For the pre-bidders, the current winner can set a proxy bid and defend their position while not even attending the auction. No one can see the proxy bid price including the Auctioneer. This means a leader of an auction can successfully defend against auction snippers while sitting on a beach without Internet access.

Testing the bidding system
If anyone wants to test the bidding system, we have setup a test spot on lot 1. The domain is called “Xx–Practice-Domain.com“. Anyone is free to bid on this domain, the current price is $1,500,000. This is the only domain in the auction that is for testing the interface and getting used to our controls. The domain is currently not registered, so hopefully no one goes out and registers it and tries to claim $1,500,000.00 from us. Once again, the domain is xx–practice-domain.com, please do not register it.

Are you eligible to bid?
Don’t wait for the last minute to figure out if you can bid. Visit the bidding page and look in the second yellow box. If the auctioneer is telling you that you are not eligable go threw the wizard and become eligible. If you have ever purchased ANYTHING on domaintools then you are eligible, just sign the contract. If you have never shared your credit card with us and we don’t know who you are, we ask that you purchase a $1 verification item prior to the auction so that we can verify your identity and make sure you are a real person.

Domain Roundtable
The conference begins today and I am extremely excited, I get on the plane this morning and hope to see everyone soon. I am looking forward to hearing all the speakers and moderators. I want to personally thank, Susan Prosser, she has done a fabulous job selecting speakers and coordinating the whole event. The Domain Roundtable would not be possible without her and the rest of the wonderful team. As the founder of the conference people look to me, however she is the one that truly deserves the respect for putting on such a great show. When you see us, be sure to thank her, I am more of just an observer.

Secret Announcements
We have so many cool things to share with everyone. We have not officially announced this one yet, but I will let you readers in on a small secret. We quietly launched Thumbnail History this week (The service is still in beta, don’t try it in IE8!). It allows people to see what domains looked like years ago. Sort of like Archive.org except we take thumbnail images and not just HTML copies. The thumbnails have been taking by us with Internet Explorer over the years, so they have Flash and the other things that archive.org doesn’t seem to capture. We have hundreds of millions of these thumbnails, several Terabytes actually. More on the thumbnail system later… There are a lot of details I can tell you about it but I will use a dedicated blog post after the conference to really tell you the ins and outs of the service.

The Reserve on Illusionist.com is $280,000.

Bidding is available online at the DomainTools.com or live in person at the Domain Roundtable in San Francisco. Bidding is now open and will close Monday at 11am PST.

The live auction event will be broadcast on DomainTools and the Bidding page.

Here is a complete list of what is available during the auction.

This is an excellent reserve price, the domain has been owned by the same person for 11 years.

WASHINGTON, DC — April 15, 2008 — The 2008 presidential election has generated a flurry of news and commentary, and, as has been the case in the last two elections, is sure to continue to generate interest beyond November. With more and more people turning to the web for their information, the value of targeted political domain names is at an all-time high.

Domain Market, a WashingtonVC company possessing one of the premier domain asset portfolios in the world, has today announced the inclusion of six highly-valued targeted political domain names into the Domain Roundtable conference live auction to be held on April 21, 2008 in San Francisco, CA. The domains are: presidentialcampaign.com, presidentialdebates.com, presidentialprimaries.com, presidentialrace.com, presidentialrace.org and presidentialaddress.com.

Generic domain names, like those being offered by Domain Market, have seen prices skyrocket as the market’s awareness of their value has escalated. In the past 6 months alone, there have been notable sales of such premium domain names as iReport.com to CNN for $750,000 in January, Fund.com for $10 million, DataRecovery.com for $1.7 million, SkiResorts.com for $850,000, and Pizza.com for $2.6m dollars.

“Media companies are increasingly looking for opportunities to drive their audience to destination sites with highly focused content, particularly during major events such as elections,” says WashingtonVC Chairman Mike Mann, who believes that this opportunity is indicative of the greater market trend towards wrapping business models around prime Internet real estate. “Whoever owns these domain names will have significant influence over the US political process on the Internet forever.”

Interested parties have the ability to attend the auction live or participate from anywhere in the world via computer to bid in the auction in real time. Auction registration can be completed through Domain Roundtable’s website, http://www.domainroundtable.com. For additional information or to request an interview, please visit WashingtonVC at
http://www.washingtonvc.com or by email at media@washingtonvc.com.

About WashingtonVC:
WashingtonVC is an early stage fund and incubator that grows companies through the exchange of complementary technologies and marketing services. Our portfolio of interlocking companies share resources, talent and technology to deliver innovative products and services across a broad range of industries.

Our investment focus is in online media and marketing, software technologies, telecommunications services, domain name services and consumer Internet services. We seek out and fund world-class teams and products with the potential to be leaders in their markets, and back their companies with premium, highly relevant Internet domain names (i.e. phone.com, software.com).

A significant percentage of our investment returns go toward supporting and financing our nonprofit organizations, Grassroots.org and MakeChange! Trust.

http://www.domaintools.com/live-auction/sanfrancisco2008.html

We are still moving things around a little, tweaking things here and there. Once the list is finalized we will publish in EVERYWHERE on the DomainTools.com website. Right now it is only being made available to the 15,000 people that read our blog. We will push the list out mid Tuesday morning to the 400,000+ people that visit DomainTools daily.

UPDATE: The entire DomainTools site is now showing the domains going to auction.

Then you can start a company that helps people with Baby Shower Invitations, Birthday Invitations, Party Invitations, Special Invitations, Birthdays, Showers, Weddings, Baptisms, or Graduation invitations.

Invites.com is a ground breaking reserve of $185,000. This is a huge commercial generic domain.

Domain Roundtable is a great place to buy generic domains and get premium access to the world’s best domains.

Family Planning provides sexual and reproductive health information, clinical services, education, training and research.

FamilyPlanning.com is only $225,000.

Bidding is available online at DomainTools.com on Monday the 21st or in person at the Domain Roundtable in San Francisco.

The domain will be available at the Domain Roundtable auction on the 21st of this month.

You may bid remotely or in person.

For the full catalog, please see our site on Monday the 14th. We have priceless domain with prices. Domains that have been locked up and never offered for sale since they were registered over 15 years ago. These domains may only change hands once in the next 30 years and now is your chance to lock them up. Do not let this opportunity pass you by.

CountryWestern.com has a reserve of $30,000.

Spreadsheets.com has a reserve of $75,000.

There is a huge list of great domains going to auction. Check out the full list on Monday the 14th. We have showcased several domains on the blog and will continue to do so. We have an online bidding interface and that allows remote bidders to bid as well.