Monthly Archives: February 2009

Wed 4th February 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
CADNA IS Coming & Washington Is Listening - A story in the National Journal today, affirms what we predicted for 2009. CADNA is gearing  up for a new laws to expand trademark rights and increasing penalties for violation, using the launch of the new gTD’s as the basis for getting before congress. On Tuesday, the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) hosted a briefing for executives and Capitol Hill staffers to discuss how Congress can get involved, ICANN officials were told they were not welcome. On Friday, the U.S. Chamber of ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ICANN Loses $4.6 Million Of Your Money In The Stock Market - According to a new post on Circle ID, ICANN lost $4.6 million last year in the stock market, which the author’s post points out is equivalent to its fee ($.20) on 23 million domain registrations. How did this happen you ask. Well basically, when it was formed in 1998, ICANN was allowed to set up “reasonable reserves for future expenses and contingencies reasonably related to the legitimate activities of the Corporation”. In 2002, ICANN proposed having a $10 Million dollar reserve. By the 2007-2008 ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Auction Watch: DOMAINfest and Sedo - DOMAINfest silent auction ends Thursday; Sedo auctions heating up. The silent auction portion of the 2009 DOMAINfest Global auction ends Thursday at 3:15 PM EST. The auction includes thousands of low cost domain names, including 3,000 domain names with starting bids of $1,000 or less (and many at $300). Bidding is done through the SnapNames platform. To find the DOMAINfest auction domains, go to the SnapNames home page and click on “advanced search”. Then ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
NameDrive Breached, Less Than 1% of Accounts Affected - Breach exposes e-mails and passwords. E-mail addresses and passwords for a limited number of NameDrive customers were obtained and posted in a hacker forum this month. The security breach just came to light today. NameDrive has responded by instituting new security measures including password resets: We were alerted of a possible security breach affecting less than 1% of our accounts, although we have no indication that any unauthorized access was gained, we have ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
PushToAuction.com Sells over $125,000 in Domain Names - Unique idea drives hundreds of domain aftermarket sales. It’s been about six months since I first wrote about PushToAuction.com, a service that lists domain names that people are willing to send to an auction on Sedo with a $60 offer. The service was active for a couple months before Domain Name Wire’s story, and since launch it has helped sell 426 domain names for $126,901. That’s an average of $298. The value to sellers is clear: list domain names on the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sedo Releases 2008 Domain Name Market Study - Sales volume up, average price down in 2008. Sedo has released its 2008 Secondary Domain Market Study (pdf), and it provides a wealth of information about the domain name aftermarket. The domain brokerage company sold over $77 million in domains in 2008, a slight increase of 8% over 2007. Although overall sales revenue was up, the company saw weakness in the fourth quarter. The company sold 9,727 domain names in Q2 (the peak for the year) and only 8,754 in Q4. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Dollars.com Sells for $388,000 - Domain name with a history sells for lots of “dollars”. Sedo has sold Dollars.com for EUR 302,500, which is about $388,000 USD at today’s exchange rates. An auction for the domain ended this morning, but the winning bidder is certified and is likely to complete the transaction. My understanding is the deal was put together by a Sedo broker. Dollars.com has somewhat of a history on the domain name aftermarket. The domain reportedly sold for $650,000 in 2007. ... read more ...
Tue 3rd February 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
Our Picks For a Silent Domainfest Auction - Well I went through the over 5,000 domains for the silent auction from DomainFest and came up with our favorites. As the results of the live auctioned showed, most of you are more interested in domains with lower price tags. So I picked out the best of the cheaper domains. No domain on this list is priced over $10k and 95% are a grand or under. All and all there are a lot of decent domains at good prices I pulled for you. There are some good .me, three number domains, excellent one word .info, 2 ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
It’s Time For Godaddy To Rethink It’s Super Bowl Strategy - I had dinner with my sister last night, and we talked about the game for a while, then she mentions Godaddy.com.  She asks me do you work with them, and what exactly do they do? That’s just great. A very smart, Internet user, can’t figure out after watching 2 commercials, what a company does. $6 million dollars and the average guy in the street has no idea of Godaddy.com does, why you would use it, or how you would use it, except if they possibly if they heard the line “register your domain ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
.Tel Landrush Starts At 10am EST Today - The landrush for the new .Tel  extensions open at 10am EST this morning on a first come, first served basis. .Tel registrations will be available though many registrars including moniker.com I met Justin Edelman, last week at DomainFest, a representative for the .tel registry, whose .tel domain is Justin.Tel is up and operating if you want to see what this type of page looks like. Justin is a very nice guy who will tell you that the .tel extension is like no other and according to the New York Times, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DevHub Builds Your Domain Media Network - New incarnation of EVOLanding to launch in February. DevHub, a free platform for rapidly developing web sites, will launch to the public later this month. Mass developing web sites isn’t easy. DevHub makes it easier, but you shouldn’t expect to be able to just press a button to develop 1,000 domain names. Technically DevHub would allow you to do that, but you won’t get long term search engine traffic. It takes a little elbow grease to realize its true ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Tel “Landrush”: What You Need to Know - Phase one of open registration is now open for .tel. The first phase of open registration for the new .tel domain name is underway. I’ve been a vocal critic of .tel, even suggesting that the $35 million investment in .tel registry Telnic should be written off as a loss. I don’t want it to fail and hope that time proves me wrong. I just think the odds are stacked against it. At DOMAINfest last week I talked with Telnic’s Justin Hayward. I’ve talked with ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Red Bull Can Now Energize Mobile Phones - Energy drink seller Red Bull wins rights to RedBull.mobi. Red Bull, famous for giving you an energy boost, can now energize mobile phones with the domain name RedBull.mobi. The company won the domain name in a dispute at World Intellectual Property Association. The respondent, Roy Atar of Israel, defended himself by saying he is commonly known by friends as “Shor Adom”, which translates into English as “Red Bull”. Atar did not park the domain name; it was ... read more ...
