Monthly Archives: October 2010

Sun 10th October 2010
Written by The Domains in EN
Now The Chinese Have Even Learned How To Sell Domains From Rick Schwartz - I saw this story today and although I can’t prove it, the owners of the domain certainly have gone to the Rick Schwartz school on how to sell a and price a domain. If you haven’t read Rick’s 2 part series on “How to Sell a Domain”, then you have missed some of the best advice your ever going to get. I honestly can’t believe the guy is giving away million dollars information for free. If you have read his posts you can read them here, and here. Now back to the China connection. One of ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Could VeriSign Topple Web Traffic Ranking Companies? - VeriSign files two patents related to counting the web’s traffic. Web traffic ranking companies such as comScore, Alexa, and Compete.com all have limiting factors. They use various methods to figure out traffic, such as panels (people that let them track their site visits), search data, and ISPs. But this gets them only so far. Who has better traffic data? VeriSign, which is the registry for .com and .net. The company has filed two patent applications related ... read more ...
Sat 9th October 2010
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
UPDATED: Protecting Your Domains: Registrars That Have Special Locking/Security Programs - In the wake of this weeks story’s on domain theft we reached out to some of the registrars that offer “protection” or domain lock type programs to get details on their products. Here is a list of some of the registrars and the extra level of protection they offer: Fabulous.com: Fabulous.com offers two options customers can choose to enable to protect sensitive areas within their account, the Fabulous Security Key or Challenge/Response Security Questions. Both provide an additional layer ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Microsoft Time Change Adds Headache to Yahoo Switchover - Reporting timezone changes with search alliance. Anyone who has a parking company using a Yahoo feed and all stats services have an added headache to deal with thanks to the switchover from Yahoo to Microsoft. Until now both Yahoo and Google reported stats based on Pacific time. With the switchover Yahoo/Microsoft stats will now be reported at UTC/GMT. This is only a one time headache for some companies, such as parking providers, that need to adjust their stats ... read more ...
Fri 8th October 2010
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Days After Vb.LY was Seized, The Libyan Registry Issues a Statement & Warning - Today, days after the domain shorter Vb.ly was basically seized by the registry of the Libyan ccTLD .Ly, we have a statement from the registry regarding this seizure. Basically as you can read below the Libyan government has decided that it wants any .Ly domain with 4 or less letters to be reserved for people and companies located in Libya. This should be a cautionary tale that ccTLD’s are different than TLD’s. Libya of course has the right to set up whatever rules and restrictions they would ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
WIPO Panel Finds Bad Faith Must Exist At The Time Of Registration - A WIPO case decided today had some good language concerning the issue of “bad faith” for purposes of UDRP’s. Although the facts of this particular case will be of little interest to domain holders as it involved parties that had a history together, the decision contains language helpful to domain holders. When I comes to bad faith there is a divergence between panelists, which of course is not helpful since its one of the basic elements and findings on which these decisions turn. One set of ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
CollegeNet Sues Google Over SpeedBook But Neither Has The Domain - According to TechEye.net, an Oregon company,  CollegeNet filed suit against Google, alleging that they infringed on its trademark of the term “Speedbook”. “The lawsuit, claims that Google has filed for a trademark of the same term, which is an infringement of CollegeNET’s trademark, and that due to Google’s stature in the industry this will cause significant harm to CollegeNET’s business.” “CollegeNET says that if Google uses the name, which is rumoured to be for a Google ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
BusinessWeek: How A Small Company With A Great Domain Can Kick The Crap Out Of Amazon: Diapers.com & Soap.com - Businessweek.com just published a story on how a small company with a big idea and a great domain beat Amazon.com at its own game. The Article entitled “What Amazon Fears Most: Diapers” is a very interesting case study in what a category killer domain can do for a business. The article concentrates on the five year old company Quidsi, the parent company of Diapers.com. The company by years end will ship its 500 millionth diaper. The company did $180 million in revenue in 2009 and expects to top ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Elephant Orchestra Breaks Out during DOMAINfest - Web startup opens up its doors during conference in Prague. Elephant Orchestra has been a relatively quiet company in the domain name space. Sure, it released Elephant Traffic and presented at DOMAINfest in January. But it used DOMAINfest Prague, where the company is located, to really unveil itself. I checked out the company’s offices this week. The company started in a small apartment, moved into a small office, and then started breaking down the walls to expand ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
No Language Barriers in Prague - Plenty of translators on hand, but few have a need. Holding an international conference means many languages. In some ways all domain conferences are international, but it was even more the case with DOMAINfest Prague. The official language of the conference was English, but DomainSponsor wanted to make sure everyone could understand. So it had real-time translators for several languages. Attendees could wear a headset and tune into their language “U.N.-style”: Headphones ... read more ...
