Monthly Archives: October 2009

Fri 30th October 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
ICANN Votes To Allow Non-Latin Langauge IDNs ccTLD’s - The board of directors of the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) voted for a  Fast-Track Process for applying for an IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) and will begin accepting applications on Nov. 16. Starting in mid-November, countries and territories will be able to apply to show domain names in their native language. Currently, domain names can only be displayed using the Latin alphabet letters A-Z, the digits 0-9 and the hyphen, but in future countries will be ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
FuneralHomes.com Gets Some Competition From An Unlikely Source, Walmart.com - Is there is no product on earth that can’t be sold on the Internet? If you thought the one product that couldn’t be sold over the Net was caskets, you would be wrong. Walmart.com, has 14 caskets that can be purchased on its site. The prices range from $895 for a steel casket to $2,899 for a bronze casket. The items are sold online only and not in Walmart stores. Walmart expects the product to be shipped to funeral homes directly and is requiring the buyer to enter the following information for ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Photon Group Submits Formal Takeover Offer for Dark Blue Sea - Group submits plan to takeover Fabulous’ parent company. Photon Group has submitted its formal share purchase statement (pdf) for its planned purchase of outstanding Dark Blue Sea shares. Dark Blue Sea is the parent company of domain name registrar and parking company Fabulous. Photon owns almost 30% of the outstanding shares in the company. In a letter to shareholders, Photon Group Executive Chairman Tim Hughes says the offer represents a premium to the average ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Friday Domain News Bytes - Quick news updates before the weekend. It’s the Friday before Halloween and there’s a lot of domain news to report. I’ll be taking off early today to go to my daughter’s Halloween school carnival (she’s dressing up as a Flamingo), so here’s a condensed version of all the news that’s fit to print. IDN TLDs are coming! ICANN’s board has approved the fast track IDN country code domain name process. Here’s what you need to know: 1. These are the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google Encroaches on Lead Gen Companies - Google gets into the lead gen business through Adwords. Google has launched a new Google Adwords offering that directly competes with mortgage lead generation companies such as Lending Tree. The new offering, dubbed Comparison Ads, allows Google visitors to compare offers from various mortgage providers. They can then fill out a quote lead form or call the mortgage company directly using a specially encoded phone number. Google charges the mortgage companies each ... read more ...
Thu 29th October 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Moniker Responds To TRAFFIC Live Auction Results & Auctioneer Problems - Monte Cahn posted the following as comment to our post last night on the results of the Moniker.com Live TRAFFIC auction. I thought his response should have the same prominence as the original post, so here is Monte comments regarding yesterdays auction, which may answer many of your questions and comments: Folks “”””I know it looked disappointing and YES we did have some bad luck on the live part of the auction. The good news is that the extended auction goes on for until November 4th and ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
The City Of New York Fails To Renew Their Domain & CUNY.com Sells For $30K On NameJet.com - In a big 4 letter .com sale,  the domain CUNY.com sold for $30,050 on NameJet.com today. CUNY stands for among other things,  the City University of New York, which holds 3 trademarks on the term The City seems to have owned this domain and let it drop, as it was pointed to Cuny.edu according to the wayback machine most recently and CUNY.Edu is the official site for the University system and the .Edu site gets over 1,000,000 visitors a month according to Compete.com CUNY.com gets some traffic according ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
