SEDO recently held a premium and exclusive auction for .CO, mainly involving Mike Mann's portfolio. It recently ended with numbers far lower than anybody expected it to be.
You can visit DotWeekly who managed to jot down all the necessary details of the auction. As expected, most of the bids came with less than a couple of minutes in the lots. Notable 5-figure sales that were accomplished were:
Music.CO - $30,000.00
Shop.CO - $22,000.00
Love.CO - $20,000.00
CreditCard.CO - $17,000.00
Pizza.CO - $15,000.00
Download.CO - $10,099.00
Vodka.CO - $10,000.00
On the other hand, Casino.CO managed to garner up bids raising to $60,000.00. But with a high reserve and a non-binding bid, that really doesn't matter as much.
Personally, I didn't expect much from the auction from the start upon seeing how high the reserves were during its promotion. The average $100k tags on the domains were not really much of an invite to domain investors and end-users considering how young the extension is.
If you think about it, if Mike Mann really wanted to sell the domains ASAP seeing how downhill it is from here as others say, he would've put reserves around the $10k range and I'm pretty sure that would definitely sell out like hotcakes considering the hype. But given the realty, I'd say it was more of a situation where MM decided to either keep domains for a valued future, or sell the domains quickly at the price of its expected and perceived value with the coming years ahead. That makes sense, yes?
The result of the auction isn't a favorable one but I think it's still too early to tell. Six months into its existence, I bet not much people really know what the .CO is. Facebook and Twitter did not attain success months after it launched. It took years and a lot of networking and exposure until everyone realized what it's all about.
Many believe this isn't a good sign for the .CO. I simply think it's not really an indicative factor of an extension's success. The thing is, people are comparing this auction to that of .MOBI, or .TV or whatever wherein people back then were still crazy about domaining without regard for the use of the domain with its extension. People learned, which resulted very well into them not being as crazy about new extensions especially now that a lot more are bound to come. All the negativity's just putting down the .CO through its not yet established presence and life cycle.
DNW managed to bring up the news that by March, .CO will launch a billboard in Times Square and an outdoor advertising campaign in New York, Austin, and San Francisco. Definitely good places to promote and create awareness. Plus it's nice to know how Juan Calle is still pushing faith into the extension by continuously and religiously promoting the value of the .CO