Thu 7th October 2010
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ParkingSpa.com Wins UDRP on Thea.Com/Net Despite Trademark & Being Parked - Parking Spa and legendary domainer igal won a three person WIPO panel decision today on the domain names Thea.com Thea.net. The decision is a good one for domainers since the Complainant is a big corporation with trademark on the term Thea, and the domains were going to a parked page advertising adult dating sites. The panel the parked pages to be “a bona fide offering of goods or services”. Here are the highlights of the decisions: “The Complainant is the owner of a registered trademark in ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ModelingAgencies.com Sells For $16K On NameJet.com Plus More - The domain name ModelingAgencies.com sold today on NameJet.com for $16,300 Its sister domain name that dropped on the same day and was also caught by NameJet.com, ModelAgencies.com sold for just $2,500. It pretty unusually for a longer similar domain to sell for 8X more than the longer version but in this case I think it’s warranted. The same bidder Id did not get both domains. Another pair of domains got some love at NameJet.com with SolarElectricPanels.com selling for  $9,600, while the singular ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Domainer Shooting Contest Results: Keep an Eye on These Two! - Two domainer industry execs you don’t want to challenge to a duel. Attention domainers: watch out for these two sharp-shooting domainers. DOMAINfest held two shooting contests this today. eNom’s Chris Sheridan took home the accuracy prize in the morning session. Who won the afternoon session? Read on to see… Shortly after a traditional Czech lunch, about 50 domainers borded a bus for the Czech Republic countryside. We arrived at the shooting range at about ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
You Can’t Buy Beer with CTR - by Craig Rowe There are a variety of opinions in the domain industry about the effectiveness of non-traditional domain monetization platforms, such as WhyPark, Epik, and SmartName content portals. There are just as many terms for it, whether it’s mass development, mini site development, enhanced parking, etc. We typically call WhyPark a domain monetization or domain development platform. We make tools to help you make money from your domain names, regardless ... read more ...
Wed 6th October 2010
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
According to SeattlePi.Com Microsoft Files 3 Separate Suit For Bing Cybersquatting - According to SeattlePI.com Microsoft has filed three lawsuits in the past two weeks against people registering domain names using the Bing trademark. All the 3 cases, were filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. According to the article many of the domain subject to the suits either redirected to PPC pages, to non-resolving sites or registrar placeholders. Microsoft apparently doesn’t care if the page goes to PPC, doesn’t resolve or goes to a Godaddy place holder. If ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Moniker.com Sells DayTrading.com For $200,000; DomainFest Live Auction Brings In $458K - Right after the DomainFest auction came to a close, Moniker.com sold the domain name DayTrading.com for $200,000. While the domain did not officially sell in the auction (it was passed) a deal was struck immediately after the close of the auction. With the rest of the domains that sold at the Live auction I get an UNOFFICIAL total of $458,200 Interesting that 3 top Wall Street financial type domains have now sold in the last few weeks, Daytrading.com and ETFs.com today and IPO.com two weeks ago. Here ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Our Picks & Pans From The Moniker.com DomainFest Auction To Be Held Tomorrow - Moniker will be holding a live domain name auction from the DomainFest show in Prague Tomorrow October 6th starting at 10am EST. Remote bidding will be available through SnapNames.com Lets start with the star of the auction, Restaurants.com The domain name Restaurants.com besides being a category killer domain is an active site with revenue. Here are the facts and figures from the domain holder: “Restaurants.com is the premier domain asset for the $580 billion restaurant industry.” “It generates ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Libya Shuts Down .ly Link Shortener - A .ly link shortening service is seized. