Monthly Archives: June 2009

Mon 15th June 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICA to ICANN Ombudsman: “Tardy, Nonresponsive and Non-Persuasive” - ICANN Ombudsman responds to IRT complaint, but after IRT released final report ICANN Ombudsman Dr. Frank Fowlie responded to Internet Commerce Association’s complaints about Implementation Recommendation Team, a trademark-interests group that has proposed sweeping changes to domain disputes and allocation. Internet Commerce Association (ICA) calls the Ombudsman’s response “Tardy, Nonresponsive and Non-persuasive”. In a post on its web site, ICA counsel Phil ... read more ...
Sun 14th June 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
.CM Sunrise Period Opens Tomorrow: Timetable For Land Rush & Open Registration Announced - EuroDns.com laid out the dates for the rollout of the .cm extension, which certainly will be a highly sort after country code. .CM is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the Republic of Cameroon. As we know, .cm is a frequently  hit typo, when someone directly navigates to a .com., and has quite a history. In a recent auction held by Rick Latona, many of the registry owned .cm domains sold with Vegas.cm the highest priced on at $15,500. The Sunrise phase of the .CM registry rollout will ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
GoDirect.com Sells for $15K At NameJet.com - It was a busy week at NameJet.com with all the registry .Me auctions. Yesterday an interesting domain, Godirect.com sold for $15,100. Godirect.gov is a site where you go if you want to sign up for direct deposits of government benefits.  The .gov site gets a lot of traffic, compete.com shows it getting over 70K visitors a month.  Compete also shows the .com ranging from 2,500-5,000 visitors a month. The term “go direct” seems to be trademarked. Here are other notable sales (non .me domains) ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
First Two (Unofficial) Days during Domain Roundtable - A weekend of domain festivities in Washington D.C. Domain Roundtable officially kicked off this evening in Washington, D.C. at the Grand Hyatt. But this weekend was filled with unofficial activities for a few of the early arrivers. Saturday evening David and Michael Castello graciously treated a dozen early arrivals to dinner at Central Michel Richard. In attendance were a number of familiar domain industry faces such as Phil Corwin of Internet Commerce Association ... read more ...
Sat 13th June 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
Did You Get Your Facebook User Name? - According to reports over 200K Facebook User names were grabbed in the first 3 minutes and 500,000 were gone in the first 15 minutes. I tried to get “domain” “domains”, “domainname” and “domainnames” however, none were available.  Checking this morning none of these are resolving so I’m not sure why they weren’t available. I settled on using thedomains, so our facebook page is facebook.com/thedomains Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
The Next Big Domain Auction: GoDirect.com Today On NameJet.com - The auction closes today for GoDirect.com and with almost 4 hours to go the domain is already at $15,100. The are 121 bidders in the closed auction. Godirect.gov is a site where you go if you want to sign up for direct deposits of government benefits.  The .gov site gets a lot of traffic, compete.com shows it getting over 70K visitors a month.  Compete also shows the .com ranging from 2,500-5,000 visitors a month. The term “go direct” seems to be trademarked. It will be interest to see how ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
I Didn’t Get My Facebook URL Because we was Socially Networking - I had to settle for a second-rate vanity URL. But I don’t care. At the stroke of midnight last night thousands of techies were sitting at their computers trying to get a crack at the ideal vanity Facebook URL, such as FaceBook.com/name. I was well aware of this URL landrush but opted to sit on the sidelines. Why? Ironically, because I was socially networking. The difference is I was being social in person. I’m in Washington D.C. and was at a bar with my ... read more ...
