Hell.com: hot address?

This past Friday, the domain name Hell.com went up for sale.  Before the auction, the W$J reported (subscription required):

Hell.com is scheduled to be offered in a live auction organizers predict willdraw bids of more than $1 million. The hot market for domain names, theaddresses people often type in for Web sites, is being fueled by thesurge in Internet advertising and the ease with which domain owners canmake money from ads brokered by the likes of Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc.

Sex.com sold for about $12 million earlier this yearand Diamond.com changed hands for $7.5 million. The big-moneydomain-name sales echo an earlier boom, when Business.com fetched $7.5million in 1999. Today’s live auction of 300 names, by Seevast Corp.’sMoniker unit, includes more than a handful it predicts will generatebids of more than $1 million, including Iran.com, Auction.com andElections.com.

The company that owns Hell.com marketed the sale as “the opportunity toredefine what hell means, at least on the Internet.”  The company’s founder set the reserve price at $2.3 million; but a domain-name appraiser put Hell.com’s value at $625,000 — based (of course?) on comparison to the revenue from advertisements on Heaven.com.

Yesterday, the W$J reported: “Hell.com failed to sell during a live auction of Internet domain nameson Friday, as no bidders met the $2.3 million reserve price set by itsseller.”

[Meredith R. Miller]