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: building a web business on a country code domain name carries big risks. Not all country codes, but some. Consider country code domains for countries that like to censor the web. Here’s a prime example: a link shortening service for adult sites has been shut down by Libya. Yep, the same Libya ccTLD that bit.ly runs on. The .ly domain in particular has lots or risk. Could Libya ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Live Current Sells Canadian.com for $60,000 - Company sells another gem from its portfolio. Live Current Media has sold another domain name to improve its cash position. The company just sold Canadian.com through Sedo for $60,000. The company has been selling off its portfolio of premium domain names over the past few years to raise much needed cash. It’s also dealing with a proxy battle between the former president and current CEO. The Canadian.com sale didn’t top Sedo’s list for the week. Those honors ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DOMAINfest Announces Shows in Barcelona, Las Vegas - DOMAINfest plans four shows for 2011. This morning at the DOMAINfest show in Prague, Oversee.net General Manager Peter Celeste announced locations for the franchise’s shows in 2010. Next year will kick off with the previously-announced main event in Santa Monica in February. Celeste said the party at the Playboy Mansion will return for the third year. In June 2011 DOMAINfest will return to Europe with an event in Barcelona. Barcelona was the site of the first ... read more ...
Tue 5th October 2010
Written by The Domains in EN
Statcounter: Internet Explorer Use Falls Below 50% For The 1st Time: Chrome Gains - According to the browser analytics firm Statcounter,  Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser has fallen below 50% of the worldwide market for the first time. Microsoft IE fell to 49.87% in September followed by Firefox with 31.5%. “Google’s Chrome continues to increase market share at an impressive rate and has more than tripled from 3.69% in September 2009 to 11.54% in September this year.” “This is certainly a milestone in the Internet browser wars,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Another Domain Theft: UDRP On Prince.com Filed With Owner Alleging The Domain Was Stolen - The former owner of the domain name Prince.com, Andrew Prince has filed a UDRP on the domain, claiming the domain which was sold by Mediaoptions.com for $235,000 in August was stolen. The domain is currently at Moniker.com showing the buyers whois info but is locked by the registry so the respondent of the UDRP (as it is referred to below)  is Moniker.com This follows on the story of Chris Hartnett who was the victim of identity theft we wrote about yesterday. Matter of fact in his telling of his ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Experian Picks Up CreditReport.com, CreditScore.com, and MyCreditScore.com in 9 Figure Deal - Experian picks up prized domains in acquisition. Credit information company Experian picked up a few killer domains a couple weeks ago, but I haven’t seen anyone in the domain industry write about it yet. Experian bought Mighty Net Inc, which owned the domains CreditReport.com, CreditScore.com, and MyCreditScore.com, in a deal worth $207.5 million. This is certainly more than just a domain name deal. Mighty Net has 680,000 U.S. subscribers to its credit monitoring ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DOMAINfest Kicks Off in Prague with New Faces - Conference starts with local beer and appetizers. I get a lot of bang for my buck at domain name conference through the connections I make. But often times I have to search out new faces at the conferences — it’s the same people each time. That’s not the case at DOMAINfest in Prague. The event kicked off with a happy hour about 2 hours ago. About half the people haven’t been to a DOMAINfest before, but I’d say 75% of the faces I’ve seen tonight are ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
High Margin Products Critical to Registrar Success - Forget domains — it’s the add-ons that separate winning registrars from losers. Over five years ago I started an intellectual property licensing company (I long ago left the company.) We would help companies license technologies they developed for internal use. In the grand scheme of things most of our Fortune 500 clients didn’t make much from technology licensing relative to their billions in core product revenue each year. But it was high margin. I recall ... read more ...