Monthly Archives: January 2008

Thu 31st January 2008
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Google Misses: Stock Sinks - Google released its earnings for the 4th quarter of 2007, that missed Wall Street estimates, sending the stock tumbling after hours. Google which went up $16 a share today, sank $46 points after earnings were released and now sits at $518. Google is now well below its all-time high of $747 last November. Google reported that its fourth quarter revenue came in at $4.83 billion, up 51% from a year ago. Excluding advertising traffic acquisition costs, the company reported revenue of $3.39 billion, ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
SnapNames Silent Auction: Our pickups - Well as promissed now that the snapnames.com silent auction is completed we can now tell you what domains we bidded on. These are the domains we acquired: testtubes.com organicchocolate.com autographcollectors.com shocktherapy.com endurancetests.com dailybackups.com These are the names we bid on but were outbid: exhibited.com bodilyinjury.com collectiblestamps.com organiccosmetics.com lasikeyedoctors.com happybirthday.org Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
SnapNames.com silent, Under an Hour to GO - The silent auction part of the snapnames.com, DomainFest show, auction is underway and closes within the hour. There is bidding going on. We told you that we had interest in 12 names, 7 of them are getting mulitple bids. We will keep you updated. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Roundtable Heads to San Francisco - Name Intelligence show leaves the Seattle area for fourth show. For its fourth Domain Roundtable (DRT) conference, Name Intelligence (parent company of Domain Tools) is moving the conference to San Franciso. The event will take place at The Palace Hotel April 18-21. I caught up with Name Intelligence’s Jay Westerdal and Susan Prosser to get a preview of the upcoming event. Prosser is organizing the conference. What will be the overriding theme of the next Domain ... read more ...
Wed 30th January 2008
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Will Microsoft Finally Buy Yahoo.com??? - Back In January 2006, the big rumor spreading around was that Microsoft was on the verge of buying Yahoo. The rumor was the Microsoft bid 80 billion dollars for Yahoo, and that Yahoo turned it down. In May of 2007, when Yahoo was trading around 28, the rumor resurfaced driving Yahoo up to $32 a shares based on the rumor that Microsoft was going to offer $36-38 a share. Now 8 months later Yahoo is trading at $19 a share approximately, one-half of its rumored offer of last year. So why shouldn’t ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
DomainFest Silent Auciton: Our Take - As promissed we have analyzed the domainfest, snapnames.com silent auction names and here is what we find to be most interesting, not including the live domains that are left in the silent. The one’s we like for the live, we still like for the silent auction. We have held back the 12 names we are going to bid on but will release those once the auction is over. We also expect many of the 4 letter domains all priced at $500 each to sell, although we are not a buyer of these. This is the best of ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Google and Panasonic Team Up - Panasonic and Google are developing televisions that will display Internet content such as photos and videos. The televisions, which are set to be released this spring, will allow users to directly browse and access videos from YouTube and view Picasa Web Albums, a free online photo-sharing service from Google. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
GoDaddy Superbowl Commerical rated 5th sleaziest by MSNBC - MSBNC released it’s top ten list of the “sleaziest super bowl ads of all time”. Coming in 5th was GoDaddy.com, for it’s 2005 Commerical entitled “proceedings”. You can view the entire top ten here. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Yahoo.com Hires CFO; Plan to Lay off’s 1,000 People - As we disucssed last week Yahoo.com confirmed today that it will in fact lay off a portion of its workforce, but instead of being several hundred people, it will lay off approximately 1,000 workers, representing a 7 percent reduction in its 14,300-employee work force Yahoo shares dropped $2.13, or more than 10 percent, in extended trading Tuesday after finishing the regular session at $20.81, up 3 cents. The company’s market value has plunged more than 50 percent since the end of 2005, wiping ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
CADNA Releases Report on Domain Name Drop Catching - Special interest group suggests that non-refundable $.20 fee is not enough to stop domain tasting. The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) released a report today about expired domain drop catching. It’s an interesting report and contains good data, although I don’t agree with all of its conclusions. CADNA hired Zooknic to study 17,000 randomly selected domains dropping on September 18, 2007. Of those names, 100% of the .net and .com domains released ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google Duped Us - Google is smart, and it proved it with its “we are not evil” approach to domain kiting. I knew those engineers at Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) were smart. But they also have smart PR skills. Last week, Google decided to let the world know it was going to stop monetizing kited domains — those domains that are continually dropped and re-registered during the 5 day registration grace period. It found a mule to report this to the world and show how Google was a great ... read more ...
