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Last
week
I
started
running a series of highlights from DN
Journal's first 10 years - an anniversary
we will officially reach on January 1, 2013.
Today let's revisit 2007 - a record
breaking year when the domain business set
some high water marks that still stand
today. The year began with another major player
joining the domain conference circuit when the
first
DOMAINfest Global show opened in
Hollywood, California at the end of January
2007. That event, staged by Oversee.net's popular
domain monetization unit - DomainSponsor
- joined T.R.A.F.F.I.C. and Domain
Roundtable in helping spread the
domain gospel around the globe.
DomainSponsor's
Ron Sheridan (left) and Stephen
Baldridge at the first DOMAINfest Global
conference in Hollywood, California in
2007. Ron (who, in a 2009 DN
Journal Cover Story, was described as
the Babe Ruth of Business Development)
played a key role in developing the new show
that is still held annually in California with a
new name - Webfest Global.
Just
two months later, the pioneering
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference scaled new heights
with a landmark
show in Las Vegas that drew more
than 600 attendees. One of the most vivid
and unforgettable memories of my first decade in
this business was walking into the ballroom at
the Venetian Hotel and seeing that massive crowd
stretching wall to wall. That's when I knew the
domain business was not in Kansas anymore!
Part
of the crowd at the record breaking 2007
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West conference in Las
Vegas.
As
big as that Las Vegas show was, the best was yet
to come. T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Co-Founders Rick
Schwartz and Howard Neu decided it
was time to take the domain business the media
capital of the world - New York City. In
August 2007 a big crowd packed the Grand
Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan for a show
highlighted by the most successful live
domain auction in history. Just under $11
million worth of domains was sold in one
day, and by the time the results from the
accompanying online auction were added in, more
than $12 million had changed hands.
Auctioneer
Joel Langbaum and Moniker Founder and
CEO Monte Cahn had good reason to smile
at the 2007 T.R.A.F.F.I.C. New York live
domain auction. The sale, run by Moniker, would
up generating a record $12 million in
domain sales - a mark that has never been
topped.
While
the conferences continued to generate fireworks
and push domains to an entirely new level we
also continued to focus of the many
fascinating personalities in the industry. I
made a special trip to Los Angeles in
September 2007 for the sole purpose of
interviewing Thought Convergence leaders Kevin
Vo and Ammar Kubba who were making
big waves with their TrafficZ domain
monetization unit. The result was an October
2007 Cover Story that detailed the
remarkable personal stories of these two close
friends and business partners who continue to
play a key role in the domain industry today.
Thought
Convergence leaders Kevin Vo and Ammar
Kubba in Los Angeles - September 2007
2007
closed with one of the most widely read stories
in DN Journal history - an in depth Cover
Story profiling the world's most widely
recognized domain investor - Frank Schilling.
The headline on that article - Nice
Guy Finishes First: How Frank Schilling Won the
Domain Race After Starting at the Back of the
Pack - sums up Frank's story pretty
well, but the details of his journey are still a
source of endless fascination to our readers.
Frank has made a big move from domain investing
to providing domain services to his fellow
investors over the past year (a move we detailed
in our November
2012 Cover Story).
Frank
Schilling (right) with his
"mentor" and fellow domain industry
legend Garry Chernoff
at the 2007
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East conference in Hollywood,
Florida (photo by Barbara Neu).
Next
time - 2008: the year got off to a
good start but the arrival of the worst global
recession since the Great Depression, started
taking a toll on our industry too.
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