Host.al, an accredited registrar for .al domains informed that the domain VOK.AL was sold for 1000 US$.
Although the name of the buyer was not been made public initially, the domain seems to be the main brand for the Start-up GETVOKAL. (GET)VOK.AL is an audio social network for creating, sharing and discovering entertaining, hilarious Vokes (audio clips). Normally the users can signup to create “vokes” of up to 1 minute in length
edit, add special effects in real time. The vokes can be posted privately or publicly.
VOK.AL has headquarters in Bengaluru, Karnataka India. Their crunchbase page indicates that they have raised funds from some prominent investors such as Accel Partners or Blume Partners.
Apparently one of the websites that offered .al domain registrations, www.dot.al is down since 2-3 days. While this is a problem isolated in an irresponsible behaviour of small business owner, the issue should be avoided in the future.
Assuming you are a domain owner and have registered a domain through dot.al, have a look at the following announcement: Dot.al – domain registration portal offline. Host,al, the largest .al domain registrar in the zone is offering support to those facing interruption of service.
It is interesting to see that Google preserves a history of website rankings. INIMA.AL used to be the registrar for .al domains, and it is still listed as one of the best results in the search results. Sometime in the 90s, the central authority responsibility was delegated to INIMA, an Albanian Institute of Applied Mathematics.
As the institute ceased to exists years ago, the domain provides basic information on albanian domain registration. It can be considered almost empty now, with merely some informative pages on the procedures for registering an .al domains, and yet it is indexed as good as the other Registrars which have more information and more day to day visits.
.al domains are still one of the coolest ccTLDs when it come to domain hacks. The .al ending can create hack domains in English, Turkish and Pakistani daily words. As many good domains are expired, a lot of old domains become available every day.
To allow the users registrater dropped domains, Expireddomains.al and expiring.al are two fresh websites dedicated to lists of domains which are expired or about to expire. Both websites are related, but represent different view and information.
ExpiredDomains.al presents the already expired domains. The domains in the list will be completely available for registration, assuming someone else did not beat you to the race to snap the domain. Expiring.al represents domains which are about to expire, but hey, the websites points to a .al backorder service as well. The backorder is based on a fee which increases the chances of being the first to register the domain significantly.
Ever heard a salesman scream: Buy 1, Get 2!?
Well actually with this domain, you buy one and you get at least 10… domain hacks!
The short domain CI.AL has been placed for sale on a Flippa Auction.
What makes this domain so special, is the combination of English word domain hacks which can be created based on this name. A domain hack is a domain name that suggests a word, phrase, or name when concatenating two or more adjacent levels of that domain. In this case, CI.AL can serve as second level to many combinations which form a set of interesting English Words.
SO.CI.AL
SPE.CI.AL
CRU.CI.AL
RA.CI.AL
OFFI.CI.AL
PROVIN.CI.AL
FA.CI.AL
FINAN.CI.AL
SPA.CI.AL
The list below includes just a few of domain hacks which are based on ci.al. Someone with experience in domain hacks sales, will not miss the reference to SOCI.AL, a domain hack which as sold for 50,000$ a few years back to Meet.Me. Seems that CI.AL can create a more orthodox and interesting domain as in SO.CI.AL
But why should one use a domain hack!?
Domain hacks are for the bold and for those who provide memorable services in internet.
Some of the most succesful initiatives on internet have relied on domain hacks including:
Instagr.am
Chee.rs
Famo.us
Grou.ps
Bit.ly
Adf.ly
Del.icio.us
Indoo.rs
Instant.ly
Who.is
Pea.rs
Mov.ie
Illustrato.rs
Trib.al
YouTu.Be
etc
The price for domain hacks is also quite high depending on the value of the hack-terms:
Local.ly sold to Infor for $100,000
Me.ga sold to Kim Dotcom for $98,800
E.co sold to B52 Media for $81,000
T.ag sold to Kinetic Fin for $60,000
Soci.al sold to (Meet.me) for $50,000
Ma.de sold to Made Innovative for $25,000
Gr.ee sold to GREE for $25,000
Aweso.me sold to Theorydot for $24,189
Rep.ly sold to Social Media Ltd for $22,050
Love.ly sold to Quotidian Ventures for $20,000
K.im sold to Kim Dotcom for $20,000
futu.re sold to russian sci-fi author Dmitry Glukhovsky for $20,000
Gr.am sold to HP for for $18,000
Ae.ro sold to AeroFS for $10,000
Kro.me sold to Google for $10,000
And since we are discussing a .al domain, these are some prominent sales in this ccTLD.
