Many friends wonder why I switched domains again. Although switching hurts a site a lot, when I come across a desirable domain I can’t resist switching. What’s the story behind the newly adopted [renfei.net]? I was curious too, so I looked up the history of the domains I care about.
Domains I’ve Used
My first domain was probably [bennett-ren.com], registered in 2012 — long and hard to remember, so in 2013 I changed my English name and registered [neilren.com], but people joked it sounded like “nei ren” (insider). I wanted the full spelling [renfei.com] but it was long taken, so I registered [ren-fei.com]. Then in 2019 I happened to find [renfei.net] for sale at a very low price — under 100 yuan — and bought it immediately, switching to [renfei.net].
The Other Domains
First, [renfei.com]: registered back in 2005, when I was only 12 and in middle school. The current holder is a big name in the domain world, [Zhu Jiang]. Who is he? Rumor has it there’s a low-profile tycoon — his name is Zhu Jiang, owner of Chengdu Yisuo Information Technology Co., and he’s handled countless premium domains. Every two-pinyin (双拼) domain in his portfolio is worth a fortune; a rough estimate puts his holdings north of several hundred million yuan. Reportedly he held the two-pinyin domain zhongjin.com for over ten years and sold it to a domestic end-user for over a million yuan. So this domain is out of the question — a private individual could never afford his price.
Next, [renfei.org], registered in 2012 when I’d just started college and knew nothing — another missed opportunity. The current holder is [Renfei Song], who also uses it for his own site; from the content he looks like a software engineer working in San Francisco, USA.
Then [renfei.cn], registered in 2010 when I was probably in high school. The current holder is [Pan Jianwen] — not as big as Zhu Jiang, but still a CN-domain heavyweight. His buy-it-now price is 12,000 yuan. Cheap for what it is, but as an individual I’d rather spend that on a computer.
I don’t care about other suffixes.
The Story of renfei.net
Now that I have [renfei.net], I was curious who owned it before, so I did some digging:
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2010-01-29 Ren Fei (renfei****@163.com), Shandong University of Technology, Zibo, Shandong
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2011-01-29 expired, unregistered, deleted
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2012-01-09 registered, whois privacy protected, unknown person
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2013-03-24 lidesheng (lidesen**0@126.com)
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2018-03-24 expired, unregistered, deleted
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2018-06-04 registered, whois privacy protected, unknown person, Xiamen, Fujian
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2019-01-04 I acquired this domain
We can see the first registrant was also named [renfei], from Shandong University of Technology in Zibo, Shandong. The main later holder was [lideshen], who let it lapse in 2018. That same year a domain scalper likely caught it in a bulk drop-catch, then found it had little value and sold it at cost. I bought it back in early 2019.
I was very interested in the first owner, so I kept digging: Ren Fei, Shandong University of Technology, Zibo, Shandong — Mechanical Design, Manufacturing and Automation. QQ: 719***354, born 1988, probably now working and living in Beijing.