Fri 12th June 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Last Day Of .Me Auction At Namejet.com Nets Highest Price Sale: Teach.me Goes For Over $20K - The last, of the 5 day auction for .me registry owned domains just finished at NameJet.com, with Teach.me selling for $20,100, the highest price of any of the .me auctioned off this week. The other 2 .me domains, selling today were, remind.me at $7,700 and gallery.me, one of those .me domains, I just don’t get, sold for just $1,209. So here are the complete results for the 5 day .me auction from NameJet.com: Teach.me $20,100 Invite.me  $12,000 Publish.me $11,100 Trust.me $10,799 Remind.me $7,700 Share.me  ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
What’s A Better Name: CashIsKing.com or HomeBoy.com? - Both domains, CashIsKing.com and HomeBoy.com, ended at auction today at Snapnames.com. Both domains sold in the $x,xxx range, but one sold for considerably more. I bought one of them and let the other one go. So I thought I would just poll you guys and see what you think was the better domain to buy, or neither one? Later on I will post the sale prices for each. Post your thoughts below. Thanks. BTW the .me auctions at NameJet are rocking today and we will be posting the results as soon as they are ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Here It Is: AfterMarket’s Live Auction List For DomainRoundtable Show - The Aftermarket Auction list was just released for the DomainRoundtable to be held in Washington DC next week. The auction will be held on Tuesday June 16th at 4pm EST. Our Favorite name after a quick look is a Geo domain, NewRochelle.com at $32K, but some other very good domains are on the list. As usually for Aftermarket.com, bidding is now opened and remote bidding will be available before and during the live auction There are only 71 domains on the list, which should make for a fast paced auction Here ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
San Francisco Chronicle Article is Today’s Laugh - Article says domain name auction yesterday would have been “one of the first”. A planned real estate domain name auction yesterday in San Francisco fizzled as no one placed bids. But an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about the auction will give you a chuckle. It suggests that this would have been “one of the first” live domain auctions: The few who showed up felt more comfortable negotiating in private – removing the sale from public view and scuttling ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Stat Check: How is Domain Aftermarket Doing? - A statistical look at a slice of the domain name market. Most people agree that the investor aftermarket for domain names isn’t as lofty as it was a couple years ago. Just look at the mood and total sales at live domain auctions for proof. But gathering data to prove this is difficult. Richard Wixom of DNSalePrice recently took at stab at it, but with a different conclusion: the domain aftermarket is doing just fine, thank you. The drop in domain prices over ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Case Study: Parked Domains Outperform Search Ads - Data from an advertising campaign shows that parked domains can convert better than search ads. It’s been about 9 months since I last wrote about how I was getting better conversions from parked domain ads than Google search. Now that I have a lot more data, it’s time to update the stats. As background, I own a college funds site that offers a free report about mistakes to avoid when setting up a 529 plan. I purchase ads on Google Adwords that direct users to ... read more ...
Thu 11th June 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
Bing.com: Paid Clicks Up 8% - The number of times people clicked on ads listed next to Microsoft’s search results jumped about 8% in the week since the Bing.com was launched. “If this share lift holds we can expect advertisers to allocate additional budget to Microsoft over the coming months,” said Efficient Frontier Inc., which helps advertisers place text ads on top search engines. Efficient Frontier, in a blog post on its Web site, also said the number of searches conducted on Microsoft was up about 20% from the week ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
4th Day Of NameJet.com .Me Auction: Invite.me Sells For $12K - The 4th day of the .me registry owned domains just concluded with 3 more sales. A great .me domain,  Invite.me lead the pack at $12K, representing the single highest price sale during the NameJet.com .me auction event. The other 2 .me’s, today were a far cry, in both quality and selling price. Face.me sold for $2,100 (seems a little low) and david.me sold for $1,211. The other three days results can be seen here, here and here. Tomorrow marks the end of the .me auctions, with both teach.me and ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
AOL Buys Patch.com & Going.com For Millions - According to several reports,  AOL, which Time Warner announced last month it will spin off into a separate public company later this year, went on a shopping spree of its own, picking up Patch.com which offers local news for small towns and communities and Going.com, which is a local event and entertainment listing site based in Boston. According to the sources each acquisition was in “the single-digit millions”, meaning anything above $1 Million but less than $9,999,999. Patch.com raised a ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
