Monthly Archives: May 2009

Wed 27th May 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GreatDomains Auction Ends Thursday, 80.com during $60k - Monthly GreatDomains auction ends tomorrow. Sedo’s monthly GreatDomains auction ends tomorrow, but no major domain name sales appear to be in the works. One domain may tip the scales: 80.com, which is currently at $60,000. The domain hasn’t met its reserve but the reserve is under $100,000. The top domain in the auction to meet its reserve so far is 434.com at $8,100 with 13 bids. 434 is the area code for the south central area of Virginia. A number of three ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
NameMedia Sells Another $500k in Domains - BBI.net, Requirements.com and ApartmentsNow.com lead the pack. NameMedia continues to sell over a half million dollars worth of domain names each week, a thousand or two thousand dollars at a time. Last week the company tallied just over $550,000 in reported sales. The median sales price for .com domains was at the company’s typical $1,200 and the median for non-.com (mostly .net and .org) was $1,000. The top sale was BBI.net at $11,800, followed by requirements.com ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Get Whois from DomainTools Faster - Four tricks to access whois information on DomainTools faster. Last week I visited the DomainTools offices in Seattle and it inspired me to write a series of posts about how I use DomainTools. This first article is about what we all use DomainTools for at the simplest level: whois lookups. If you are manually going to domaintools.com and typing in your whois query, you’re wasting time. Here are four ways to access a whois record on DomainTools much faster. 1. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
NBC Wants Tonight Show Domain Names - Jay Leno is attempting to aquire three domain names thru World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), among them is “TheJayLenoShow.com”. The question is: is he entitled to it? Although the domain name incorporates his name, all proof indicates he has sold his name to his employer NBC, Inc. GE, parent company of NBC, Inc. owns, not only JaLeno.com, but also JayLenosGarage.com. GE aquired JayLeno.com last year, details of the aquisition were not released, but by looking at the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Demand Media Awarded Patent for Tiered Domain Name Registrations - The return of domain name tasting? Demand Media, parent company of eNom, has been awarded United States Patent 7539774 for “Method for domain name registration and a corresponding apparatus”. The patent application was filed in 2005 and appears to be targeted toward domain monetization of low traffic domains. The idea would be for the registry, such as VeriSign (NSDQ: VRSN), to offer domain registrations at different prices but with different rights. For example, ... read more ...
Tue 26th May 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
FaceBook.com Takes In A $200M Investment, Vaulation is Now Pegged At $10 Billion - Facebook today announced that Digital Sky Technologies (DST),  made a $200 million investment in Facebook in exchange for preferred stock, representing a 1.96 percent equity stake at a $10 billion valuation. In addition, DST has indicated that it is planning to offer to purchase at least $100 million of Facebook common stock from existing common stockholders that would facilitate liquidity for current and former employees’ vested shares in the company. DST will not be represented on the Facebook ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
AdAge: Microsoft Changes Again; Kumo.com is out, Bing.com Is It’s New Search Engine - Microsoft has switched gears again in its naming of it’s search engine.  From Live.com to Kumo.com (which never officially launched) they have appearently settled on Bing.com According to Ad Age, Microsoft plans on spending $80 million to $100 million on its ad campaign for Bing. Ad Age points out that Google only spent about $25 million on all its advertising last year, while Microsoft, spent $361 million. From the domain side of things, I like bing.com better than Kumo.com. You have Bing cherries ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
