Monthly Archives: October 2010

Sun 31st October 2010
Written by The Domains in EN
“Lords Of Cyberspace” Are Founders Of Twitter, YouTube, Skype Bebo & Divyank Turakhia of Directi - Divyank Turakhia, Founder of Directi, has just been named along with the founders of Twitter, YouTube, the Skype and Bebo as the “Lords Of Cyberspace” According to A story 1st published by The Irish News and now picked by the Irish Independent, Divyank one of the biggest players in the domain industry,  attended a conference in Ireland called “the Founders” which ran along side a long running “Dublin Web Conference” According to the story the conference “brought the some of the biggest ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
OnlineRealty.com Sells For $12K: GreenTags.com $10K on NameJet.com - The domain name OnlineRealty.com sold yesterday on NameJet.com for $12,200. Some other notable sales over the last few days: GreenTags.com $10,010 Sampling.com $5,097 Openhealth.com $4,600 NetCase.com $3,100 JustAskMe.com $2,800 3h.Org $1,600 Scholarship.info  $1,531 Vindicate.com  $1,312 Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
Sat 30th October 2010
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Comedy.tv, Pets.Tv. Recipe.tv: Great Domains With Matching Shows On The Air: All Owned By Byron Allen - Byron Allen has done something most domainers can only dream of. Marry great .TV domain names with actual on air broadcast television shows. Some of the domains Mr. Allen’s company owns are Comedy.tv, Pets.TV, Recipe.Tv, Cars.TV and ES.tv. All but Cars.tv are actual television shows running in syndication on on broadcast television around the country. Bryon Allen’s company is called Entertainment Studios, Inc. “owns Six 24-Hour HD Networks, CARS.TV, PETS.TV, RECIPE.TV, COMEDY.TV, MYDESTINATION.TV ... read more ...
Fri 29th October 2010
Written by The Domains in EN
Feds Return To National A1 For 2nd Day - According to the Philadelphia ABC affiliate’s site, law enforcement returned to National A! headquarters on Thursday “as part of an ongoing investigation by authorities  “that began with a state police probe of an escort service there and alledged prostitution”. “A raid that started yesterday morning went into the night. Federal agents from the FBI, IRS and U.S. Attorney’s Office loaded dozens upon dozens of boxes into a U-Haul truck under the watchful eyes of both city and State ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
.XXX Pushed Off Until Colombia ICANN Meeting In December - The ICANN board had a meeting yesterday and the question of the day was would ICANN grant final approval and sign the contract with .XXX. The answer is no. In a resolution that should be posted on its site today, ICANN resolved to send the matter back to the  Governmental Advisory Committee for its opinion on the contract based ona few points that will be detailed in the resolution. According to AVN, one of the  points well may include: A review of “the Wellington Communiqué of March 26, 2006, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Hogwarts School Gets Its Own Domain Name - Warner Bros. wins domain name dispute for Hogwarts.com. Children and dreamers interested in attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from the Harry Potter series will soon be able to find it more easily on the web — Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. has just been awarded the domain name Hogwarts.com through a UDRP. Warner Bros. has rights dating from June 1, 1998 in which author J.K. Rowling granted and assigned to it rights in all four books in the Harry ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Interview with Jarred Cohen of Bido - New ownership, but a similar formula for Bido. Social domain auction site Bido is back and under new ownership. There’s a familiar face at the helm, with Jarred Cohen returning as Chief Operating Officer. He’s a busy guy right now, but I was able to steal a few minutes of his time via email for an update: DNW: Who bought Bido? Cohen: The Bido software, website, and some other related assets were purchased by Bido.com LLC, a Switzerland company. DNW: What is ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Business Constituency and ICA Say No to New UDRP Providers - Groups want moratorium on new UDRP providers until ICANN gets handle on them. Both the ICANN Business Constituency and the Internet Commerce Association have asked ICANN to reject any applications from new UDRP providers until “ICANN implements a standard mechanism for establishing uniform rules and procedures and flexible means of delineating and enforcing arbitration provider responsibilities.” The comments are in response to an application by Arab Center for ... read more ...
