Monthly Archives: December 2010

Mon 20th December 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Bank of America Wants You to Know Its Executives Don’t Suck - Company defensively registers hundreds of domain names for its senior executives and board members. As Bank of American awaits a possible release of information from WikiLeaks, it wants to ensure that you don’t think its executives suck. Or blow for that matter. The company has been aggressively registering domain names including its Board of Directors’ and senior executives’ names followed by “sucks” and “blows”. For example, the company registered ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New Top Level Domain Delays Will Hurt Domainers - Current negotiations and delays could result in unfavorable terms for domain name investors. A lot of domain name investors are against the wholesale introduction of new top level domain names, or at least some of the provisions attached to them. They worry that new intellectual property guidelines, a lack of pricing controls, etc. will be extended to existing top level domain names such as .com. They also worry that ICANN will crumble under the weight of legal ... read more ...
Sun 19th December 2010
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Is QWE.com Really Going to Sell For $100,000 Or More? That’s The High Bid At Sedo.com - The three letter domain name QWE.com is at auction at Sedo.com and has a $100,000 opening bid. Since the auction still has over 6 days to run it looks to me like this could have been one of those offers pushed to auction situation, however I see nothing exceptional about the domain QWE, except there is a product called the Q-Barcode which is using QWE.net as it site. So this could be another case of a domain upgrade which I discussed the other night in a post. Remember OMG.com sold just about a year ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
A Fun New Tool to View Today’s New Domain Registrations - Site shows latest registered domain names. There’s a new site to search through today’s (OK, yesterday’s) newly registered domain names: AddedDomains.com. All you do is type in a search term and the site displays domain names including the term that were registered yesterday. It uses an instant search technology, so as soon as you start typing letters you’ll see results displayed in a colorful, whimsical way. Soon you’ll be able to set up e-mail alerts ... read more ...
Sat 18th December 2010
Written by The Domains in EN
Quick Poll: What Was The Biggest Story Out Of The Domain World In 2010? - With 2010 quickly coming to a close, its time for our year end poll on what you thought the biggest story coming out of the domain industry  in 2010. When choosing the stories for you to vote on I particularly looked for stories that made a lot of press outside the domain industry as well. Here are the topics I put into the poll for your votes: .Co. The .Co launch got a ton of attention in the domain world in 2010 and rightly so. The extension has already racked up over 600,000 registrations, with ... read more ...
Fri 17th December 2010
Written by The Domains in EN
Enom & Moniker Are Now Live On Afternic’s Domain Listing Service - Enom and Moniker are both Live on Afternic as DLS Premium partners. This means that if your names are registered at Moniker, Enom, Enom Central, or Bulk Register (or other DLS Premium Partners, NetSol, Register.com, Name.com) you can now opt-in to DLS Premium at Afternic. Once you are opted in to DLS Premium, your names will be listed for sale at more than 24 major sites; including Enom, Moniker, NetSol, Register.com, Name.com, GoDaddy Auctions etc. If the name is sold at a DLS Premium partner site ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Before You Start Complaining About Airport Security This Holiday, Take A Flight Out Of Colombia - Over the Thanksgiving holiday the biggest story around the United States was the ‘harsh” security of the TSA that travelers had to undergo to get on a plane. Well I’m here to tell you until if your flying this upcoming holiday week don’t complain about airport security until you have flown out of  Colombia. Last weeks ICANN meeting in Colombia ended with horror tales of attendees flying back home and the security checks they were subjected to. While people in the US complain about a pat ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN Extends Public Comment Period for New TLD Guidebook - More time to weigh in on new top level domain name plan. ICANN frequently extends the deadline to submit public comments on both major and minor issues. But this is done prior to the comment period ending to give people more time to consider how they want to weigh in. A number of people requested additional time to comment on the proposed Final Applicant Guidebook for new TLDs but were rebuffed and the comment period ended a week ago. Now it has risen from the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Tucows Not Liable for Porn Spammer - by Kevin Murphy Domain name registrars cannot be held responsible for spammers who hide behind Whois privacy services, a California appeals court has ruled. Plaintiff Daniel L Balsam had won a $1.125 million default judgment against a spammer after receiving over 1,000 pieces of pornographic spam. Unable to recover the money, he found that the spammer had hidden his identity behind Tucows’ Whois privacy, so he sued the registrar for the cash instead. He argued that ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