StripClubs.com: Back On The Auction Block After The Rick Latona Auction For $101K Fails To Close - The domain stripclubs.com which sold at the Rick Latona auction at the Phoenix Forum Adult show On March 5, for $101K, is back on the auction block. The domain is being offered for sale on ebay.com with a starting bid and reserve of only $75K. According to the owner of the domain, the sale with Rick Latona did not close as the “winning bidder was unable to get the financing he thought was a sure thing.” Last week we posted about domains at Namejet.com failing to sell and being re-auctioned.  ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google Inserts Image Ads in Link Units Pages - Could move foreshadow image ads on parked pages? Today Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced that it will start adding relevant banner ads to the bottom of link ad results pages. Link ads are part of the Google Adsense program. Instead of showing ads that link directly to an advertiser’s site, a link unit includes keywords that link to a page full of Google ads. The banners are shown at the bottom of these ad pages: Google says that it found revenue increases when ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sedo Fixes Auction User Interface - Auction page now easier to scan. One thing has always baffled me about the auction page at Sedo: domain names were truncated at 13 characters even though there was plenty of space to list the entire domain. Like many things in web applications, fixing this was a challenge due to some legacy backend systems. But I’m happy to report that Sedo has fixed the glitch and most domains are no longer truncated: A quick review of current auctions shows only a couple truncated ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Firm Wants to Be “Your Lawyer” (and Wants a Domain Names, Too) - Arbitration panel finds Parker Waichman Alonso LLP overstepping its bounds. New York law firm Parker Waichman Alonso LLP has two registered trademarks that include the term “YourLawyer”: yourlawyer.com on the principal register and YourLawyer on the supplemental register. It’s trying to make a land grab online for domains that include “YourLawyer” in them. The law firm just lost a case at National Arbitration Forum for the domain YourLawyer.tv, which is ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Visiting Name Intelligence in Seattle - My visit to company’s offices in Seattle. Over the holiday weekend I traveled to Seattle for a wedding. Because I can never take a holiday from the domain world, I arranged to visit Name Intelligence’s office while I was there. Name Intelligence, owned by Thought Convergence, operates DomainTools and Spry, a web hosting company. Friday afternoon I made the short walk from the W Hotel to NI’s offices, located in a non-descript building that used to house a ... read more ...
Mon 25th May 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
iTrust.com Sells On NameJet.com For $13K - The domain itrust.com sold today for $13,100 on NameJet.com to the bidder known as “eglobal”. itrust.com is certainly an end user type of domain and for me a bit overpriced. Here are some other notable sales over the last few days at NameJet: audios.com                       $6,600 nextera.com                      $3,300 thanking.com                   $2,988 hydrogenvehicle.com     $2,400 esgroup.com                    $2,300 yescash.com ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Why Didn’t Microsoft Buy LiveSearch.com For $800K? - A story in paidcontent.org today tells the tale of the domain LiveSearch.com. According to the story, Microsoft’s failure to acquire the domain, may have lead it to abandon its live.com search for Kumo.com. Apparently the owner of the domain LiveSearch.com turned down a $200K offer  and demanded $800K.  Although no one will confirm that the $200K offer came from Microsoft, if they could have bought the domain for $800K and left live.com in place instead of rebranding their search platform as ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Tweet.me Sells for $11,505 - Twitter related .me domain names sells for five figures. The latest premium .me domain name auction is coming to an end, and Tweet.me looks to be the winner at $11,505. I can see this being used for a Twitter service, but I’m a bit concerned about all of the services popping up that use variants of Twitter and Tweet in their names: could Twitter ever come after them for trademark infringement? Lease.me sold for $7,605 with 139 bids and Massage.me sold for $6,005 ... read more ...
Sat 23rd May 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
HitWise: Paid Search Down 26% - The research firm, HitWise is reporting a record drop in Paid search advertising over the last few weeks. HitWise reports that the share of search traffic to websites generated from paid listings has dropped to about 7.25% over the four weeks ending May 9th, down from 9.8% during the same period a year ago, representing a decline of 26%. “””This trend is apparent across 16 of the 17 Hitwise parent categories (i.e. Automotive, Food and Beverage, Health and Medical, etc). The only category that ... read more ...
