Monthly Archives: May 2010

Tue 25th May 2010
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
WIPO: New Rule: “Domainers Who Use Computer Programs To Register Domains Are Guilty Of Bad Faith” - According to an article in Managing Intellectual Property , Erik Wilbers, the Director of the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center,  said: “The Center is close to releasing a new version of its bible for panelists.  The new “2.0″ version will include topics that have emerged in recent years, such as whether domainers who design computer programs to register domains automatically are guilty of bad faith registration and use—a key part of the Policy. “The answer is yes they are guilty,” “It ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
After 7 Hours of Bidding, GovermentGrants.com Sells For $53K On NameJet (Yes It’s a Typo) - After 7 hours of extended bidding on NameJet.com,  the auction for the domain name GovermentGrants.com finally ended with a sales price of $53,022. Yes its a typo. The correctly spelled domain, governmentgrants.com has some nice traffic, with compete.com showing over 30K monthly visitors and  Alexa gives it a rank of 555K. The ownership of GovernmentGrants.com is under Moniker privacy. The typo that sold today has an Alexa rank of 5.5M. According to WordTracker.com there is about 10% of the search ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Google If You Want Give Us Transparency How About Telling Us Our Quality Score - As you have no doubt read today, Google “in the spirit of greater transparency”, disclosed the revenue share it was paying its adsense publishers. However as anyone in the domain business can tell you the revenue share is irrelevant because of smart pricing. Google has refused to give anyone their quality score or any information as to how smart pricing affects their account. Yahoo clearly lets publishers know there Traffic Quality score on a 1-10 scale and they update the number frequently. Google, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Lawsuit Filed Against Live Current Media CEO and Board Members - Complaint alleges CEO and board members have neglected their duties. In what is the latest in the continuing saga of Live Current Media, its former CEO and other plaintiffs have filed a lawsuit (pdf) against current CEO Geoffrey Hampson and each of the company’s board members. The lawsuit was filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois in the Chancery Division. The suit goes after Hampson for alleged fraud, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duties, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Sport Whines Again: Please Don’t Allow .Football! - Group again asks ICANN to not allow any individual sports to get top level domain names. Last August the so-called .Sport Policy Advisory Council (basically a group that wants to launch the .sport top level domain name) told ICANN it was unhappy with the idea that there could be individual sports (such as .baseball) as top level domains. At the time, the .Sport Policy Advisory Council wrote: We cannot accept ICANN approving any applications for top-level domains ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google: Ad Clicks More Valuable Than Organic Clicks - Good news for publisher from Google economic report. Google has released an economic study showing its impact across the United States. Here’s one of the more interesting tidbits for publishers and domain owners: Google assumes that a click on an Adwords ad results in more revenue to the site owner than a click on an organic ad: However, clicks through search results may not be as commercially valuable as ad clicks, so we want to be conservative: we estimate that ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sedo Keeps Growing and Growing and Growing… - Brokerage and parking company continues to grow customer numbers. The Sedo customer base continues to grow, according to the company’s first quarter 2010 report (pdf). The domain name brokerage and parking company now has 1,051,000 registered members, 16.1 million domain names on its platform, and 7.1 million domain names available for sale. The same can’t be said for the company’s financials, as sales dropped 6.7% from the same quarter last year. Earnings ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Two Defendants Respond to Verizon Cybersquatting Lawsuit - Response filed in Verizon domain name lawsuit. Two defendants in a lawsuit filed by Verizon alleging cybersquatting have responded to the suit. Both The Producers, Inc., and Michael Gardner have responded to Verizon’s allegations that they registered domains related to Verizon trademarks. The somewhat bizarre case revolves around what DirectNIC does with domain names when they expire but are not yet deleted. Like most registrars, DirectNIC removes the registrant’s ... read more ...