California ISP Guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking - ISP tries to get domain name registered many years before it even existed. A World Intellectual Property Forum panel has found California internet service provider Webpass, Inc guilty of reverse domain name hijacking in its attempt to get the domain name WebPass.com. The ISP uses Web-Pass.com as its web page. Webpass, Inc. didn’t start using the Web Pass name until 2007, but the current registrant of WebPass.com registered the domain name in 2001. As such, it’s ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Afternic Premium Now Works with eNom and Moniker - Afternic “turns on” its two new partners, giving domain name owners access to a powerful sales network. Yesterday I wrote about my success with Go Daddy Premium Listings. The only downside to the service is that your domain names have to be at Go Daddy. But there’s good news for domainers who want to get similar reach for domains that are currently at Moniker and eNom — those two registrars are now active with Afternic’s Premium listing service. What This ... read more ...
Thu 16th December 2010
Written by The Domains in EN
Post Time Media Announces Content Factory For Domains To Challenge Epik, WhyPark and RapidDomainBuilder: “It’s Going To Be A Whole New World” - A new entry has come into the alternative to parking space promising better content and highly targeted adverting for domain holders. The company Post Time Media was founded in 2005 and is based in Aspen Colorado. According to a press release issued today: “Post Time Media Inc. has spent five years developing a content platform that can deliver highly targeted information and advertising — both hyper-local and hyper-topical — from any site on its network to any other site on a constantly ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Whoops: TruPhone Changes Its Name To Tru But Doesn’t Own a .Com or The .Eu - According to a story in TechCrunch today, a European  company which they describe as being an “international mobile roaming and app company” announced it was changing its name to just “Tru”. The problem as TechCrunch points out is that they don’t own the domain name Tru.com. That domain seems to be owned by Toys R Us. So the company that is changing their corporate name from TruPhone to Tru is stuck still having to use their old domain name truPhone.com. It also seems the company doesn’t ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Cupid.com Sells for $7 Million Dollars After Easy Date Bows To The C & D Of Easy Group - Back in September of this year, we told you of a European Airlines called EasyJet, which is owned by a company called “Easy Group”that was asserting trademark rights to the word “Easy” much like Facebook has done to the works “Face” and “Book”. Our post talked about EasyGroup sending a C D to a dating site operating in the UK called,  EasyDate. The company owned and operated Easy Date and operated some other dating sites as well. Today comes the news that Easy Date has bowed to ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Here Is Your Early Christmas Present: Money Making Tip: Watch For People Wanting To Upgrade To The .Com - Well after spending over a week on posting about ICANN new extensions and legal issues, I thought it would be time to get back to writing about making some money. A few people commented on the $30K sale of BubbleShooter.com that we posted yesterday in our weekly Afternic.com report. Most of the commentators couldn’t understand how that domain name sold for $30,000. However as one reader pointed out, it was the result of an upgrade. Sometimes companies build out sites using some other extension ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
AT&T Takes Advantage of “Expired Phone Numbers” - Company redirects out of service phone numbers to similar businesses. When a domain name expires it is often snapped up by someone with a similar business to the previous owner in an effort to get more business. Or the domain ends up parked with ads for similar businesses. It looks like ATT is taking a page out of the same playbook. I called a number today for an insurance company I’ve used previously. They recently changed phone numbers and the number I dialed ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
My Sales Results from One Year of Go Daddy Premium Listings - The future of SMB domain sales is in the registration path. It’s been about a year since I first start using Go Daddy’s Premium Listings option for selling domain names. This option lists your domain names for sale in Go Daddy Auctions, but more importantly in the registration path on GoDaddy.com when someone wants to register a domain name you own: I currently have about 250-300 domains with Premium Listings at Go Daddy, although for most of the year it was ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Apple Wins Appl.com and Why It Was a Right Decision - Four letter domain transferred to Apple based on content of parking page. Last month I wrote about how Apple had filed a complaint with World Intellectual Property Forum to get the domain name Appl.com. Apple just one the case. But before you get upset about a four letter generic domain name being surrendered through UDRP you should read panelist Richard G. Lyon’s decision. Lyon notes that Apple doesn’t have rights to any domain containing the word “apple” ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Possible New TLD Application Date: Aug 2011 - Application window for new TLDs could be pushed back to August. ICANN’s board set back the process for new top level domain names last week by agreeing to meet with the Governmental Advisory Committee in February to hash out their differences. How long will the delay be? Kevin Murphy discovered some recently disclosed ICANN staff documents that were used to estimate the previous application starting period of May 2011. Based on the assumptions in the staff documents, ... read more ...
