Forbrukslån.com sold for $123,000

[blackpower]

Forbrukslån.com (IDN)
("consumer loan" in Norwegian)
...next position going to an IDN - Forbrukslån.com ("consumer loan" in Norwegian) at 1 million kroner which is $123,000 at today's exchange rate. A spokesman for the buyer, STK FINANS AS, told us they plan to launch a loan comparison platform on the domain within the next month.
http://www.dnjournal.com/domainsales.htm

[blackpower]

It appears that the owner of Forbrukslan.com (ascii) bought Forbrukslån.com

[blackpower]

Funny that nobody wants to comment... The biggest yet idn sale so far and no opinions?
Is it not what you guys were waiting?
This sale shows what I was saying all along: idn latin version is more valuable and more important than ascii misspelling one!

[Avtal]

Well, it's good news, of course!

But I'm curious. You are in Brazil, right? Or at least you interact with a lot of Portuguese speakers, I think.

So when they text each other, do they bother with the accent marks and tildes? What about when they send email? I guess what I'm asking is, are the accent marks only for formal communication? Will they bother with accents when doing a Google search?

I think the answers to these questions (and the answers might be different for French speakers, Turkish speakers, etc) will give an idea about whether idn latin will ever take off.

Avtal

[blackpower]

Avtal,
great questions!
I am not in Brazil but follow it closely.
People with education do type accents when posting or messaging, those without may not type some for speed; They both do type ç though, since it is on the keyboard;
But I think how they type is not very important for domains. A domain is an address and there are correct addresses and wrong ones!
This sale is the good example of what is important;
Each country is different.
In Brazil they don't use much of the accents in domains even today.
The reason for this today in case of com.br, is that the owner of com.br by default owns the accented variant- thus people still don't bother to use accented variants on com.br since initially sites started to use ascii domains, idns were not available then!; Users were not typing accents all along in the address bar and got the idea that this was normal. They do lose lots and lots of traffic today as people do type accents much more and lately sites start to use idn variant, today mainly to redirect.
Obviously things are different with .com where owners of idn and ascii variant may be different.
The question here always was-if you have to pic only one, which one you'd pick?
Today, some idns has less type-ins than ascii varians but for reasons described below I don't think they are more valuable.
After all, a domain is to be used as a site holder, not a clicks gatherer, right?
I always thought that idn in this case is more important; Imho the correct spelling is preferable and I too, as the buyer in this case, would not start an important development on ascii typo, knowing that there is a correct spelling out there; Doing so spells trouble in the future; Not so much vice versa, imho.
I started the site in my signature without even contacting the owner of ascii variant for price; I don't care for this ascii variant because all my potential clients speak Portuguese and can type ç ; Also we don't know how the navigation will be some time from now so being on a correct domain imho is preferable.
The only exception when having both variants is important imho is when you have native and foreign visitors, who speak different languages; But 95% of native domains don't need that!
In general who cares what illiterate people type in their spare time? After all, the domain without an accent, where there must be an accent, is just a typo and imho, it's only a matter of time when search may treat them as typos. Think about it!

The bigger question for idns is whether they use .com in a given country, not if they type accents.