Monthly Archives: February 2010

Thu 18th February 2010
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Marchex Reports Revenues Down 33% for 2009 - Marchex reported earnings after the market closed today and although revenues for both the 4th Q of 2009 and the year ending December 31, 2009 were down, they beat the street estimate by $.01. Revenue for the 4th Q of  2009 was $23.4 million, compared to $34.8 million for the same period of 2008. Revenue for the year ended December 31, 2009 was $93.3 million, compared to $146.4 million for the same period of 2008. Some other interesting points: Publishing  revenue from proprietary traffic sources ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
This Sound Familiar? AdvertisingMagic.com Loses Trademark Claim Against AdMagic.com - As most domainers know there is an ongoing dispute between AOL’s Advertsing.com in its claim of right against Ad.com and Advertise.com. In a case that strikes us a being very similar, a federal jury has decided in favor of New Jersey based Ad Magic ruling that its corporate name and Web sites, admagic.com, admagic-inc.com, admagicadvertising.com, and admagic.org, do not infringe upon the trademark rights of California based Advertising Magic Inc. Ad Magic brought suit against Advertising Magic ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Is The Sale Of Poker.Org For $1M A Game Changer? We Say Yes - As reported by TechCrunch.com last night and by DomainNameNews.com, Poker.Org sold for a cool Million yesterday by National A-1 and brokered by Jeffrey M. Gabriel of Sedo.com As you also probably know the sale shattered the previous record for the then highest .org sale of engineering.org at $198K, and our sale of Sexe.Org last year for $151K. So the question becomes is this sale a game changer? I believe so. Selling for more than 5 times than the previous highest sale,  coupled with breaking the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Verdict Reached in PaperSnowflake.com Domain Dispute - This case was over before it even began. I was scratching my head when I saw that someone had filed a UDRP against the owner of PaperSnowflake.com. Who in the world would go after a generic name like that? We now have the answer, but I’m still scratching my head. Patricia Kelley, who owns PaperSnowflakes.com (plural), filed the case. She operates a web site that instructs people on how to create paper snowflakes. With the help of counsel, she tried to argue that ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
One and Two Character .Info Domain Names on a Way - X.info will be available soon. .Info registry Afilias is asking ICANN to approve a plan to offer one and two character .info domain names for registration. As with other newer gTLDs, ICANN originally reserved all one and two character domains from being registered. Afilias is modeling its plan after Neustar’s launch of one and two character .biz domain names. There will be a three step process: 1. Requests for Proposal, where anyone can submit a proposal for ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Yahoo-Microsoft Benefits for Domain Parking Closer to Fruition - Yahoo-Microsoft payday for domainers is finally within view. It’s getting closer. Yahoo and Microsoft have announced they’ve cleared U.S. and European regulatory requirements for their search partnership. The first change will be that Bing’s search results will start showing up on Yahoo search pages. That means one less search engine to optimize for. The good news for domain name parking is that later this year — or perhaps in early 2011 — the Yahoo ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
NameDrive Launches Japanese Language Parking Platform - Domain parking company to launch Japanese parking platform. Domain name parking company NameDrive will launch a Japanese-language parking platform tomorrow. NameDrive has partnered with ICANN-accredited and .JP-accredited domain registrar WIXI to provide the parking program for the Japanese market. It is designed for owners of domain names in Japan or domains using the Japanese language. Founded in 2005, NameDrive has been one of the major parking companies to ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Name Whois Accuracy: It’s Not Really that Bad - 77% of whois data rubbish? More like 8%. If you just read the headlines, you’d assume most domain name whois records are bogus. Here are a couple headlines from today: “77% of domain registrations stuffed with rubbish” – TheRegister “ICANN fails to control Internet, 77% of domains have no valid information” – Ecommerce Journal Indeed, the numbers from ICANN’s recent whois study show there are problems. But you can pick your numbers as you wish. The ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Title Insurance? There’s a (Patent) App for That. - Application filed nearly a decade ago covers domain name title insurance. Over the past few years, a number of domain industry experts have been calling for domain name title insurance. The basic idea is that a title search would be run on previous owners of a domain name to make sure it hasn’t been stolen, and insurance issued. A domain buyer (or financier) could use this to warrant against buying a stolen domain. So I was surprised to see that someone thought ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Yahoo Files Patent Application for Method to Prioritize Cybersquatting Battles - Method helps brand managers prioritize cybersquatting disputes. Yahoo has filed a patent application (pdf) for a method for prioritizing which cybersquatted domain names to pursue. The application describes a system that generates a list of domain names related to a trademark (“seed” term), then runs calculations based on probable traffic to those domain names to determine which ones a trademark owner should pursue. For example, if one of the domains generated ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Survey: DOMAINfest is Best Domain Name Conference - A move at the top for ‘best conference’. For the first time ever, DOMAINfest has been selected as the top domain name industry conference by respondents in the annual Domain Name Wire Survey. DOMAINfest received 45% of the vote, knocking TRAFFIC off its perch. Here’s how they stacked up: 1. DOMAINfest 45% 2. TRAFFIC 36% 3. Domain Roundtable 7% 4. Domainer Mardi Gras 6% GEOdomain Expo 6% DOMAINfest carries an even bigger lead when it comes to the percentage ... read more ...