How To Protect Your Trademark During The FaceBook Landrush - The Silicon Valley Insider published a helpful post today concerning the landrush for Facebook “domains” this weekend. As previously announced At 12:01 a.m. EST,  Saturday morning, Facebook will allow users to register user names and domain names (facebook.com/username) to go with them. If you have a trademark, Facebook has a “Preventing the Registration of a Username” form to prevent someone from registering it. You have to enter,  your company name, title, email, trademark, and registration ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Roundtable Auction List Released - Auction includes 71 domains priced from $0 to $300,000. Aftermarket.com has released its auction list for next Tuesday’s auction during the Domain Roundtable conference in Washington, D.C. Based on the number of very attractively priced domains in the auction, I think there will be some great momentum and excitement. Sure, there are a few domains as always that seem like long shots, but most look well priced. This list is subject to change. 3gphone.com $3,500 Adjusted.com ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Minnesota Drops Challenge to Online Gambling Sites - State drops plans in face of industry lawsuit. Earlier this year Minnesota tried to force ISPs to block access to gambling web sites. The move came on the heels of a similar action from Kentucky’s governor, who tried to seize gambling domain names last year. Although the battle is still ongoing in Kentucky, Minnesota officials have thrown in the towel. A gambling industry association sued the state, saying its plan violated federal commerce and free speech. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
CrapShoot: Man Rolls Dice on Casinos.org - Man files UDRP for domain name Casinos.org. To be fair, it was early this morning that I first saw an arbitration filing for the domain name Casinos.org at WIPO. I rubbed my eyes. This must be a joke, right? Perhaps there was more to the story, I thought. I looked up the history of the domain, and it appears to be owned by the same person for a couple years. Something just didn’t seem right. I emailed the owner of the domain to ask him what was going on. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Wendy’s de Mexico: Burger Chain Wants Mexican Domain Name - Wendy’s restaurant chain files for arbitration for Wendys.com.mx domain name. Wendy’s International, Inc. (NYSE: WEN) has filed for arbitration to get the domain name Wendys.com.mx. The domain name currently resolves to a page with the message “Si le interesa comprar este dominio envie un correo a”, which translates to “If you are interested in purchasing this domain please send an email…” There are over 6,600 Wendy’s stores, many of them franchises, ... read more ...
Wed 10th June 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
3rd Day Of .Me Auction Results On NameJet.com - Today the auctions closed for 3 more .me registry owned domains, representing in my opinion the weakest of the group, with live.me selling for $3,501, kick.me at $3K, and network.me closing out at $2K. The next couple of days has some good .me finishing up at auction, including teach.me, invite.me, remind.me and face.me We will keep you updated. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Rumor Of The Day: Who Will Be ICANN New CEO? - According to the Internet Governance Project blog, Rod Beckstrom, the former director of the US Homeland Security Department’s National Cybersecurity Center, may be the new CEO of ICANN. The blog also says  that David Eisner, the CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service under G.W. Bush and former VP at AOL, is in the running. “”””Perhaps someone familiar with DC is a prudent choice, given ICANN’s recent performance there. Beckstrom is best known for his dramatic resignation ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
TechCrunch.com Covers The Auction Of Wealth.com: Is It Priced Too High? - TechCrunch this morning covers the auction of Wealth.com to be held on June 25th, on Sedo.com. The reserve is set at $2,900,000. TechCrunch and myself agree that the reserve for this domain is too high. Wealth.com, although a very good name is not in the same catagory of toys.com or candy.com or even auction.com I think its a domain that could fetch $1M, but I think the reserve should be more like 500K. If you want to participate in the auction, you have to prequalify by June 15, 2009. Google+Michael ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN to U.S. Government: End Joint Project Agreement - ICANN Chairman of the Board asks government to conclude JPA upon expiration this year. Peter Thrush, Chairman of ICANN’s Board of Directors, has sent an eleven page letter (pdf) to National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) asking to end the Joint Project Agreement when it expires later this year. The letter was in response to NTIA’s Notice of Inquiry regarding “the transition of the technical coordination and management of the internet’s ... read more ...