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Comment by Lammy | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how much the threads.net domain cost

  Updated Date: 2023-04-07T13:53:29Z
  Creation Date: 1997-05-27T23:00:00Z

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Facebook/Instagram has owned the domain for a while as they had a prior Threads app as far back as 2019, shut down in 2021.

https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/17/instagram-will-shut-down-i...

From WayBack, it looks like they bought the domain in 2010:

https://web.archive.org/web/20191001000000*/http://threads.n...

.net domains aren't all that valuable. Funny enough threads.com seems to be a random Slack clone which will probably get acquired by Meta down the line for their domain name.

When was the name announced/leaked? They would have tried to acquire relevant domains beforehand, like the guy who owned meta.com (.co? .net?) and didn't even know it was Facebook wanting to buy it off him.

iirc he got a pretty good price, but nothing like if he'd known who the buyer was.

It’s really strange, and awesome, to see them launch on a .net domain. I have a decent (8 letter) .com with the .net and others to match. I want to build something on the .net, so I hope this builds some awareness for the TLD.

I would love to hear an explanation of why they chose a .net. I always think of it as an OG TLD that throws back to a time when the internet didn’t suck, but I doubt that’s it. Lol.

It can’t be a cost thing, can it?

Maybe because threads.com was taken by another company?

It was. But Facebook is worth billions. I’m pretty sure they could afford it. I have no idea why a company with their money and power go with a .net because the .com was taken by some random site.

Some people have been theorizing that Facebook will sue them to get the .com. Apparently, Facebook has been using the Threads name before the current owners of the .com, but I don’t know if this is true.

threads dot net was also taken, clearly from the gp post. I think they (fb/meta) prob reached out to both and the made an offer that couldn't refuse.

One of them refused

These kinds of assertions puzzle me.

.net is almost as valuable as .com right now, and that additional value .com has is dropping over time.

Search Engines don't care and people have normalized the extended TLD space since the 2010s, since URLs in general are just scary to non-technical people anyway. Even with an aging (on average) population, we will have all grown up with this mindset.

^thread.net (not threads.net) was a webhost with cheap shared hosting for PHP, Perl, etc in the late 1990s

I'd be surprised if it was more than $20k. Maybe in the $3-10k range? Seems to be the going rate. .Nets usually aren't that valuable, but I suppose if you have the network of Meta you can _make_ anything valuable.

Idk, if they need something quick, og owner might have said a price they thought was way to high, and FB just said, "yea ok". I'd prob put it in the 50-100k range, but wouldnt be suprised to see 500k-1m

Meta likely didn't buy the domain. Some shell company does, then sells it to Meta.

It’s a lot of hassle to save 500k. The lawyers alone must cost more.

that makes zero difference to the cost

It absolutely does - if you know meta is buying you know they can afford way way way more than some random company so you can charge more

someone replied and delete while i was typing: here is my thoughts...

Well i guess we will see. I think threads.net works in multiple ways, and the .net stigma doesnt matter anymore with so many TLDs, and kinda makes sense for social app.

I know someone that sold a .io for a ridonculous sum. And again I think if fb/meta wants to do something they are in a place to make an offer the holder wont refuse.

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