WalMart Goes After PeopleofWalMart.com Typo - Walmart files for domain arbitration, but not against the actual web site. Remember how a couple weeks ago I wondered how long it would be before Walmart would file a domain arbitration case against PeopleofWalmart.com? Well, there was an interesting twist today. Walmart filed a case, not against the actual PeopleofWalmart.com site, but against a typo of it: PeapleofWalmart.com (notice the a instead of o). It should be a slam dunk case for Walmart, given that ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN May Consider Pre-Applications for New Top Level Domain Names - New TLD backers to propose plan for parallel processes. There are a lot of uncertainties about new top level domain names, including how many applications will actually be submitted and what they will be for. This affects a number of things — root scaling, trademark concerns, and geo TLD concerns. For example, if it turns out only 50 TLD applications will be received, root scaling might not be an issue. With that, it looks like the community of likely new TLD ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Moniker Advertises to End Users On MonikerBrokerage.com - Moniker launches lead gen web site to attract end user domain buyers. Domain name registrar and brokerage company Moniker has started marketing the value of generic domain names to end users through a new web site, MonikerBrokerage.com. The company registered the domain name in August. Today I saw an ad for it on Google Adwords: The web site speaks to the SEO value of a good domain name, with the headline “Need a Big Boost from a Category-Leading Domain Name?” ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Silicon Alley Insider Values GoDaddy during $1.4 Billion, Oversee.net during $1 Billion - A number of domain name companies land on valuable start up lists. But SAI didn’t do its homework. Silicon Alley Insider has released its latest list of the world’s most valuable startups, which includes a number of domain name companies. But I question the validity of some of its assumptions because of some glaring errors, such as saying that Oversee.net hasn’t taken any outside funding. The top domain name company on the list is GoDaddy at #9. The valuation ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Inside Demand Media’s Content Machine - A look inside Demand Media’s automated content machine. Ever since Demand Media launched, a lot of people have wondered how it actually makes money (other than through its eNom division). A reader just sent a fascinating article to me from Wired that explains its content machine and money making ability: using algorithms and a freelance army to churn out vast, but low quality content. It works a lot like how domainers decide which domains to develop and how to ... read more ...
 
Written by The MediaWizard's Blog in EN
5 Essential Tools for Domain Owners - These are my top 5 recommendations for essential domaining tools that any domain owner MUST have in their arsenal. They are all extremely cool and allow domain portfolio owners by making information available extremely easily. 1. FreshDrop One of my favourite tools for finding domains about to drop as well as available domains. It provides sortable lists of domains, you can change the displayed names via filters. Also provides essential information regarding the drops including number of ... read more ...
Wed 28th October 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
UPDATED Moniker.com TRAFFIC Live Auction Nets $415K - The Moniker.com Live TRAFFIC auction just ended in New York with just under $417K in domains sold. (One domain seem to sell after the auction ended, originals.com which sold for $37,500.) Multivitamins.com lead the way at $45K. The scheduled auctioneer ran into a problem and didn’t make it to the auction, leaving Moniker scrambling for a last minute replacement which I think really hu the results. The floor callers were basically non-existent and the auctioneer was quite annoying making it very ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Moniker Live Auction during TRAFFIC Today: Our Picks - Looking through the Moniker live TRAFFIC auction list today here are what we consider to be the domains most likely to sell. First for the higher priced domains: Photo.com– Talk about a category killer, whether for stock photos like a gettyimages, or an online processor like shutterfly.com, a camera manufacture like Kodak the possibilities and endless and this domain covers all of them and a lot more. CollegeEducation.com– We all know education is just about the hottest and most sought after ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
