When we broke the news of the huge purchase of Twitch by Amazon to the domainer community, some appeared shocked by our statement that Twitch .com has become a seven figure domain name.
The $970 million dollar all-cash purchase of Twitch and Twitch.tv is indisputably a punch in the face of Google, that was also interested in the expanding game video streaming community.
Amazon is becoming the next Big Brother, replicating the reach and success of Google across every financially sound industry.
We reached out to Peter Kay, registrant and owner of Twitch.com and he was kind to give an exclusive interview to DomainGang.
Peter is a down to earth New Yorker, and is not related to a British comedian by the same name. Peter’s primary occupation is that of an app developer, producing ebooks, games and apps for kids, based on great works of music.
DomainGang: Peter, how did you go about registering Twitch.com – were you looking for a catchy domain at the time?
Peter Kay / Twitch.com: I first WHOIS’ed it in 1996 or ’97, and saw that it was available, so eventually I snapped it up with no particular plan of what to do with it.
DomainGang: Sounds like one of these lottery moments. Do you own other domains as part of an investment approach? Are you interested in domains as digital property in general?
Peter Kay / Twitch.com: No – I only have one other domain – infinitefermata.com for my app business. In general I am not interested in domains as property.
DomainGang: Amazing that 16 years passed between the first and second domain registrations! Over the years, did you have many inquiries and unsolicited offers for the domain Twitch.com?
Peter Kay / Twitch.com: Absolutely, probably hundreds of inquiries, most notably from the guys who started Twitter.
DomainGang: I bet you’re currently getting contacted by some “shady” characters after the Amazon deal went through. On average, what is the amount of daily traffic you receive? What do you do with all the obvious typo traffic originating from Twitch.tv?
Peter Kay / Twitch.com: The domain Twitch.com gets between 30,000 to 50,000 unique visits a day. I redirect the Twitch.tv typos to a 404 page that presents my latest apps.
DomainGang: That’s indeed smart and quite decent, others would have “abused” this by parking the domain for a monetary benefit. If you were to sell Twitch.com, would you then register a made up name, or buy an existing one in the domain aftermarket?
Peter Kay / Twitch.com: Neither. I’m not particularly interested in owning domains for their own sake. Getting Twitch.com in the first place was totally serendipitous, as would be selling it.
DomainGang: Peter, it was a pleasure talking to you. Best of success to your business ventures, and good luck with whatever direction you decide to take with Twitch.com; as far as we’re concerned, it’s a seven figure domain name!
Thanks for the interview.
“Abuse” by parking ?
Why is presenting a page with apps for monetary gain saintly while showing a page with ads for monetary gains
abuse?
It’s so absurd, you ought to just remove that sentence entirely. It makes you sound foolish.
Anyway, nice insight and thanks for the interview. There were some guys with great foresight in the early days of
the domain goldrush.
Congrats Peter.
Adam – Parking this domain would be abuse, correct. It is clearly a personal/professional web site that has nothing to do with streaming of gamer’s video, and that’s the type of ads that would appear on it, if it were to be parked.
Al(exander) – Typically I don’t allow Debbie Downer comments but I let yours through to point out your ignorance.
Anyone can put anything on any web site that receives typo traffic, and in this case yes, displaying one’s creations – the apps – is 100 times more saintly, than parking the domain and having it display ads with obvious gaming or video streaming content. That, would be an issue with Twitch.tv and Amazon, rest assured.
Please think twice before calling someone a fool in the future.
great name great potencial the market is in full expansión great interview
Probably my least commercial effort is here (for all you fenslerfilms fans)
http://twitch.com/fenslernovelizations/g-i-joe-ice-a-novelization/
Lucky guy! Thanks for doing this interview.