Numeric Domains

Developing Nations - Picking Up the Mobile Pace

That venerable organization, UNCTAD, (who dat?, ed.) an offshoot of the UN claims that "Mobile phone users in developing nations now make up 58% of handset subscribers worldwide". And according to the ITU , mobile phone penetration rates are expected to reach 50 percent by early this year with the three billion subscription mark already passed some months ago.

Unsurprisingly, most of that growth is coming from emerging markets like Africa, which has come up with a growth rate of 50 percent in the last few years. The stars of the show, equally predictably, have been the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) adding one billion new users between them last year.

Undoubtedly, the vast majority of the mobile phones being purchased are NOT of the Smart phone and qwerty keyboard variety. They are of the standard key pad alpha-numeric configuration used on billions of cell phones world wide.

As our unofficial anecdotal learning curve suggests, many new cell phone users will type-in random numbers into their browsers to test the wireless internet waters. These meanderings eventually lead subscribers to properly formatted internet sites designed to deliver information and services. As their efforts improve access over time, they will come to realize that  inputting 42637.com leads to "games", 2428.com leads to "chat", 6397.com leads to "news", 32232665.com leads to Facebook etc. Companies delivering mobile content such as Worddial continue to see growing traffic from these developing countries.

This can only bode well for increased use of numeric domains.

ChaCha's Boy Wonder Blasts "Partners"

Last Sunday (January 27), Brad Bostic posted an entry on his blog describing how Sybase and Sprint had managed to screw up delivery of ChaCha answers to Sprint hand sets.

Young Brad, backbone fully engaged, went on to rake the ChaCha "partner" duo, Sybase/Sprint, over the coals (had to work all weekend, lackluster service, ineptness, spotty core competency, yada, yada, yada).

However, astute NuDoms would have glazed over the public stoning and zeroed in on this innocuous blurb.

"We have a longer term strategy that will put us in more direct control of these situations..."

Whatever can it mean?

Readers with any information are invited to comment. Insiders are particularly welcomed.

242242 Cha Cha (Cha)... Mobile Portal on the Horizon?

It was widely reported yesterday that ChaCha launched its Human-powered search site, a new service that allows you to ask questions and get the answers via text message. The press coverage was fairly extensive. Unquestionably, with other competitors such as UK based Texperts and US based Mahalo, the human assisted search market is gaining momentum. Whether they will all carve out a successful niche remains to be seen. It begs the question, how far behind can the majors that want to protect their market share be?

Numeric Domains - a bit player in this unfolding story...

On September 4, 2007, staff at ChaCha hand registered several 242242 TLD and CC extensions including .net, .org, .co.uk, .info, .biz, .mobi -and potentially others. At that point in time, they did not own 242242.com.

My sister did.

Weeks later she received an anonymous offer via a broker for 242242.com. Like any good NuDom (Numeric Domainer), before responding to the offer, it was researched who owned the other extensions. Turns out it was ChaCha, so it was a pretty safe bet that it was them looking to buy the .com. If, as  presumed, it was ChaCha knocking on the door, a decision had to be made. Do we try to maximize returns with a relatively high asking price, or follow that gut feeling that they will someday use 242242.com in a much broader context and develop it out as their mobile portal, and ask a more moderate price?

It was decided on the latter. An agreement on price was made and the sale was completed in a matter of days.

So you can imagine my elation when yesterday's announcement was made public. Even though it is structured as a texting service for the time being, I'm hoping that ChaCha will continue to evolve the mobile portal concept so that anyone with wireless access to the Internet, no matter what cell phone they have, no matter who their wireless carrier is, no matter what language they speak, no matter what time of the day or night and no matter where in the world they are - they will be able to retrieve their information from ChaCha by simply entering 242242.com into their mobile browsers.