Mon 2nd February 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Think You Can’t Compete With a Big Guys: How 2 Regular Guys Turned $2K Into $1M & Kick Madison Ave. Ass - Indiana brothers Joe and Dave Herbert entered a contest to create a Super Bowl commercial for Doritos. Their commercial “crystal ball”,  was chosen from around 2,000 entries. Doritos paid five finalists, $25,000, but promised to pay a contestant $1 million if the ad chosen to run during the game ended up as the No. 1 selection in USA Today’s Ad Meter focus group ranking. The Herbert brothers shocked Madison Avenue by topping the USA Today’s group and took home the $1 million prize. The ad ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Silent DomainFest Auction; Domains Getting Bids - The silent/extended auction from DomainFest.com show ends this Thursday at 3:15pm EST, 12:15 PST, and there are already quite a few domains with bids on them, including introduction.com with a bid at $117,650. If you want to join any of these auctions, just click on the link for the domain. We will be publishing a list of our top picks for the DomainFest silent auction by Wednesday. Here are the domains currently with bids at the silent DomainFest auction and the current high bid: introduction.com ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Twitter Can’t Take Down GoDaddy - Twitter backlash at GoDaddy ads is amusing, but it won’t add up to much. The Monday after the Super Bowl is filled with analysis. Not about the football game, but the commercials. Domain Name Wire received literally thousands of search visitors Monday from people searching for GoDaddy’s Super Bowl ad. GoDaddy sturred up its contrived controversy again. And, once again, many people complained about its sexist commercials. The difference this year is that Twitter ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy Charges Own Customers with Cybersquatting - Domain name registrar files UDRP complaints for its trademarks. You won’t believe where the domain names are registered. Domain name registrar GoDaddy.com and its parent company have filed 4 UDRP cases with World Intellectual Property Organization this year. What’s interesting isn’t that a domain registrar is protecting its brands. It’s that many of the domains it is trying to get are registered at GoDaddy. Of the four cases, two involve domain names at ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Does Vogue Want to Launch .Live Domain? - An example of the confusion that will reign when new TLDs are launched. This morning I saw an ad in the print edition of The New Yorker for Vogue.TV, the popular magazine’s multimedia web site. Here’s the ad: Do you see the part of the ad circled in green? It’s kind of small, so let me blow it up for you: What’s that? Does Vogue want to launch a new top level domain name .live? Of course not. The dot is just a branding thing for its reality model show ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
RAI.mobi Owner Needs to Put a Foot in His Mouth - RAI.mobi domain owner did himself a disservice in responding to UDRP. It’s difficult to win a UDRP domain arbitration case when you don’t respond to the proceedings. (Difficult, but not impossible). But sometimes not responding to a case is a better idea than responding with a half-hearted story. That’s what happened in the case or RAI.mobi, a generic domain name won by complainant RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana S.p.A. This isn’t a case of someone registering ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Top Domain Name Stories of Jan 2009 - A look back at the previous month in domain names. 2009 started with a bang in the domain name industry. Here’s a look at the top five new articles (by views) on Domain Name Wire: 1. GoDaddy Takes on eBay, Amazon.com, and Yahoo – in a rather perplexing and unexpected move, GoDaddy launched an online marketplace for people to sell physical goods. 2. Mystery Domain Auction Isn’t About Domain Names – was that really just last month? I wouldn’t be surprised ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Critiquing DOMAINfest Global 2009 - As the curtain comes down, here’s a look back at last week’s conference in Los Angeles. Oversee.net’s DOMAINfest Global 2009 was an excellent conference. Now that I’ve had time to relax and reflect on last week, I’d say the conference deserves five stars. Of course, there’s always room for improvement. The Good -Attendance was very strong at over 600 people. DomainSponsor handed out fewer “rebates” and free passes this year, so I suspect paid attendance ... read more ...
Sun 1st February 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Domaining 2.0? Best Show Ever?, we Don’t Think So: Final Thoughts And Observations From DomainFest - DomainFest’s theme was domaining 2.0, where does the industry go from here. I was honored to speak about the topic.  Since the session was a sit down chat, answering questions from a moderator and the audience, I didn’t prepare remarks.  Instead I spent a lot of time reflecting on the domain business, where its been and where its going.  Unfortunately the session was only a hour and after the moderator’s opening remarks. less than 50 minutes remained. So let me take the time to deal with ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy Promotes Its Own Service When Switching Nameservers - Domain registrar offers its own competing service when changing nameservers. Domain name registrar GoDaddy.com is promoting its own domain parking service “Cash Parking” to customers who attempt to change a domain’s nameservers to a competing domain parking company. If you have a domain name on GoDaddy’s name servers (which is the case whenever you register a new domain name or use forwarding) and try to switch to the nameservers of a domain parking company, ... read more ...