Wed 17th February 2010
Written by The Domains in EN
New Report: Fortune 500 Companies Suck At SEO & Keyword Buying Too - Domainers traditionally complain about the lack of interest and knowledge of Fortune 500 companies in domain names. According to a new report released today,  “The Conductor Research Q4/2009 Fortune 500 Report” Fortune 500 companies also “fail at search engine optimization, many still don’t link paid-search keywords to SEO campaigns, although they collectively spend about $3.4 million a day on 97,559 keywords.” The report found that only 25% of those 97,559 keywords the Fortune 500 buy ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
FaceBook Zero Is Coming; Too Bad They Failed To Register FaceBookZero.com - TechCrunch wrote a post yesterday about a new mobile version of Facebook, that’s going to be entitled Facebook Zero. Apparently Facebook choose to use the URL zero.facebook.com (mobile phone uses only) and neglected to register Facebookzero.com which was quickly registered by someone in Beijing China after the TechCrunch story came out and is already resolving to a domainsponsor lander. Facebook zero according to TechCrunch  “is a light-weight version of facebook.com that omits data intensive ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainHack.er in ES and tagged
Cuadro de Precios de Nombres de Dominio en Latinoamérica - 17/02/2010 - LatinoamerICANN ha realizado un nuevo cuadro donde conocer los precios actualizados de los ccTLDS o Country Code Top-Level Domain es decir los precios de los Dominios de nivel superior de cdigo de cada pas. El cuadro est realizado en relacin al precio de registro de un nombre de dominio en los diversos ccTLDs de los pases que componen Latinoamrica.Los precios han sido calculados en dlares (US$), incluyen impuestos locales y corresponden a un periodo de dos aos.Interesados pueden acceder ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Tucows Reports Record Revenues For 2009; YummyNames: “Transactions Grow 10 Fold” - Tucows announced earnings today after the market closed, reporting Net revenue for the 4th quarter of 2009 increased 6.1% to $20.3 million from $19.2 million for the 4th quarter of 2008, marking Tucows 4th consecutive quarter of revenue in excess of $20 million. Net income for the 4th quarter of 2009 was $1.7 million, or $0.03 per share, compared with $1.0 million, or $0.01 per share, for the 4th quarter of 2008. Tucows reported record high revenues for 2009 surpassing the $80 million mark for the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Report: Google May Earn $497 Million a Year from Typosquatting - Study says typosquatting money big. But there may be a conflict of interest. A new study suggests that Google may earn $497 million a year from typosquatters targeting the 100,000 most popular .com sites on the web. Although I question some of the logic in the report and its appendices, and it is tainted by one of the authors being involved in a lawsuit against Google for typosquatting, the data is still fascinating. First, for the claim of $497 million in revenue ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Co Domain Name is .Coming - .Co domain name to go worldwide this year; Pool.com to manage sunrise and landrush auctions. [Update: See guide to pricing and registrars for .co launch.] Anyone who attended one of the three domain name industry events so far this year has heard about the .co domain name launch. The domain’s registry, .CO Internet S.A.S., has been aggressively getting its name out with a big marketing splash at all three events. It’s not another TLD typo It’s natural for the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sedo Upgrades User Interface and Bidding Management - Online domain broker releases updates today. Based on community feedback, Sedo has introduced several improvements to its user interface. First, users can log into their account from any page on Sedo. After a recent redesign, users had to click through to a secondary page to login. The new login form is an expanding box. Second, Sedo now shows “Action Notifications” upon logging into your account. This is a quick look at any actions you need to take, such as ... read more ...
