World’s Top Ten Most Expensive Domain Names

For over half a decade,Business.com reigned as the world’s most expensive domain name after its 1999 sale for $7.5 million. That was shortly after the site was founded by former Walt Disney Internet Group chairman Jake Winebaum and Earthlink founder Sky Dayton. The domain retained its record until 2006, when Match.com founder Gary Kremen decided to get out of the adult entertainment industry and sold Sex.com for $14 million (or $12 million, depending on who you ask) in 2006.

While the current market for internet domains is nowhere as solid as it was during the dot-com peak, the market remains strong and is experiencing solid growth. Each year tens of millions of dollars are exchanged during the resale of domains.

The record for most expensive domain name ever sold changed hands again in late 2009, when internet marketing firm QuinStreet purchased Insure.com for $16 million. Other top dollar domain sales of 2009 include Toys.com, purchased by Toys ‘R Us for $5.1 million in March of 2009, and Candy.com, sold for $3 million in June of 2009.

Enough with the preamble, though—check out the world’s top ten most expensive domain names:

1. Insure.com, sold to QuinStreet for $16 million in 2009.
2. Sex.com, sold for $12-$14 million in 2006.
3. Fund.com, sold for $9.99 million in 2008.
4. Porn.com, sold for $9.5 million in 2007.
5. Business.com, sold for $7.5 million in 1999.
6. Diamond.com, sold to Ice.com for $7.5 million in 2006.
7. Beer.com, sold for $7 million in 2004.
8. Israel.com, sold for $5.88 million in 2004.
9. Casino.com, sold for $5.5 million in 2003.

World’s Most Expensive Hello Kitty Item

Sanrio’s Hello Kitty, that adorable cartoon cat that comes to us from Japanese popular culture, has appeared on a host of commercial products from credit cards to the Hello Kitty Jet (an Airbus A330-220). The character, designed by Yuko Shimizu, debuted in 1974 as a decoration on a vinyl coin purse.

To celebrate the 35th anniversary of Hello Kitty in 2009, Sanrio partnered with crystal maker Swarovski and Japanese jeweler I.K. to create the Super Hello Kitty Jewel Doll. This 4-inch “doll” is made of solid platinum studded with thousands of precious gems, including 1,939 pieces of white topaz, 403 pink sapphires, a pair of black spinels for her eyes, a citrine for her nose and a 1.027-carat diamond on her signature bow.

The ultimate Hello Kitty doll was unveiled at Switzerland’s Baselworld watch and jewelry show and is valued at 15 million yen—about US $167,000!

Amazing Chinglish

Chinglish is commonly seen in China. You could see it everywhere on the local restaurants’ menus, street signs and notices and so on. Many foreigners find it quite amusing. As a Chinese, I am expecting we could get rid of those ridiculous Chinese to English transliterations but some smart translations could be preserved as a sort of culture and I hope they could be categorized as Chinese English in some day. I have collected some Chinglish as below from the Internet. We should definitely avoid such translation errors.

And here are some examples that I think could be accepted as Chinese English just like Long time no see 好(hǎo)久(jiǔ)不(bú)见(jiàn).

Chinese: 你(nǐ)有(yǒu)种(zhǒng)，我(wǒ)要(yào)给(gěi)你(nǐ)点(diǎn)颜(yán)色(sè)瞧(qiáo)瞧(qiáo)！
Chinese English: You have the courage to challenge me. I will give you some color to see.
I will give you some color to see means I am going to teach you a lesson.

Chinese: 好(hǎo)好(hào)学(xué)习(xí)，天(tiān)天(tiān)向(xiàng)上(shàng)
Chinese English:Good good study, day day up.
Good good study, day day up means study hard and you will improve everyday.

Chinese: 人(rén)山(shān)人(rén)海(hǎi)
Chinese English: People mountain people sea
People mountain people sea means crowds of people.

And these days has seen more and more Chinese pinyin being put into the English vocabulary list as China is more open to the western world. For example, 城(chéng)管(guǎn) (officials from China’s City Urban Administrative Enforcement Bureaus) is directly translated as chengguan. And kongfu 功(gōng)夫(fu), mantou 馒(mán)头(tóu)and jiaozi 饺(jiǎo)子(zi) are frequently used among native speakers. Apart from these, the smart Chinese netizens also have created some Chinese English words such as niubility, zhuangbility, shability, erbility, gelivable and ungelivable, some of which have been listed on the Urban Dictionary. The following sentence is very popular among the Chinese internet users: Many people think they are full of niubility and like to play zhuangbility, which only reflect their shability and erbility.

Below are the definitions of niubility, zhuangbility, shability on the Urban Dictionary.

 

Gelivable and ungelivable are two adjectives of opposite meaning. Gelivable derives from 给(gěi)力(lì) which could be transliterated as “give power”. It describes the gap between reality and the ideal. If they are the same, you can say “gelivable”. If not, it is “ungelivable”. When I feel disappointed, I can say that’s so ungelivable! It is such fun. I hope more and more words like these could be created in the future and be a part of English vocabulary.