Symbolics.com was registered today, 25 years ago! Symbolics.com is now owned by domain name investor Aron Meystedt where he runs a personal blog on the Symbolics.com domain name. The blog has a main focus on domain names and investments with domain names.

Verisign, the registry for .com and .net domain names is throwing a year long party to celebrate the 25 years of Dot-Com and is kicking things off with a site at  25YearsOf.com

Well, even Verisign seems to have a bit of a problem after 25 years!

Once the site is fixed, it will display history of domain names, which will be pretty cool to see, but in the mean time, they are showing that even after 25 years, web sites still have problems from time to time. (Update: The site appears to load now)

Here is a list of the top 10 oldest .com domain names:

Out of the top 100 "oldest" .com domain names, NYNexst.com was registered on 11/30/1987 and comes in at number 100. Since the time of the original top 100, all 100 have held there original creation dates.

Convergent.com (#54) is the "longest" domain of the top 100 .com domain names ever created with 10 letters (excluding the TLD). 40% of the top 100 are registered with Network Solutions at time of posting. 7 of the 100 domain names are 2 Letter domain name. 34 are 3 letter domain names. 7 are 4 letter domain names.

Bell-ATL.com was the first hyphenated dot-com domain name, created on 08/05/1986. Data-io.com was the second on 11/18/1986 and rounds out the only two hyphenated domains in the top 100. December 11, 1986 saw the most .com domain names registered in one day out of the top 100, with 12 domains registered that day.

I always find it interesting when a large news source like CNN covers domain names. It’s never a bad thing for the domain name industry when this happens, because it sheds some more light on to domain names and the values many carry. The bad thing, the reporters mainly have little to no clue what they are talking about and it shows!

Reading the article on Money.CNN.com by Ben Rooney can clearly be confusing if you are not familiar with domain names. Why? The very first sentence in the article states:

"Sex.com, one of the most valuable Internet domain names, will go up for auction next week after the previous owner defaulted on its debts."

Then in the very next sentence of the article:

"Escom LLC paid a reported $14 million for the Web site in 2006"

Now the "Domain Name" has become a web site? A domain name and a web site are two totally different things IMO! Although domain names and web sites go hand in hand, a domain name directs traffic TO a web site. The large majority of domain name sales reported are just that, Domain Names. If a website sells, 9 times out of 10, the domain name that the web site was on, goes with the sale.

So to be clear, a domain name sale is a domain name sale. A web site sale most likely includes the web site and domain name. Not every domain name has a "web site" with the domain name!

Then about half way down in the article, the author wrote:

"By way of comparison, the domain name www.pizza.com reportedly sold for more than $2.5 million at an auction in 2008."

Mr Rooney first writes Sex.com just like that and calls it "one of the most valuable internet domain names". Then appears to turn the domain name into a web site sale. Sex.com may have been sold as a domain name & web site sale, but it should be reported that way as well.

It was pointed out in the article, but both domain names used (Sex.com and Pizza.com) were "reportedly" sold for the respected amounts mentioned. Why not use Candy.com that we all know sold for $3 Million instead of a reportedly sold domain like pizza.com for $x amount? How about Toys.com domain sale that we know sold for $5.1 Million? Fund.com for $9,999,950 that we know sold for that amount. If you are going to compare any domain name sales, at least use one that is known for the amount it sold for.

I am not lashing out at CNN or Ben, but it would be nice if the reporting was a little more clear and based on known sales when they can. No two domains are a like, so it is hard to compare two domain sales. I also know the story could be looked at both ways, as Ben was talking about the domain name itself in one part of the story, and the sale of Sex.com and the web site, if it was sold with one, but I also think it should be cleared up if it was a web site and domain sale or just a domain name sale itself.

CNN itself may need to learn a thing or two about domain name and the values in them. They did simply let Coldwar.com expire last year and let it get auctioned as an expired domain at NameJet, where it sold for $7,900 USD! NameJet got the majority of the sale price, with CNN likely getting a check for 20% due to rules in place at the domain name registrar Network Solutions. The majority of expired domain name auctions that take place, the past owner will not get a penny of the sale proceeds if there is any.