Monthly Archives: February 2010

Fri 5th February 2010
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
47 Registry Owned .ME Domains Hit The Auction Block - Namejet.com is holding an online auction for 47 registry owned .ME domain names. The auction starts on February 19th and backorders have to be placed by date shown for each domain by 11pm EST Some of the domains already have backorders: Domain                          # of Backorders      Backorder by Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Eyeglass Company Guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking - Eyewear company’s dates don’t add up. Zenni Optical, LLC, a retailer of eyeglasses, has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking by a World Intellectual Property Organization arbitrator. Zenni Optical filed the complaint to get the domain name Zenni.com. But its dates didn’t add up. Zenni.com was registered in May 2002. But Zenni Optical didn’t register trademarks in Zenni and Zenni Optical until 2008 and 2009 respectively. That’s where things ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Judge Says SnapNames Lawsuit Might be Too Small for Class Action - Amount in question may be below $5 million required for class action case. U.S. District Judge Margaret M. Morrow is asking the plaintiffs bringing a class action against SnapNames over the insider bidding scandal to show that the controversy exceeds $5 million. Under the Class Action Fairness Act, the amount at issue in a lawsuit must exceed $5 million (not including interest and costs) to qualify for class action status. In the case of Stewart Resmer vs. Oversee.net ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Bringing Market Efficiency to Content: What’s a Written Word Worth? - Marketplaces find the correct price for paying for content production. Earlier this week I wrote two stories about Demand Media, a company that has found a way to make money with online content. I noted that the company will have a hard time getting fair press coverage since many journalists probably feel threatened by its model. Here’s one example, aptly named “Demand Media Can Go To Hell“. In the post, author Tony Silber complains about what he calls Demand ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Escrow.com Offers “Payment Plan” Escrow on Domain Transactions - Escrow.com offers service for domain name purchase payment plans. I caught up with Escrow.com president Brandon Abbey during DOMAINfest last week. When I asked him about current trends in sales, he said the company is seeing more people wishing to do payment plans when they acquire domains. Escrow.com has a service for these customers. It runs similar to its traditional domain escrow service, except that Escrow.com takes control of the domain name and facilitates ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
2010 Domain Name Wire Survey – By a Numbers - A look behind the people who responded to this year’s survey. I’d like to thank each and every person who participated in this year’s Domain Name Wire Survey. 537 people in the domain industry participated this year. If you’re one of the five people who will receive a free copy of David Kesmodel’s “The Domain Game” book, you already received an email this morning. Here’s a look at the profile of this year’s participants: -537 total responses -25% ... read more ...
Thu 4th February 2010
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Will Klimt.com Sell Today? One Sold Yesterday for $43 Million - The extended auction for domainferst closes at 3:15 EST today on SnapNames.com One of our picks from the live auction is back up again for sale today, Klimt.com. At Sotheby’s yesterday, while the $104.3 million sale of Alberto Giacometti’s “L’homme qui marche 1 (Walking Man 1)” made news as being the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction, I couldn’t help but notice the second highest sale went for a painting by Gustav Klimt’s entitled,”Kirche in Cassone” for $43 Million dollars, ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
TRAFFIC Extended Auction Nets $379,000: LongIsland.com Sells For $370K - The extended TRAFFIC auction which was held by RickLatona.com just closed with $378,900 in sales. LongIsland.com sold for $370K after the reserve was lowered just hours before the auction closed. The other sales from the auction: Imply.com $4,000 JusticeDepartment.com $1,800 CuteTops.com $1,100 Ocnn.com  $1,000 defensiveback.com $400 etaxreturn.com $300 php.mx $300 Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