Mon 24th May 2010
Written by The Domains in EN
Microsoft Rolls Out Docs.com - Microsoft just launched Docs.com, in Beta. The site that allows you to “discover, create, and share Microsoft Office documents with your Facebook friends. Built using Microsoft Office 2010, Docs for Facebook lets you work from just about anywhere with the familiar Office experience.” Its certainly a great domain name, nice to see Microsoft using a great domain to promote this product. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
A Few New Cool Apps For Domains - A few new cool apps are out for domainers on the Apple iTunes store so they will work with the iPhone and iPad. SmartNames.com has a new app that you can check your stats on your parked domains. The SmartNames App is free and can be downloaded here. Cirtex Corp released its new Webmaster Tools application, providing webmasters worldwide with core website management functionality on their mobile device. The new application, which is available free of charge from the Apple iTunes Store, allows users ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Atheist Richard Dawkins Wins Domain Name Case - Author and scholar wins domain name case. Well-known atheist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, has won the domain name RichardDawkins.com through an arbitration case at National Arbitration Forum. Dawkins’ main web site is RichardDawkins.net. The owner of RichardDawkins.com claimed that he was using the domain name merely as a fan site for Dawkins. There were affiliate links on the web site that linked to various products related to Dawkins, but the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
If Adsense Rev Share is a Same, Why is My Revenue Changing? - Revenue share will always be different from what lands in your pocket. Earlier today Google announced what percentage it is paying out to its self-service Adsense for Content and Adsense for Search publishers (68% and 51% respectively). It also announced that it hasn’t changed revenue share ever for Content and not since 2005 for Search (when it increased the payout). I immediately heard moans “then why has my revenue been going down?” There are a number of ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DotAsia Asks for Fee Discount from ICANN - DotAsia joins the sTLD fee reduction bandwagon. DotAsia Organisation Ltd., which operates the .asia top level domain name, has requested that ICANN lower the fees DotAsia pays to ICANN. DotAsia, a non-profit organization, currently pays a variable fee of 75 cents per domain name registered. It is requesting a 33% decrease to 50 cents per domain name. In requesting the fee reduction, DotAsia writes: A lower fee would enable DotAsia to invest further into meaningful ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Adsense Discloses Revenue Share: 68% - Google discloses how much it pays its publishers. After many years of complaining from publishers, Google has done an about-face on its stance on not disclosing how much money it passes along to its Adsense publishers. In a blog post this morning, the company disclosed the numbers: -68% of ad revenue paid to Adsense for Content Publishers -51% of ad revenue paid to Adsense for Search Publishers Furthermore, the company confirmed that it has paid out the same percentage ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN Travel Survey – Poll FAIL - ICANN wants your feedback on international meetings, but it won’t be easy. ICANN is kicking off its “Meetings for the Next Decade” consultation process to figure out how to handle its international meetings. ICANN has been criticized for its large travel budget for many years. I remember at DOMAINfest last year Steve Wozniak joking about when he was asked to join the ICANN board, and how he viewed it as just a way to take some free vacations during the year. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Flying.com Acquires UsedAircraft.com - Flying.com parent company adds another web site to its collection. UsedAirplanes, Inc., the parent company of Flying.com and UsedAirplanes.com, has purchased the domain name and web site UsedAircraft.com to add to its expanding arsenal of web properties. Earlier this year the company acquired Flying.com for $1.1 million. I interviewed company President CEO Mark J Horne at the time, and he explained the decision as a “no-brainer”: “On an investment standpoint, ... read more ...
Sun 23rd May 2010
Written by The Domains in EN
Internet Week Takes Over New York Jun 7th-14th - A huge show for all things Internet hits New York on June 7th-14th. Internet Week, is a week long show attended by all the Major Internet companies including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft which is capped off on Monday June 14th by the Webbie Awards gala. The Webby Awards will honor Vinton Cerf with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Talk about a well deserved award. The show has events, meetings and parties all over the city all week long. On the domain front, .CO is a sponsor. If your going to be in New ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
If You’re Going to TRAFFIC, Don’t Forget Your Passport - You’re cutting it close to get a valid passport. Heading to TRAFFIC in Vancouver in a couple weeks? If you’re a U.S. citizen, don’t forget to bring a valid passport. You can get into Canada with other forms of I.D., such as an expired passport along with a valid drivers license. But if you want to fly back to the U.S., you’ll need a valid passport. I thought my passport expired later this year, but it turns out it has already expired. Two weeks notice isn’t ... read more ...