Wed 15th December 2010
Written by The Domains in EN
Mark Zuckerberg Founder Of Facebook Is Named Time’s “Person of a Year” - Since 1927, Time Magazine has been naming a “Person Of The Year”. This year, Time named Mark Zuckerberg the founder of Facebook as the Time’s Person of the Year. For connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them; for creating a new system of exchanging information; and for changing how we all live our lives, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is Time’s 2010 Person of the Year”. “”Zuckerberg is part of the last generation of human beings who will remember ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Woolworths Buys Hardware.com.au for $33,333 After Rival Lets it Expire - Big bucks for an expired domain — but an even more interesting story. Australia’s Woolworths Limited got into the domain name drop catching game recently by picking up the domain name Hardware.com.au for $33,000 AUS. What makes this story more interesting, according to the Herald Sun, is that one of Woolworths’ rivals let the domain name expire. Bunnings Building Supplies Pty Ltd owned the domain name but may not have received the renewal notice due to an ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
How Would You Visit .Nike, Anyway? - I don’t understand the protocol for visiting a web site at a top level domain name. Let’s say a brand like Nike gets its own top level domain name — in this case .nike. Just how would people visit that TLD, anyway? I must confess I’m a bit confused by this issue. I’ve asked a number of people and haven’t gotten an answer, so I figured I’d throw this up on the blog and let anyone who knows respond. Let’s say Nike gets the domain name .nike. How ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Registrar Acquired for $22 Million - by Kevin Murphy Indom, a medium-sized European domain name registrar, has been bought for €16.9 million ($22 million) in cash. The buyer is Group NBT, an acquisitive British registrar holding company that already owns NetBenefit, NetNames, Easily.co.uk, Ascio and Envisional. Indom, founded in 1999 focuses primarily on the French corporate market. It had revenue of €6.6 million ($8.7 million) in 2009, was slightly profitable, and is growing at 18% this ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domainers Need to Bring Professionalism to ICANN San Francisco - San Francisco event could be good for domainers — if they bring their professionalism. Next up on the ICANN meeting schedule is meeting #40 in San Francisco. Being the first U.S. meeting in a while, and since there will be some sort of TRAFFIC event immediately proceeding the event, you’re going to see a lot more domainers there than usual. This is a good thing as domain investors are generally underrepresented in just about everything that deals with ICANN. But ... read more ...
Tue 14th December 2010
Written by The Domains in EN
ICM Registry Launches .XXX Founders Program - In a press release issued today by ICM Registry, who is seeking to run the .XXX registry, the announcement of a Founders Program was made. The program allows for webmasters who plan to develop a site using a .XXX domain to secure it prior to general availability. Here is the full release: Adult Webmasters can secure premium .XXX domains if they proactively develop and maintain domains with the .XXX extension prior to the General Launch, in Summer 2011. ICM Registry is pleased to announce the launch ... read more ...