It was reported by several sites like Mashable.com and Flippa.com that the website and domain name Retweet.com sold for $250,000 on Flippa in early 2010.
A short 4 years later(not in tech life, but you get my point) and the domain name Retweet.com has expired and is currently (6/17/2014) on expired domain name auction at GoDaddy Auctions!
At time of posting this article, the current bidding is up to $8,600 and this will greatly increase tomorrow (June 18, 2014) when the auction ends.
Retweet.com expired on 5/14/2014 and the last whois records show that Dollar Rose Holdings LTD / David Hunter as the registrant of the domain.
Was this an oversight to let the domain expire? It is hard to say really, but the fact is that the renewal was not (or has not) and the domain currently sits in an expired auction. Dollar Rose Holdings can still renew the domain name for about 8 more days, and would simply have to pay an $80 redemption fee, plus the domains annual renewal cost. Will the domain get renewed in the next 8 days? What will the auction end for if the domain isn’t renewed before tomorrow?
Time will only tell, but right now, Retweet.com is an expired domain auction and is open to the public for bidding (if you have an GoDaddy Auctions account).
6/18/2014 Update: Retweet.com ended at expired auction at GoDaddy for $24,250 with 165 bids being placed
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This is likely to be renewed.
The owner may be putting out feelers by allowing it to go to expired auction.
Another possibility: the owner may be incapacitated or even dead.
It will be interesting to watch this auction, although…
I would stay away from this one; there MAY be some TM issues involved.
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Hard to say on the renew part, because I know I would never let a domain get to that point on purpose 😉 . Between lost passwords, expired credit cards, non-used email addresses and such, it can lead to lost domains if not renewed. I would have to assume that the website behind Retweet.com wasn’t all that popular any more? or otherwise there likely would have been enough “noise” to alert the owners of the expired domain. It has been over a month since it expired, so one would think the news would have made it back to the domain owner or a member of the company to renew. Either way, I’ll be watching (not bidding) and we will see if the domain changes hands or not.
If there are no TM concerns then this is a great pickup as the term is very popular. There was an article that said that the former owner said that Twitter users created the term ‘retweet’ so Twitter should not be allowed to TM it.
If you can use it free and clear in a purpose related to Twitter this is a solid five figure name.
I agree! Very popular term and if it’s TM clear, it’s a nice name! Bidding has climbed to over $10K the last time I checked.
Retweet.com ended for $24,250