Sat 22nd May 2010
Written by The Domains in EN
55,000 People A Month Go To A Domain That Doesn’t Exist - As you know most the single charter .com are reserved by the registry and do not or have ever resolved. However that doesn’t stop a lot of people from typing in those address into their broswer every month. Take for example e.com. According to Compete.com 55K people a month visit the non-existant domain.  Alexa ranks the site as 111,000 on the net. F.com is not far behind with 33,000 visitors a month estimated by Compete and an Alexa ranking of 175,000. 12,000 people visit 1.com a month and 18,000 ... read more ...
Fri 21st May 2010
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
BuyDomains.com Moving Some Inventory On NameJet.com - Well add BuyDomains.com to the growing list of companies that are selling off some of their less desirable domains on NameJet.com NameJet.com which started an an auction house for expiring domains, opened itself up to private sales as well, that get mixed into the expired domain auctions last year. It now appears that Buydomains.com has listed some of its inventory on NameJet.com Once such domain is SouthTomsRiver.com which has to be backordered by May 30th and has a minimum bid of $69. NameJet.com ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Internet Brands Inc. Sued Over Acquisition Earnout - Plaintiffs allege company withheld payments from 2008 acquisition. Internet Brands, Inc., which owns Autos.com and Loan.com, has been sued (pdf) by two people who sold the web site ModelMayhem.com to it in 2008. Although Internet Brands has not yet responded to the suit, it’s a reminder of the challenges of selling domain names or web sites with “earnout” or residual terms on future revenue or traffic. Donald and Tyler Waitt sold their popular Model Mayhem ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
MonaLisa.com Domain Name Sells for $200,000 - MonaLisa.com domain name sells for $200,000. The Mona Lisa has been sold! OK, so it’s actually MonaLisa.com. According to Sedo’s market activity report, it has sold the domain name MonaLisa.com for $200,000: The domain name is currently pending transfer and is in Sedo’s brokerage account. The seller is California-based NetCorp. This is a big sale for Sedo, given the dearth of six-figure sales coming out of the brokerage recently. Of course, it is getting ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Meet a Faces Behind a Top 10 Domain Registrars - VeriSign interviews founders and CEOs of top domain name registrars. Some domain name registrars have boisterous CEOs with their own blogs and video blogs. Others are a bit quieter. As part of its “25 Years of .Com” celebration, VeriSign has captured the stories behind 10 of the top domain name registrars, and it’s a good opportunity to hear from the quieter CEOs in the industry. VeriSigns “Meet the domain pioneers” features the CEOs or founders of ten ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Breaking: Sedo to Sell Sex.com Domain Name - Settlement paves way for Sex.com domain name sale. The managers of Escom, LLC, which owns the Sex.com domain name, have agreed to enter into an agreement with Sedo to sell the domain name. Terms of the brokerage agreement are confidential. The agreement to retain Sedo to sell the domain name comes after a settlement between a number of the creditors to Escom. Originally, creditor DOM Partners pushed the Sex.com domain name into foreclosure and scheduled an auction ... read more ...
Thu 20th May 2010
Written by The Domains in EN
Buy.com Sold For $250 Million - According to TechCrunch.com, Buy.com was purchase for $250 million dollars by a Japanese e-commerce company, Rakuten. The deal is all cash Rakuten in Japan counts 64 million members, while Buy.com claims 14 million customers. Seems like a pretty cheap price for one of the most recognizable brands on the net and 14 million customers. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...