There is a new entrant at the top of the 2011 domain name sale leader board — social.com.
In the largest confirmed transaction so far this year, the domain name has changed hands for a reported $2.6 million.
The domain name was sold at an auction in Barcelona, Spain, where high levels of interest in the Web address served to push up its value.
With social media increasingly important in the online world, social.com is considered by many to be a category-defining domain name.
Ahead of the sale, industry commentators had predicted a multi-million dollar price for the Web address, and they were not disappointed.
Earlier this year, it was reported that the data.com domain name had changed hands for around $1.5 million — a figure which has now been eclipsed.
But both the social.com and data.com transactions fall short of the all-time sales record. Back in 2009, insure.com and its associated assets were sold for a combined sum of $16.1 million.