Thu 28th October 2010
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
VeriSign Profits Up 10%, Registrations Up 10%: 103.5 Million .Com/.Net domains - Verisign reported earnings after the market closed today. VeriSign, Inc. reported revenue of $173 million from continuing operations for the 3rd quarter of 2010, up 2% from the prior quarter and up 10% from the same quarter in 2009. VeriSign reported net income of $785 million or $4.48 per share for the 3rdquarter of 2010, reflecting a net gain of $737 million, net of tax of $244 million, on the sale of the Authentication Services business. This compared to net income attributable to VeriSign, Inc. ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Comment Wars - A few days ago I wrote a post about a Congressman who visited the TRAFFIC show as well as a candidate for Congress which spoke to TRAFFIC attendees. Along the way the comments on the post got away from the subject of the post and got into personal issues between people in the domain industry. I have now moved all of the comments from that post which were off topic to this post as they were clearly inappropriate to be comments on the previous post. So if you have anything to say about the Congressman ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Valuable.com Sells For $28,500 On Sedo - The Domain name, Valuable.com just sold on Sedo.com for $28,500 with 2 bidders battling it out from $12,500 on. In other Sedo.com auctions which just closed today, LosAngeles.de sold for 8,100 Euro’s which is about $11K, FindInsurance.com Sold for $7,209,  Shoes.Info sold for $3,100. The auction for TheAgency.com is still ongoing but reserve has been met and the high bid currently sits at $14,500. Finally the domain name Billig.de (which translates into “cheap”) was in a hot and heavy auction ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Court Approves Sex.com Sale - The Court overseeing the Sex.com bankruptcy case approved the sale of the domain name yesterday for $13 Million dollars. It looks like the Court also ordered the $2 Million dollars that was the subject of a motion to object to the sale filed by Nothin’ But Net to be held pending additional hearing on that matter. Once again it’s a great sale and almost double what I expected the domain to fetch. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Embattled ICANN Ombudsman Leaving - Frank Fowlie to leave ICANN role. ICANN Ombudsman Frank Fowlie has announced he will leave his post no later than January 31 of next year. In a statement posted to the ICANN web site today, Fowlie said “After six years with ICANN, I have logged 794 days in travel status, or about two years and five months away from home. It’s time for me to spend a bit more time at home with my wonderful wife.” The statement is vague about whether Fowlie is leaving on his own ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Epik Will Be OK, and Current Customers Will Win Big Tomorrow - Epik customers will get a free upgrade to full eCommerce stores. You might think that today would be a dark day for Epik.com customers after a number of Epik Product Portals were de-indexed from Google. But after talking to Epik founder Rob Monster moments ago, it’s not the nightmare scenario you might imagine. First things first, here’s what happened: a number of Epik-produced “Product Portals”, which include affiliate and CPC links to products, were de-indexed ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
RSVP Now for Austin Domainer Weekend - RSVP today for next month’s domainer weekend in Austin, Texas. It’s time to make your plans to join us in Austin for the Austin Domainer Weekend, November 12-13. You can view the invite and RSVP here. Here’s a rough schedule of events: Friday, November 12 8 pm to 10 pm – Dinner at Iron Cactus Mexican Grill and Margarita Bar 10 pm to ? – Night out on world famous 6th Street Saturday, November 13 2 hours before kickoff – tailgate or pre-game party at Austin ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Creditors Ready to Receive First $10 Million from Sex.com Sale - Court approves deal, holds back some of proceeds. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Central California has handed down an order (pdf) approving the sale of Sex.com to Clover Holdings Limited for $13 million. Upon completion of the sale, Sex.com owner Escom will pay creditor Washington Technology Associates $6,312,593 and creditor DOM Partners $3,772,545. That comes out to $10,085,138. Domain broker Sedo also gets its cut of the pie, which presumably is somewhere shy ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sedo Switches to JavaScript for Domain Parking - Company moves to JavaScript for domain parking. Sedo is changing its domain name parking platform over to JavaScript, which is says should lead to higher earnings per click and RPM. By switching to JavaScript, non-human traffic such as bots and scripts will no longer be counted in statistics. This means most Sedo customers will see reported visitor counts drop, which will thereby push up RPM (revenue per thousand) assuming valid clicks. But the company says that ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Off to ad:tech Conference Next Week in NYC - I’ll be at the ad:tech conference next week. One of the reasons I chose to work with Directi’s media businesses was that it would allow me to further expand my horizon beyond domain names. Case in point: next week I’ll be at ad:tech in New York City. I’m fairly versed in web advertising, having been involved in some way or another over the past decade. But I’ve yet to attend ad:tech, and look forward to learning more and seeing the latest in online advertising. ... read more ...
