Susidiary of BDC Capital, acquires high school and college web domain names including harvarduniversitycrimson.com and stanforduniversitycardinals.com.

BDC Capital, Inc., a business development company, today announced that BDC Partners, its wholly owned subsidiary, has completed the acquisition of 23,000 high school and college web domain names.

About 90 percent of the 22,000-plus high schools' domain names acquired by BDC Partners end in .com, with a much lower percentage ending in .net. Combined, this represents about 99 percent of all U.S. high schools - as designated by the name of the high school and the high school's mascot name. Using a similar .com naming approach, BDC Partners have also acquired approximately 97 percent of all the colleges and universities in primary athletic conference categories in the United States.

Some of the prominent domain names acquired by BDC include harvarduniversitycrimson.com, stanforduniversitycardinals.com, universityofmichiganwolverines.com and uofmgophers.com. The company plans to work with private sector marketing organizations and with the schools themselves to develop effective strategies to communicate with current students and alumni and to promote easier and deeper contacts with the educational institutions.

"We believe that both the individual and the aggregate values of these largely undeveloped domain names hold promise as marketing, communications and outreach vehicles," said Richard Pomije, president and CEO of BDC Capital. "Most educational websites are designated by a '.edu' or '.org' suffix, which often are complex and difficult to remember. Ours are straightforward -- the name of the school and the mascot. And .com and .net remain the most easily memorized addresses."

"The success of meeting sites, such as 'classmates.com' and 'reunion.com,' are highly encouraging," Pomije said. "We are equally excited about the potential for sports marketing and reporting given the growth of sites such as 'myteam.com,' 'eteamz.com,' 'collegesports.com' and 'onlinesports.com.'"