The web application framework Ruby on Rails was on my mind and I decided to check whether someone had developed anything on the Ruby.me domain name. I found that it hadn’t been developed so out of curiosity I looked up the whois for the name at DomainTools and discovered that Johnson & Johnson is the current registrant with date of last transfer indicated to be March 31, 2011.

I did a quick search to see if Johnson & Johnson currently offers any products with the name Ruby but didn’t find any. Perhaps, they are preparing to launch a new product at the address. On the other hand, they do own thousands of domain names many of which I would imagine do not resolve so nothing may come from this acquisition either.

The domain name Uber.me was sold on Sedo in early April and now that the transfer is complete we’ve discovered that the name was purchased by Internet entrepreneur Bill Gross’ company UberMedia. UberMedia began as TweetUp and later as PostUp and in recent months has been acquiring leading Twitter clients such as UberTwitter, Echofon, and Twidroyd.

This week’s edition of the DN Journal domain sales report which covers the week through April 10 shows that .ME domain name sales were strong at Sedo with seven domain names selling at prices of $1000 and higher. The .ME domain names featured in the ccTLD section of the list are as follows:

Chat.me – $7,685
VPS.me – $7,250
Done.me – $2,500
Robot.me – $2,000
Uni.me – $1,305
PlasticSurgery.me – $1,000
Uber.me – $1,000

In the past few weeks, we’ve noticed a growing trend in major new Web services being launched on .ME domains. Here are some of the highlights:

Connect.ME is a stealth startup whose beta invite launch went viral last week. (read more)

Ditto.ME is a new social app that allows you to indicate what you wish to do and in turn your friends can offer recommendations. (read more)

A new service from WordPress was launched at Jetpack.ME. It provides users of the self-hosted CMS package easy access to the features found on WordPress.com. (read more)

EightBit.ME has recently opened up registrations after an invite-only beta period. The service allows you to create an 8-bit old school video game style avatar of yourself. These avatars will eventually interact in a forthcoming social game. (read more)

Attachments.ME, a service we wrote about earlier, received a $500,000 investment from Foundry Group. (read more)

The domain name Truly.ME sold on Sedo in February for $12,000 and already the acquirers have launched an alpha stage version of their new service.

There were some other notable .ME domain name sales recently including Copy.ME which sold on Sedo for $10,000. Just late last year it sold for $1,080 (DN Journal sales report).

In February, the domain name Whisper.ME sold for $17,500 (DN Journal sales report).

Perhaps, these .ME domain names were acquired by two more soon to be launched startups.

Here are just a few of the many other major new Web ventures built on .ME domains:

About.ME
Flavors.ME
Formspring.ME
Join.ME
Star.ME
News.ME

Here’s a roundup of recent .ME domain name sales activity.

Hollywood.ME was sold in a private sale for a five figure price

We reported a few weeks back about Hollywood.ME being offered for sale on Flippa. It didn’t sell at the time as the reserve had not been met. A post yesterday on the NamePros.com forum by the owner indicates that a sale was completed last week. Here is what he/she posted:

SOLD one of my DOTME Babies last week – Hollywood.me for xxxxx

Bye, Bye, Hollywood baby…but, don’t worry, you’re going to a very good home.

Link to post on NamePros.com

Note that the seller describes being approached by a large media conglomerate in 2008 about the domain name and the deal ultimately falling through as a result of the financial crisis. Given the turmoil of that period, it is remarkable how well the .ME launch went. We believe that the true value of .ME domain names is just now being rediscovered as interest in the extension appears to be growing and the potential exists for large companies who retrenched due to economic conditions during the time of the .ME launch to revisit the .ME domain for development. We believe that businesses will begin to embrace the .ME domain in a big way.

Truly.ME is for sale on Sedo

Truly.ME has a $12,000 bid on Sedo. It has met the reserve price and the auction is scheduled to close on February 15 (US time).

Listing of Truly.ME on Sedo

HotelReviews.ME is for sale on Flippa

We’re always on the look out for .ME domain names and websites that are being offered on aftermarket domain name sites or website sales sites like Flippa and when we see something that we believe is noteworthy we’ll feature it on our site. Today, we came across a new listing on Flippa, it’s HotelReviews.ME. We feel the domain name alone has good value and this listing features a developed site as well. Granted, it doesn’t currently have much traffic to speak of and apparently the majority of the user signups were generated by a script but it would appear to have great potential.

The mininum bid is $500 and the buy it now price is $2,499. It currently has one bid of $750. The auction ends on February 17.

Listing of HotelReviews.ME on Flippa

As we’ve stated, our goal is to get the word out about the .ME domain and its potential so focusing attention on auction listings like this helps to accomplish that.

Mashable is reporting that domain name investor Kevin Ham has purchased the hot startup ThreeWords.ME that saw a rapid trajectory in popularity as the app went viral. There isn’t any information on the price paid at this time.

Read more: ThreeWords.me Acquired by Domain Name Czar

The DN Journal sales report for the week from 1/3/11 to 1/9/11 has five .ME domain names on the ccTLD lists with all transactions occurring at Sedo. They are as follows:

Judge.me – $7,820
Shapeup.me – $2,550
Anonymous.me – $2,500
Xplore.me – $1,250
Testosterone.me – $1,000

DN Journal: 2011 Domain Sales Season Gets Off to a Good Start As British Buyer Spends $100,000 to Be With His Soulmate

DomainNews reports that Judge.ME sold on Sedo for $7,820 and was one of the standouts on the weekly sales chart.

DomainNews: FamilyInsurance.com tops Sedo’s weekly sales list

A Tweet from Gr8Names alerted us to this list. Follow them, good info.

ireport.me sold for $1,200 on Sedo according to the site’s recent sales listing.

Sedo Recent Sales Feed

We noticed another significant .ME sale tonight while perusing the Sedo market activity section. xplore.me was listed on Sedo for $1250 and that’s price for which it sold sometime over the past few days.