Tue 29th January 2008
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Yahoo 4Q Earnings Fall Over 23 Percent - Online search engine operator Yahoo Inc. said Tuesday that its fourth-quarter profit declined a bit more than 23 percent as higher operating expenses overshadowed an increase in revenue. 4th fourth net earnings were $205.7 million, or 15 cents a share, down from $268.7 million, or 19 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Excluding items, the company posted an adjusted profit of $280 million, or 20 cents a share, versus $297 million, or 21 cents a share, last year. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial, ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Buzz.org is Generating alot: Current ebay Auction - The domain name buzz.org is currently at auction on ebay, and it’s living up to its name, creating a lot of bidders. With just over 6 1/2 hours to go the domain is already over $39K. If interested you can bid or track the auction here: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemitem=270206092503ssPageName=ADME:B:DBS:US:1123 Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
ICANN Ends Domain Tasting - According to the lextext blog the ICANN board passed a resolution that will impose ICANN per name fee on all domain registration whether or not they are  deleted within the first five days. Although no clear date was set for the imposition of the fees it is generally believed that it will take place on July 1, 2008 or sooner Here is the text of the resolution: Here’s the text of the resolution: Whereas, the current version of all gTLD registry contracts provides for a five-calendar-day Add Grace ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Baidu.com downgraded, Google.com Upgraded - Baidu.com Inc. shares are down around 20 points today, after an Canaccord Adams analyst Colin Gillis, initiated his coverage of the stock, setting a $265 price target and a “Sell” rating, saying investments the Chinese search engine operator is making in 2008 are expected to increase expenses without leading to substantial near-term revenue.In the past year, the stock has moved between $92.80 and $429.19. The analyst said he feels positive about the company’s position as a the leader in a growing ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Name Wire Goes Mobile - Read Domain Name Wire from your mobile phone at DomainNameWire.mobi. Readers can now get the latest domain name news via their mobile phone at DomainNameWire.mobi. Reading blogs on mobile phones can be difficult, but now visitors using a mobile phone (Blackberry, Treo, et all) to visit Domain Name Wire will be presented with a modified version of the site that loads quickly and renders properly on small mobile screens. OK, so you don’t actually have to use the domain ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
TrafficClub Closing Its Doors - Parking aggregater to shut down service at end of month. Moniker’s TrafficClub will shut its doors at the end of the month. TrafficClub allowed customers to maximize revenue from parked domains without moving domains between different parking companies. Traffic to domains was split tested across various parking services and eventually shown more on the feeds that had higher RPMs. The service was not without controversy. Last year DomainSponsor, citing a policy ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Auto-Generated Web Sites, Part 2 - New services show the trend continues, but are automated site generators the future of domain parking? In September 2007 I wrote about DomainEmbarking.com, a service that generates a parking page that looks more like a real web site than a parked page. For a brief history of automated site generation, here’s a snippet from that article: A few years ago savvy entrepreneurs figured out they could mass-develop web sites based on niche keywords and penetrate search ... read more ...
Mon 28th January 2008
Written by The Domains in EN
Goodbye TrafficClub.com: All Customers Moved to DomainSponsor.com - Not surprisingly Moniker.com announced today that they were migrating all of the customers of TrafficClub.com to DomainSponsor.com Oversee.net which owns DomainSponsor acquired moniker.com a couple of weeks ago, Moniker.com, which owns trafficclub.com, parking program was using a skenzo feed and a domainsponsor feed prior to the acquisition. Immediately after the acquisition skenzo.com announced that they were canceling the trafficclub.com feed,, thereby leaving trafficclub.com, with only the domainsponsor ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
2008 Domain Name Wire Survey Now Open - Survey participants can win prizes, speak their minds. The 3rd Annual Domain Name Wire Survey is now open for participation. This survey has been the voice of the domain community for several years, and this year’s survey lets domain industry participants give their opinion on: -Which registrar is best? -What’s most important when selecting a registrar? -Which parking service is best? -What’s the best place to buy and sell domains online? -What will happen ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Parked Adds .Mobi Compliance, Yahoo Quality Score - Domain parking platform adds new features. Domain name parking company Parked.com has added two new features in recent weeks. First, the company now supports .mobi parking. .Mobi domain owners can earn revenue with scaled down parking pages that work on mobile phones. Second, the company now shows publishers their Yahoo Quality Score. This score is a measure of the quality of traffic they are delivering to advertisers according to Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO), and is measured ... read more ...
Sun 27th January 2008
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
HelpLine.com goes for $70,300 during NameJet.com - So much for the recession. Interesting to note that helponline.com went for just $5,70 last week at NameJet. Seems like quite a bargain now. A typo of xxxvideos, xxvideos.com sold for $12,500 Seems like a ton for a name such as this. Here are some other notable sales the last few days: movie-trailers.com $8,200 (re-auction) erotictalk.com $6,000 dreamcenter.com $5,600 dangeroustoys.com $4,500 yourdomains.com $4,000 litigationservices.com $3,010 fantastictickets.com $1,500 I like fantiastictickets.com ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Are Newspapers only Landing Pages with Content??? - In my endless quest to find you, my readers, the most relevant information on domain names and the media industry, we hopped a flight from LA after the DomainFest show, and went to Hawaii for a few days.   Did you know that the largest newspaper in terms of circulation in the state of Hawaii is called the The Honolulu Advertiser?   I thought what a great name for a newspaper. I mean here is a something actually calling itself what it is. This made me think, is a typical daily newspaper just really ... read more ...
Sat 26th January 2008
Written by The Domains in EN
Google Recession Proof?? - Interesting article publish today about how the recession will effect the pay per click advertising industry. Put it on your must read list http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/newstex/IBD-0001-22541402.htm Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The MediaWizard's Blog in EN
Domaining is not cybersquatting! - I read an article in a major newspaper a few days back – the new form of cybersquatting – domaining. Hogwash! Its as much a legal business, if done right, as any other business. While booking someone’s name or brand is generally unacceptable, there is another type of domain investment that’ll shock your socks off. Before I go any further, here’s some recommended reading – #1 – pls note, this is just for 2008. here’s the one from 2007 – #2 And here are some resources to allow ... read more ...