UPDATE: Double Domain Auctions Closing Today during 1 & 3:15 EST - Just as a reminder both extended auctions from the domain shows close today. The extended auction from TRAFFIC will be held today on Proxibid and closes today at 1PM EST on Proxibid.com The extended auction for Domainfest closes today on SnapNames.com at 3:15pm. As of time of publication (11:30am) over at SnapNames.com there are 2 bidders on the domain KZ.com and reserve has been met at $127,650 and there are bids meeting reserve on 28 other domains. Over at RickLatona.com there are 5 bids but only ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Our Picks From The DomainFest Extended Auction To Be Held Thursday On SnapNames.com - The extended auction for DomainFest concludes tomorrow, Thursday February 4, at 3:15pm EST on SnapNames.com in accordance with its normal closing rules. To see all the domains in the extended auction with bids click here (this will be continuously updated) There are over 2,000 domains in the auction, including all of the live auction domains that did not sell (click here to see the domains that sold) To see our picks for the Live Domainfest auction click here. We have gone through the list and think ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Monster Buys HotJobs.com From Yahoo For $225 Million Cash - Monster Worldwide, Inc. announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the assets of Yahoo’s,  HotJobs.com for  $225  million cash. Monster and Yahoo! have also entered into a three year traffic agreement, to take effect upon the closing of the acquisition, in which Monster will become Yahoo!’s provider of career and job content on the Yahoo! homepage in the United States and Canada. The traffic agreement calls for performance based ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy Forced to Pull Another SuperBowl Commercial - Another commercial problem for Go Daddy. There’s more controversy with GoDaddy’s Super Bowl commercials, but this time it actually may not have been planned. The company planned to air an ad called “movies” during Sunday’s game. The ad showed Danica Patrick performing a couple scenes from iconic movies. But apparently GoDaddy ran into licensing problems with some of the movie studios with scenes portrayed in the commercial. So the company yanked the commercial. Instead, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Last Call: 5th Annual DNW Survey Concludes Today - Domain name survey closes tonight. This is it — the last day you can participate in the 5th Annual Domain Name Wire Survey. At midnight central time today, the survey will close. So if you have an opinion about which parking company is best, don’t delay. Vote today. If you have an opinion about which domain sales company is the most innovative, take the survey. If you have an opinion on new top level domains, register your opinion now. If you think your domain ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Fight Breaks Out Over .Vegas Top Level Domain Name - Fight shows complexity of new top level domain name process, and a city council that just left money on the table. “Not so fast”, says a competitor who wants the chance to operate a .Vegas top level domain name. Dot Vegas Inc. has struck a deal with the City of Las Vegas to launch and operate a .vegas top level domain name when (if) ICANN approves new TLDs. It has an optimistic view on how much money it can bring in to the city. But the owner of Vegas.com wants ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Two Domain Auctions End Today, KZ.com Snags 6 Figure Bid - Extended online domain name auctions from TRAFFIC and DOMAINfest end today. [Update: Apparently the bids on Kz.com were errant, as the they were removed and the domain didn’t sell.] Two extended online domain name auctions from recent conferences end today. First, the extended auction from TRAFFIC concludes on Proxibid at 1 PM EST. With less than 3 hours to go, a few domains have bids but haven’t met their reserves. This may indicate there are some buying opportunities ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
IBM Wants to Patent Semantic Web Tag Clouds - IBM files patent application for overcoming limitations of tagging. The past few years on the web have been all about tagging. Tagging blog posts, tagging products, tagging pictures, etc. Blogs often times represent their tags in tag clouds. But what is that, other than a collection of links weighted by the number of times the content has been tagged? IBM wants to improve upon tagging, bringing the idea of the semantic web to tag clouds. And it just filed a patent ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Buy a Domain Name With Your Latte - New gift card lets retail shoppers pick up a domain name on impulse. You can register domain names through web sites, twitter, and text message. So why not buy one with your latte? A new gift card from Canadian domain name registrar WebNames.ca lets customers buy a voucher for a .tel domain name at the cash registrer and then redeem it online. The card is apparently being offered (or soon will be) at CanTalk Wireless and Blenz Coffee in Canada. A number of domain ... read more ...
