Good idea or not: freecycle for domain names | Hacker News Reader

Good idea or not: freecycle for domain names

6 pointstedshroyer15 comments

I have two domains that are expiring in a month that I bought thinking something was a great idea. Domain names are inexpensive, so why not? Now it's been a year and I don't really remember why I bought these domain names (pseudoactuality and questionablyvalid, fyi) and I'm not going to be using them for myself. I'd like it if there were a service where I could transfer them for free to someone who wants them. Would that be something worth making?

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Very good idea, I'd sooner give away a domain name to someone who was going to use it than let some blasted domain parking business get hold of it.

On the other hand, I have no idea how you'd stop domain parkers from actually using the service to get domains for free. With freecycle itself, it's probably quite hard to hide that you're abusing it to make cash on ebay or something, but I don't know how you'd prevent that with non-physical goods.

by making it a pain in the ass...no domain parker is going to spend 1 minute requesting each domain.

So just throw up a questionnaire that asks them who they are, what the domain is going to be used for, etc

Wouldn't they just pay some Chinese sweat shop a dollar a throw or something? If they're saving money on registration fees, I don't see how making it a little awkward will deter them.

Well it'd be up to the user then. They'll get to see the questionnaire of each person who wants the domain...So if the user wants to give his domain to Landing Pages, INC instead of Blind Hungry Crippled Orphans Charity that's up to them.

+ You can let the user make their own questionnaire ...so they can make their questions be as relevant as they want. i.e. lets say you own something like newyorkjetsftw.com, you'd ask some questions that only a true Jets fan would know or someone who'd want to spend the 10 minutes hunting down the information

Yeah, you'd need a serious karma system like eBay or stackoverflow. Problem is it makes it hard for first-time users.

A few incomplete thoughts:

Just let them expire and whoever wants to use them will (in theory) be able register them from. I.e., when you let them expire they will go back into the pool.

I say "in theory" because of the possibility that domain name registrars will "taste" them http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting and/or do something else to "grab" them and sell or auction them to the highest bidder in whatever marketplace they can expose the names to. Other downside is a domain name speculator will acquire and the the same. All this begs a debate on "right and wrong," which is a whole other topic.

One of my first experiences with letting a domain expire was with a domain called catbattle. I figured no one would pick up that name because it's stupid. It's been parked by the next person for 5 or 6 years now as a jump page for lots of cat ads. This sort of thing irritates me. I would rather have some kid get it and put a picture of his cat on it with some blinking text like "This is my cat! You are defeated!"

I suppose what I really want is for a group of people that are interested in creating useful web content to have a chance at before it expires. My ideal target audience would be the readership here or a similar group. Just having a list of unused domain names registered by people on this site would be a valuable resource to me. I could get all sorts or ideas from it, make a comment on one of the names that inspired the owner to do something with it, or end up with a chance to collaborate with the owner on a joint idea.

I do that myself. I buy a domain name on a whim (alcohol sometimes present...), and then later the project never materializes.

I've let a few expire, and a few I've "given" to charity by hosting something for them.

Question: how do you handle multiple people wanting it?

* First come first serve

* "Bid" => money to charities

* Fight to the death

Fight!

Rock, paper, scissors.

Seriously though, the bid (to charity) idea makes sense, but I foresee original owners getting greedy when they see what they could've gotten. Then they may pull it and "sell" it instead. You'd have to somehow set it up so they "give" a middle man the site, and then the middle man transfers it. Interesting idea though, I'm in. I've got about 15 domains I don't need.

Great idea. I know I've definitely got some domains that I'm not planning on using anymore.

I do that too. Sounds like worth doing, for sure.

Are you saying you also want to give away pseudoactuality.com and questionablyvalid.com? (Not that I'm going to want them, just clarifying.)

ebay? I've seen it done before.

tie it into Hacker News.

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