NamesCon Interview – Andrew Allemann

“If last year was Web3 this year is A.I.”

Read or listen to what went down at NamesCon 2023 in this interview with Andrew Allemann from Domain Name Wire.

Andrew Alleman is an esteemed figure in the domain name industry, renowned for his expertise and insightful perspectives. As the founder of Domain Name Wire, he brings a wealth of knowledge and experience, making him a trusted source for all things related to domain names and online businesses.

So I’m here with Andrew Allemann from our favorite blog, Domain Name Wire. Nice to have you.

Thanks.

How has your conference been so far?

You know, it’s been nice. I think that having it combined with CloudFest has been interesting. There are a lot of new faces here that I don’t know. And, you know, of course, I think a lot of the CloudFest people are hanging out together. The NamesCon people are hanging out in their own place. But for example, last night at the party, everyone got to be together. So that was nice.

Yeah. What’s your favorite sessions so far? Interesting wise.

Well, I learned I had the opportunity to interview Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. So that to me was a highlight. Yeah. Which is such an interesting background in story, you know, creating this site that is now, what, the fifth most trafficked site or something like that. Some fun domain name stories. And then we talked a bit about AI and government regulation and things like that. So that was probably my highlight.

Yeah. Yeah, it was a really good session. He’s very open, really.

And he is.

Yeah. What’s the hot topics from the conference you would say.

Yeah. I would say if last year was Web3 this year is AI. Yeah. Very much so. And the interesting thing is it’s directly applicable to a lot of what happens in the domain space. And people have already created lots of new tools using A.I.. And so it’ll be interesting to see what sort of impact that has on the industry. You know, I personally, I’ve been able to find lots of pretty good available.com-domain names using A.I. tools that I would not have discovered otherwise. And so I think it’s an interesting topic, and there have been some good sessions on that here.

Yeah. What is your personal take on A.I. Domains GPT that we heard about and so on?

Yeah, I mean, I think these tools are really, really interesting. And, you know, I think about how I usually look for domains to register where I’m taking a word and then maybe adding prefixes and suffixes. A lot of the A.I. tools are really good at finding synonyms and combining those, and I think they do a better job finding available names than most of the registrars’ tools. Now, there is a practical aspect of putting that, you know, it takes longer for these tools to generate the names and that sort of thing. So there’s some practical limitations there, but I’m personally excited about it and interested to see where it goes.

And from your own blog, Domain Name Wire, what’s the takeaway stories from 2023 so far? The big news.

Well, I mean, the interesting thing right now is kind of the blow up of EPIK, the domain name registrar, so I know a lot of people are concerned right now about their names. And that’s an ongoing story. And then I think the rebound in the domain aftermarket, I think a lot of people had a slow second half to the year last year. And it seems like things have really picked up the first part of this year. So far this year, we’re almost halfway through the year, but it seems like back on track. Maybe not as crazy as it was during the early parts of the pandemic, but still, still it’s doing well. It feels like it’s a little bit of rebound right now. So any big sales or any big deal that sticks out to you?

Yeah. I mean the most interesting story I think this year around sales is chat.com selling twice for over $10 million. And that’s impressive. It’s not often you buy a domain for eight figures. And then you flip it within a couple of months, right… if ever. So that’s an interesting one. There was an interesting session with the buyer of home.com, which was also a very significant, I don’t know the exact number of the transactions. And then I heard today, Yue Dai, from China was talking about someone he knows selling hd.com. It was a little bit confusing. I’m not entirely sure he said it was over $6 million but he also written on social media that was his guess so not 100% sure, but certainly millions. Yeah. For a name like that. So, the big sales are back as well.

Yeah. Yeah.

It seems like.

Yeah, it really does. Okay. Thank you so much.

Yeah, my pleasure. Yup.