"Devised a quarter century ago, the Internet’s domain-name system was meant to spare the general public from numbers. Easy-to-remember words or initializations such as toys.com and cbs.com were allowed to stand in as aliases for 11-digit computer addresses.
Now, numbers could be making a comeback. Industry watchers say Web users should get used to visiting sites whose names are numeric. A group in Australia plans to develop 100.com into a search engine that will deliver the 100 most relevant results. An Aspen, Colo., equity researcher has spent more than $1 million on numeric domains for a project that is yet to be determined. And on Thursday, an auction of dozens of numeric domain names closed, with bids as high as $325,000 for 88.com."
(image source: WSJ)
Few factors here to pay attention to:
Numeric domain names always had a special appeal for us as they are universal (language free) however, majority of them get no type-in traffic. As with other domains that get no type in traffic and cannot justify their price based on PPC, the two other options for ROI are either to flip or develop.
Informative article overall. Further reading from the WSJ (different article then link above) here .
Source: Posted on TheConceptualist by Sahar Sarid -- Reprinted with permission -- December 5, 2008