Fri 22nd May 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
FixedMortgage.com Nets $10K At NameJet.com - The domain FixedMortgage.com sold today on Namejet.com for $10,211. Other notable domain sales at NameJet.com over the past few days include: espanola.com                   $7,106 audios.com                       $6,600 crazyass.com                    $6,400 nextera.com                     $3,300 totalpower.com               $3,050 baze.com                          $2,088 mypayroll.com                ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Yahoo: We Are Going To Buy Companies - Yahoo’s Chief Technology Officer, Ari Balogh who is also the Vice President of products at Yahoo, told Reuters yesterday, that Yahoo is looking to buy companies that will allow it to become a bigger player in social networking and revamp its family of products, . “It’s a good time to be buying now,” pointing to valuations that have come down from levels six to nine months ago. Balogh , said Yahoo has had conversations with companies about partnerships and “more interesting” possibilities, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Two Unique Domain Conferences on Tap for June - TRAFFIC ccTLDs and Domain Roundtable round out first half of year. Domain conference goers have been treated to many options this year, and two more events are coming up next month. These conferences will be very different from the typical conference, with unique programming and cities as a backdrop. TRAFFIC ccTLDs will take place in Amsterdam June 1-4. Rick Latona is organizing the event, which will focus exclusively on country code domain names. Many of the speakers ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
BrowserShots Checks Your Web Sites in Multiple Browsers - Use BrowserShots when to check new web sites. There are hundreds of versions of various web browsers in use, and each of them has its own quirks. I learned this when I launched the re-designed Domain Name Wire. (Thanks again to SiteGraduate for the redesign.) There were two main browser issues we had to overcome. First, the site was just a bit too wide for most browsers when people used a 1024 resolution. 21% of Domain Name Wire visitors have a 1024 wide resolution. ... read more ...
Thu 21st May 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
Is 200K and 250K Registrations Really That Impressive? - Yesterday I read many bloggers posting the news that .me registrations, had reached 250,000 registration and that .tel reached 200,000 registrations and generally the tone was that these extension had reached some sort of impressive number. However, today I have to ask is that number really that impressive? Consider last June, the registry administering the the ugly stepchild of domain extensions,  .biz announced, they had reach 2 Million registrations.  The .biz registry had 800,000 registration ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Pool: 10,000 Preorders A Day For The New gTLD’s - A month ago today, we wrote about Pool.com starting to accept back orders on possible new gTLD’s. In a press release sent to many bloggers today, Pool.com claims that they have received on average over 10,000 backorder requests every day,  over the 30 day period, for the new gTLD’s. We need to keep in mind that there is no cost to place a backorder. Still over 300,000 backorders in a month, is a sign that some of these gTLD’s are going to get serious registrations once they open up. This information ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Senators Push for Strickling to Keep Eye on ICANN - Incoming NTIA chief asked to keep close eye on ICANN agreement. U.S. Senators Olympia Snowe (of the infamous “Snowe Bill” ), R-Maine, and Bill Nelson, D-Fla, are pushing for incoming National Telecommunications Information Administration chief Larry Strickling to keep a watchful eye on ICANN, reports Nextgov. NTIA is currently requesting comments regarding what should happen to the Joint Project Agreement between the U.S. government and ICANN that expires September ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Newt Gingrich’s Lawyer Blames Tucows for Tweet - Gringrich’s lawyer confused about Twitter. Here’s a funny cease desist letter that shows how many politicians still don’t understand modern technology. The cease desist was targeted to a Twitter user as well as Tucows (AMEX: TCX). Twitter user EFCANOW tweeted “Join @newtgingrich @sanuzis in signing the EFCA Freedom Not Fear petition at http://action.americanright… WSJ.” (Gingrich is opposed to EFCA.) Gingrich’s lawyer then fired off a cease desist ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Another Silly Patent Application: 104 Domains - Company tries to patent geo-targeted directory that starts with “104”. Apparently it’s kooky patent day. This morning I wrote about a company trying to patent “virtual domain names“. Another patent application published today (pdf) is for a geo-targeted directory made up of domain names starting with “104”. Here’s the problem the patent tries to address, according to its author: Due to the recent hype, over 128 million domain names have been registered ... read more ...