Soci.al $50,000
Origin.al $20,000
Booking.al $12,000
Mur.al $10,000
LivingSoci.al €8,500
Sport.al €7,500
Loc.al x,xxx$
Port.al $5,000
Domaining is definitely a very interesting business. If you are up for a challenge, have some, own a piece of internet, own some virtual property, register a .al domain today ☺
Domain Hacks are a creative way to brand names in the internet culture. They make use of domain extensions to express words within the context of a domain such as: pla.net for a planet related website, who.is for a (domain) whois related website, del.icio.us for a website that appeals to visitors sense of pleasure! and so on. Domain hacks have been used by startups and big corporations. Instagr.am, ti.me, goo.gl, trib.al, bit.ly are just some of the examples of services we see everyday in our social lifes represented in domain hacks. Such domains stick with us because they are beautiful and because of the first impression they make. As the recognition of a word in a domain hack is also an intellectual operation, these domains are not easy to forget.
As number of new tlds in the market, increases everyday, the combinations to provide domain hacks increases as well. Xona Domain Hack tool provides a combination of more than 300 000 domain hacks accross different domain tlds. While the Xona tools is based on English as a dictionary, domain hacks can be created in any other language. As you might have imagined, there are good domain hacks, and worthless domains hacks, but in an industry of about 271 million domains, creative domains are always worth the attention.
As one cannot trace all the domain extensions, my experience has been related with .al domains. (.al domains are cheaper (12.99€) than let’s say .ly domains (75$), and more “secure” than .ng domains. From a geo-political position, .al domains are controlled from a country with similar outreach as the country controlling the generic .me). The .al zone, has more than 14000 domain hack combinations in the Xona list (and the list is based is only on English dictionary; the -al suffix is also used in Turkish and some other eastern languages to create words). All the .al zone has no more than 12 000 second level domains registered at this moment. As one might imagine, only a small portion are domain hacks.
I started registering domain hacks in this zone for pure pleasure, and I realized that while some domains sell for high bucks, there is also a market in domains which sell for a few bucks. For example, while soci.al sold for 50 000$ in September 2011, other domains may sell for less, and still provide a value to the customers. Domain aeri.al sold on Flippa for a sum between 50–60$. Finding those good domains like soci.al might be difficult, but finding domain hacks like aeri.al which still have a value is quite easy. Beside going through the Xona Listing and checking for domains which are not registered yet, you can also check for domains which are about to expire. Host.al, one of the accredited registrars for .al domains, provides a backorder service. Through this service, you can check domains which are about to expire and backorder them (a practice used by many big registrars like Godaddy, Name.com etc). As you scroll through that list, you might find valuable domain hacks such as minim.al (available for backorder at the time this article was being written) which will probably not sell for thousand of dolllars, but is a cool domain; and might probably sell for a few hundreds. At the moment the .al zone has some interesting domains for sale. medic.al, de.al, digit.al, an.al are some of the coolest hacks.
Do not risk much, have some fun and own a piece of internet, own some internet property ☺
Browsing through .al domains, I realized that the .al domains are being registered from almost every big corporation. Google (.com.al), Microsoft (.com.al), Facebook, Twitter, Ebay and a bunch of other companies own at least one .al domain. Some of them purchased the domains directly (host.al has the biggest market share when it comes to .al registration), and other have chosen to register through Domain Protecting companies such as MarkMonitor. While this might be part of a strategy to protect brands in every country, there are also some domains qualified as domain hacks which are quite a trend in the .al zone.
Matt Mullenweg of WordPress has registerednav.al and extern.al for example.
Some more projects based on .al domains:
Tid.al is a platform that identifies the best content from tens-of-thousands of the best online contributors and connects them to publishers or brands. The company powers fashion look-books for Teen Vogue, Zagat and Neutrogena. For Conde Nast, publisher of Teen Vogue, the platform produces ten times the editorial-quality content for 1/5th the cost of a staff editor. The platform was developed by founder Matthew Myers.(as described in TechCrunch)
Optim.al is the leading multivariate ad platform for Facebook and is the creation of the technology team at Optimal, Inc., based in San Francisco. Optimal, Inc. is the first advertising technology company to be both an approved Facebook Ads API Tools vendor and have built its own robust real-time bidding and audience infrastructure, integrated with all major ad inventory sources. (Cool Hack: Be.Optim.Al)
Surre.al provides free to play augmented reality 3D gaming content to the consumer. Surre.al’s location enabled rich media platform allows brands and advertisers to engage the consumer with seamlessly integrated interactive advertising. Think Cap’n Crunch leaping off a cereal box into your iPhone to play with your kid.
A hole bunch of other domain hacks are registered in the .al zone (ide.al, sport.al, dailyde.al, port.al, livingsoci.al etc) but they are not active yet. If you know a startup or an interesting company with a .al domain, let me know: I will update this list.
Update 1: There are a few .al domains used as URL shorters: I was informed of the Visu.al, Payp.al and Get.al. Thx Olgi for drawing attention to this category.
Update 2: Equ.al is also registered and for sale no longer for sale. It can create great hacks such as http://we.are.equ.al
Update 3: Sport.al was sold for 7500$ in June 2012
Some of the good domains on the list are already registered, but there are still a lot of good domain hacks in between. The list contains more than 3500 domains. I have registered a few but if anyone would like to register more, I would easily recommend host.al for the .al domains.
Surre.al