Wed 27th October 2010
Written by The Domains in EN
AVN: National A-1 Update: Escorts.com, Not HotMovies.com Maybe The Issue - AVN.com Has just updated its story on the raid on National A-1 this morning. According to the updated story, the Local CBS affiliate is reporting, that the raid was related to a prostitution ring investigation.” and according to the new report it could be the National A-1 owned site Escorts.com, that could be the issue rather than HotMovies.com AVN quoted a special agent of the FBI, Special Agent J.J. Klaver who said: “Any information about the raid will only come from the U.S. Attorney’s ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
National A-1 Raided By The FBI & Other Law Enforcement - As reported by Elliotsblog.com, AVN.com and Xbiznewswire.com, the offices of National A-1 located in Philadelphia, were raided today by  “more than 100 law enforcement agents from the FBI and local police.” National A-1 operates some adult sites, including HotMovies.com and GayMovies.com. According to the articles, “the FBI agents were armed with search warrants and more than 100 employees were detained and later released” However let me remind everyone that its still innocent until proven ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Sex.com Sale Hits Road Block As A Creditor Objects To The Sale - According to XBizNewswire.com, the sale of Sex.com to Clover Holdings has hit a roadblock, as one of it’s creditors filed a motion in court today opposing part of the sale agreement. Last week we reported that the domain name Sex.com sold for $13 Million dollars pending court approval. The court hearing on the motion to sell the domain was to be held today. However according to the XbizNewswire.com story, one of the lenders “Nuthin’ But Net” who says its owed $2 million dollars, has filed ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Is Comcast A Cybersquatter? A Law Suit Says Yes: The Case Of Fancast.com - A company Fancaster, Inc. sued Comcast (which has agreed to buy NBC, awaiting regulatory approval) in federal court in New Jersey back in 2008 over the domain Fancast.com under the  Lanham Act, for trademark infringement, false designation of origin and unfair competition, trade name infringement and cybersquatting. A court hearing was held yesterday on the case where the court granted the Plaintiff’s motion to amend their complaint, to seek damages for FanCast.com VOD product which seems to have ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy Crowns New $250,000 Commercial, Announces 2 Super Bowl Commercials - Over $600,000 in prizes awarded for TV commercials, plus Super Bowl plans GoDaddy has selected a winner in its second user-submitted TV commercial contest. Separately, it announced today that it will run two commercials in the next SuperBowl. The $250,000 top prize goes to Wayside Creations, which created a spot called “Russell’s Notebook“. It features a high school nerd who keeps giving his class notes to bullies. Then he gets the idea that he should create ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Oversee.net Starts New Technology Blog - Blog chronicles engineering challenges of large online networks. What’s it like building technology for a business that sees over 300 million unique visitors each month? A new blog will help shed some light. Oversee.net’s engineering team has just started a new blog called Regularly Expressed. In one of the first blog posts, Oversee.net Director of Technology and Program Management for Monetization Terrence Lui discusses the traffic the company deals with: “…Oversee.net ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Sex.com Sale Still On, But Mike Mann Accused of “Self-Dealing” - Nuthin’ But Net objects to how money will be split. Now that Escom, LLC has a $13 million buyer for its domain name Sex.com, the bickering over money can begin. The $13 million sale of Sex.com is still on, pending court approval. But creditor Nothin’ But Net has filed a motion (pdf) asking for some of the proceeds to be set aside while it argues how much each party should get. Nuthin’ But Net (NBN) doesn’t want the key creditors to get penalty interest. ... read more ...