Dubai Social Network Buys DUDU For $1m

Whether it's for vanity, brand consistency or search engine optimisation, website addresses - or domain names - can sell for ludicrous amount of money, and now dudu.com has joined the elite $1 million club.

Joining the likes of sky.com and domainname.com, Dubai-based social network DUDU Communications bought the $1m (£645,000) address this week, making it the first million dollar domain name of 2012; we're sure it won't be the last.

The chairman of DUDU, Alibek Issaev, is reported by TechCrunch as saying: "With the purchase of dudu.com, we will be able to match our platform's brand with the exact domain name we need, and migrate from using godudu.com to this shorter version."

Such is the power and desirability of the perfect domain name, companies like DUDU are willing to spend up to $1 million to simply remove the 'go' from its address.

The selling price of dudu.com is double that of other 'premium' domains, such as 3D.com, logo.com and puzzle.com.

Issaev continues: "This purchase means we don't lose important traffic, and at the same time we ensure that visitors from around the globe will remember our brand's name."

The sale was brokered by marketplace operator Sedo, who announced the sale on January 5.

DUDU was founded in 2007 and is a multi-lingual social network that lets people communicate with each other even if they don't speak the same language.