Wed 3rd February 2010
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Our Picks From The RickLatona.com Extended TRAFFIC Auction Closing Tomorrow (Thursday) - The RickLatona.com extended TRAFFIC auction will close tomorrow on Thursday February 4th at 1pm EST. (the domainfest extended auction ends tomorrow as well, picks for that coming later tonight) Bidding will be through Proxibid.com and you need to signup for the auction. For more details go to Latonas.com. There are almost 650 domain names in the extended auction and we went through the entire catalog and picked what we believe are the best buys. You can also see our picks from the Live TRAFFIC Auction. Any ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
VeriSign Toasts 25 Years of .Com - VeriSign launches campaign to celebrate 25 years of .com. .Com registry VeriSign has launched a new campaign to celebrate 25 years of dot com domain names and the emergence of the web. The campaign — found online at 25YearsOf.com — will celebrate a number of the milestones and important individuals that have made .com what it is today. As part of the program, VeriSign will sponsor a Policy Impact Forum in Washington D.C. on March 16. This forum will examine ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoldKey Domain Sold, Customers Need to Change DNS - NameMedia sells domain name from legacy domain parking service. NameMedia has been merging its domain parking platforms for a couple months, but a number of domain owners have yet to make necessary changes to their domains on the NameMedia platform. In particular, GoldKey and ActiveAudience accounts have been upgraded to SmartName. NameMedia sold the Goldkey.com domain name at the beginning of the year, meaning that domains parked on ns1.goldkey.com are no longer ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domainer Mardi Gras on Tap for Next Week - Domainers head to New Orleans for third domain conference of the year. I’ve barely unpacked my bags from DOMAINfest, but now it’s time to turn my attention to next week’s Domainer Mardi Gras in New Orleans. For a preview of the event, including how you can get a discounted pass, listen to this episode of Domain Name Wire Radio. I will be involved with two panels at the event on Friday, February 12. At 1:30, Ron Jackson and I will take part in a reporter ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
In Demand (Part 2): How a Domain Business Can Benefit from Demand Media - What Demand Media can do for the domain name business. [This is the second part of a two-part story on Demand Media. See part one here.] For many years, Demand Media has been a mystery to the domain name industry. It’s a big player, for sure. It snapped up eNom and then BulkRegister, making it the second largest domain name registrar in the world. Its registrars have 10 million domains under management, and Demand Media owns a nice portfolio of its own. The ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
In Demand: How Demand Media is Profiting from Web Content - Inside Demand Media’s scalable and profitable online content business. [This is part one of a two part story on Demand Media.] I have a confession to make. Last decade I made a lot of money producing crappy content. It started with systems that auto-generated thousand page web sites by scraping search engines. This worked great for a while; at one point I was making over a thousand dollars a day from placing Google Adsense on my web sites. I knew it wouldn’t ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
2010 Domain Name Wire Survey Concludes Thursday - Time is running out to give your thoughts on the domain name industry. The response period for the 5th annual Domain Name Wire Survey concludes Thursday at midnight, Central Standard Time. Make your voice heard as you give your important opinion on these topics: -Which domain name registrar is best -Where the value of domain names is headed -The best domain research/management software -The most important factors when selecting a domain name registrar -How ICANN ... read more ...
Tue 2nd February 2010
Written by The Domains in EN
VeriSign’s Profits On Naming Services Up 9% & That’s BEFORE The Rate Hike: .Com/.Net Registrations Up 8% - VeriSign, Inc. reported financial results for the fourth quarter of 2009 and year ended December 31, 2009 after the market closed today. VeriSign reported revenue of $263 million for the 4th quarter of 2009, compared to $249 million in the same quarter in 2008. For the year ended December 31, 2009, VeriSign reported revenue of $1.031 billion, compared to $965 million in 2008. VeriSign Naming Services ended the quarter with approximately 96.7 million active domain names in the adjusted zone for ... read more ...