."

That eventually dropped to about 25 a day until the recent spike - more than 350 were registered one day last week.

Blogger Jay Westerdahl says that since that early burst, "the quality of IPhone names has been dropping."

Westerdahl goes on to point out that a lot of the good ones were taken on the day of the announcement by the first people that heard the name. "They rushed out and got great names like IPhone Jewelery.com, but the really great names like IPhone Games.com were taken by almost psychic people over a year ago."

AP believes most of these domain claims are speculative: "Several of the domain names were being offered at the eBay Inc. auction site, with some seeking thousands of dollars. Few, however, were getting actual bids, even at 99 cents - already less than $6 it costs to register a domain name," the report ended, adding: "Many of these sites are now showing ads or are nonfunctional."