Monday, 17 January, 2005
DataCompression.info auction
On January 3, I received an email message from Mark Nelson, who had decided to auction his DataCompression.info link farm. He'd been maintaining links and news about data compression for several years, but hadn't been able to keep it updated recently. The auction included the datacompression.info domain name, his database of data compression related information, the software to convert his database information to Web pages, and archived news items. He decided to auction it all on eBay because he couldn't come up with a decent plan to decide who would make the best caretaker. As he said in his message: "I don't think this domain name is particularly valuable, but it does currently enjoy Google's top PageRank for a few data compression related terms."
I had considered bidding on the domain when it was around $200.00, figuring I could probably make some money selling Google ads on the site. I decided against it for two reasons: I have enough things to keep me busy without searching around for data compression related information all the time; and I didn't think enough people would click through on the Google ads to pay for the hosting and bandwidth.
I guess the domain name was worth more to somebody than either of us thought. The auction ended on January 9 at a price of $5,800.00. The site is now sponsored by a video converencing company called Visicron. It'd be interesting to discover who's behind the $5,800 purchase price and why he thought the domain name was so valuable. Whatever the case, I hope he maintains and continues to update the site, as it's a valuable resource.