Here is this weeks domain news, enjoy.

If you did not catch last weeks video you can check it out here.

I am not a news reporter and really do not enjoy writing articles about domaining news on a daily basis. What I have decided to do is record a video every Saturday of the week’s headlines.

One thing I did forget to talk about was the return of Bido.com. Bido has been down for almost six months while making some upgrades and changes to their previous system. The concept behind Bido is simple, one premium domain name with no reserve auctioned daily between 1pm and 2pm est. First auction back will be Thursday February 19th. I believe on Monday the 16th they will be announcing the upcoming domain names for auction.

On the video I mentioned a few websites I like to visit for domain news. Here is that list again just in case you didn’t write them down.
DNJournal.com
Domaining.com
DNW.com aka DomainNameWire.com

Have a great weekend and make sure to come back tomorrow for a new comic strip.

I just got an email from Bido.com saying they are still working on things and should be coming back soon. For those of you who do not know, Bido.com is an online auction house that auctions off one domain name per day.

The following is directly from the email I received today…
Just a quick message from the Bido team! It’s been some time since we last sent an update to the members. We’re still gearing up for our relaunch, we make progress with it each and every day. We recently put a server online that went a little haywire and sent out quite a few emails. If you were affected by the mishap, we sincerely apologize for the numerous emails that made it to your inbox. Please forgive us! On a parallel but unrelated note, Sahar made a post to his blog Conceptualist.com on the first of October, where he mentioned the following; “A quick Bido update, we are still testing the site, added new features, spent way too much on new hardware. We expect to bring Bido back in about 2-4 weeks”.

My only question is when are they coming back? Sahar said Bido was coming back in 2-4 weeks but that was on October first. I just emailed Bido and will let you know when I hear something.

I personally enjoy Bido.com and look forward to their comeback.

UPDATE: Jarred at Bido emailed me back saying they have no firm date but they are making progress every day.

This just posted on Conceptualist.com which is the blog of Shara Sarid, owner of Bido.com.

“We gave it another shot today but still had major tech issues. We believe the right thing to do now is to spend time figuring out the issues and come back when we are ready. It may be few days, weeks, months, none of us really knows.”

I think this is a great approach from the Bido team. They have created an amazing auction site but now need to catch up to it’s traffic. This is just a small step back, but as the saying goes “one step back, two steps forward”. I am sure Bido will be back in no time, stronger than before.

After writing this post I went to Bido.com again, it seems that even though the site was down they are reporting the sale of FixedLoans.com for $5,281. If this is true that means the seller lost money. As reported in a previous blog post the domain was purchased at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C auction for $10,000.

Bido.com went down today in the middle of an auction.

Is it Rick Latona’s fault? Some would wonder, follow me for a minute. Rick purchased FixedLoans.com in 2004 for $1,000. He then sold the domain name at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C event in 2006 for $10,000. Here we are now two years later and the new owner of FixedLoans.com has decided to sell with Bido.com. With all the excitement over a premium domain there was an abundant amount of traffic coming through on Bido.com’s servers.

So I ask again, is it Rick Latona’s fault? Think of this, what would have happened if Rick did not sell the domain at auction two years ago. I will let you determine the answer.

Either way no worries! From what I read the auction will be restarted tomorrow at 1pm. I for one will be there to see what happens. I was bidding for the first few minutes, then it went above what I was willing to spend.

PS…Along with the sale of FixedLoans.com, Bido implemented a new chat feature, which I’m sure aided in overloading their servers. Hmmm is this the cover-up story so Rick doesn’t get blamed. Of course I’m kidding about Rick. He is an amazing domainer and has done a lot for our industry. Check out his website, RickLatona.com and then Bido.com at 1pm tomorrow for the auction.