Meet the Mann who registered 14,962 domains in 24 hours

The next time you find yourself pounding your keyboard in frustration because the domain name you want is already taken, direct your ire towards Mike Mann.

Mann is one of the longest members of the clubby world of domain speculators, and he's buying up names in force these days. And not all on the aftermarket, as some others do. But new names. Dot-com names that aren't registered -- even though 100 million-plus already are -- that he then turns around and sells for a few hundred bucks, sometimes far more.

And this week, in a span that lasted less than 24 hours across Tuesday and Wednesday, Mann snapped up 14,962 domains -- 1,822 starting Tuesday evening and the rest on Wednesday.

"I'm just really greedy," said Mann, a man no one would describe as modest. "I want to own the world."

First, the quick back story. Mann, who's 45 and lives in Delaware, joined the dot-com land grab relatively early, in the late 1990s. He had founded an ISP called Internet Interstate, but one day in 1998, much to his surprise, he got a $25,000 offer for a domain he owned, Menus.com. The following day he got a $50,000 offer.

"I was like, 'I paid $70 for this,'" said Mann, who tends to sport dark glasses and, despite the outfit in the photo, doesn't smoke cigarettes. "The next day, I went into the domain business.