Single letter domain names go for £39k at auction

TWELVE SINGLE LETTER domain names went for an average of £39,000 in a recent auction.

According to the Financial Times, internet investors and speculators including Facebook spent tens of thousands of pounds to buy just one or two-letter UK domain names in an auction run for an independent charity by Nominet.

Domain names including x.co.uk and 0.co.uk went on sale alongside two-letter domain names, and 2,831 web addresses were sold, raising £3m.

Facebook, which has in the past been keen to stop others from using the word 'book' in their company names, bought fb.co.uk.

However, in the highest-priced auction, Google was outbid for the rights to g.co.uk by Any-Web, a company that collects, builds and resells domain names and is thought to have paid a high five-digit figure for the domain name.

Some people are still looking to make a buck from their purchases, obviously. Many of the web site names bought in the auction have already been sold on, with x.co.uk having changed hands three times in the past week. µ