SLS.com Hits The Godaddy Expired Auction In a BIG Way - The domain name SLS.com is currently at an expired domain auction at Godaddy.com and with over 7 days to go is already at over $23,000. According to Compete.com the domain received on average over 2,000 visitors a month and it has an Alexa ranking of 1.8 Million. A nice three letter domain but looking more like a retail price. By comparison, the domain boy.com sold for $45K in the RickLatona.com TRAFFIC auction yesterday. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Ask.com For Sale? - According to several reports Ask.com maybe for sale. Barry Diller said today: “We’ve been asked a lot whether we’re open to consolidating transactions in the area of search. The answer is yes, And, it is unlikely that we would be the consolidator.” Mr. Diller said the competitive environment in search is “fierce” and he said the future of Ask.com is “speculative.” In reporting its earnings, IAC’s media and advertising business declined 11% in the 3rd quarter. Google+Michael ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Minds and Machines Settles Food Fight with Wolfgang Puck - Consulting company settles fight with Wolfgang and Gelila Puck. New top level domain name consultancy Minds + Machines has settled its lawsuit brought against restaurateur Wolfgang Puck and his wife Gelila. Minds + Machines, along with its parent company Top Level Domain Holdings and Frederick Krueger, sued the Pucks last month, alleging that Gelila Puck inserted herself into all of the plaintiff’s business dealings and that Wolfgang Puck had not upheld his end ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Oversee.net Goes Back to a Playboy Mansion for DFG 2010 - Oversee.net announces party plans for DFG 2010. Earlier today Oversee.net announced that it will hold its finale party for DOMAINfest Global in January at the Playboy Mansion for the second year in a row. The event will benefit enny McCarthy’s Generation Rescue Foundation. This year’s mansion party has been talked about all year, so it’s sure to be a hit again. I enjoyed the party at Universal Studios, too, so hopefully they can match that experience. As ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Moniker Auction: Live Chat and My Thoughts - Join me online during today’s Moniker auction. Coming off the heels of yesterday’s successful Rick Latona Auctions event at TRAFFIC in New York, Moniker gets the bill this afternoon starting at 4pm Eastern. You can join Adam Strong and me in a live chat during the auction. We’ll get started around 3:50 ET. To join, go to tinychat.com/domains, pick a nickname, and enter password domains123. Or just go here. Here are some of my thoughts on the auction: .biz ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN Asks for Input on What Its Priorities Should Be - Fill out survey to (hopefully) shape ICANN priorities. ICANN has opened a survey listing a couple dozen priorities and asking stakeholders to rank each priority as Low, High, or Very High. Examples of priorities include: -The introduction of new top level domain names -Introduction of internationalized domain names -Security concerns and DNSSEC -ICANN complying/meeting Affirmation of Commitments -Compliance of existing contracts I’m not sure how seriously ICANN ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Lawsuit Against Tucows Provides Glimpse Into Domain Theft - Lawsuit provides complete correspondence in alleged domain heist. A lawsuit against Tucows provides a rare, detailed glimpse into a possible domain theft. The suit was brought by Mrs. Jello, LLC against Tucows with regards to a domain name purchased by Mrs. Jello (MJ). MJ bought the domain name W9.com for $20,000 from someone purporting to be the owner of the domain name. MJ completed the transaction through Escrow.com and received the domain name. Several days ... read more ...
Tue 27th October 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
RickLatona.com Live TRAFFIC Auction Nets $1.3 Million - The RickLatona.com live auction just closed at the TRAFFIC show in New York with a total of $1,295,000 in sales with Rio.com, as expected leading the way at $450,000. Here is the complete, unofficial list of the domains that sold: Rio.com $450,000 Whiskey.com $185,000 SchoolLoans.com $137,500 iAuction.com $50,000 Boy.com $45,000 Porn.co.za $45,000 Megan.com $42,500 900.com ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Rick Latona Auctions Scores Big in New York - Auction results are impressive. With Rick Latona Auctions taking over as exclusive auctioneer at TRAFFIC conferences next year, a lot of people questioned if it would be up to the challenge. Many of those questions were answered this evening in New York. The final tally appears to be about $1.25 million or so in sales. That’s a respectable number. But it’s what’s behind the numbers that should be applauded. Exhibit 1: PinkDiamond.com. This domain sold for ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
My Thoughts on Today’s Rick Latona Auction - Taking a look at today’s live domain name auction. The Rick Latona Auctions auction at TRAFFIC starts this afternoon at 4:30 ET. Bidding is available online at proxibid.com/ricklatona. Here are my thoughts on a handful of domains in the auction: Acronyms.com $150,000 – this is the type of domain the folks behind Dictionary.com might buy. I’m not sure if they’d pay this much for it, and I don’t know that anyone else would be interested. Ballwin.com $11,800 ... read more ...