Tue 16th February 2010
Written by The Domains in EN
How Are People Going To Understand The New Extensions If They Can’t Even Figure Out How To Log In To FaceBook - The Telegraph.co.uk wrote a post today about another blog, Read/Write Web (RWW) which published a post entitled Facebook wants to be your one true login. Google picked up the story and ranked it very highly for the search term “Facebook login” (currently third). As a result, thousands of people typed “Facebook login” into Google, clicked on the RWW link and thought they’d arrived at a redesigned Facebook. So they complained in the comment box. There are more than 1,600 comments, ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
MarkMonitor Launches “Site Staydown Service” - Online brand protection firm MarkMonitor has officially launched its “Site Staydown Service”, which promises to prevent web sites that sell fraudulent or counterfeit goods from resurfacing after being shut down. The company believes that up to $133bn of legitimate revenue was lost in 2009 owing to rogue sites offering pirated or counterfeit versions of well known products. “MarkMonitor said that it has been helping its clients locate and shut down these sites for some time, but the new Site ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Our Picks From The SnapNames Domainer Mardi Gras Auction - On Tuesday February 16th at 3:15pm EST, the domain name auction being held in conjunction with the Domainer Mardi Gras show closes on SnapNames.com in accordance with its normally closing rules. I’m not sure why they are closing the auction on Fat Tuesday while Maris Gras is still going on but that is beyond my pay grade. To see the full list of all the domains in this auction along with current bids, click here. As of the time of publication about 25 domain have bids on them, but not all have ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
‘Halvarez’ Caused $2M Loss to SnapNames Customers - Size of bidding scandal becomes clear. A document filed today (pdf) in a lawsuit against Oversee.net and SnapNames shows that the total loss to U.S. customers from the bidding scandal was about $1 million, including interest. The total damages for all customers can be extrapolated to be about $2.0 million. The document was a declaration of Lance Martinez, General Counsel of Domain Services for Oversee.net, filed in response to the court questioning if the case was ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
An Open Letter to YellowBook - One more reason to hate Yellowbook. Dear Yellowbook: Today you littered my neighborhood. You left yellow bags with your directories in them at each home. They’ll lay there for many days — perhaps weeks. It’s not so much that I didn’t ask for this delivery, or the colossal waste of paper, that bothers me. It’s that you couldn’t even bother to put in on my doorstep. Instead, you left the Yellowbook at the edge of my driveway. Actually more on the street ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Kevin Ham Wins Reverse Domain Name Hijacking Charge - Famous domain investor wins UDRP and RDNH charge. Kevin Ham’s company Vertical Axis has won a charge for Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) against The Realty Alliance, Inc. The Realty Alliance, Inc. filed a UDRP case against Vertical Axis for the domain name RealtyAlliance.com. In its case, Reality Alliance claimed it had trademark rights in “Realty Alliance” because it was incorporated in Delaware in 1997 and registered with Texas Secretary of State in ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Experts Predict 100-1500 New TLDs by 2011-2012 - Panel predicts number and timing of new TLDs. Last Friday I had the opportunity to moderate a panel on new top level domain names during Domainer Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Michael Ward did a great job assembling a panel of people from all sides of the new top level domain spectrum: Mike Rodenbaugh – attorney Michael Berkens – domainer Jeffrey Eckhaus – Demand Media Ken Hansen -Neustar John Berryhill – attorney There were certainly some disagreements amongst ... read more ...