Monthly Archives: January 2011

Mon 24th January 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Quick Poll: Which Domain Priced during $100K Or More Will Sell At Domainfest? - On Feburary 3rd there will be a live domain name auction from the Domainfest show. (Pre-bidding is already opened on Snapnames) In the auction there are 33 domains with a reserve of $100,000 or more. The question we have for you is which one of these domains do you think will sell? You can place your votes in the poll on the right and your comments below Since there are 33 choices we will let you pick three domains on this poll, but to do so you have to make all three selections at the same time. Here ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Microsoft Wins First Batch of Kinect Domain Names - Microsoft recovers Xbox Kinect domain names. Last month I wrote about how Microsoft had filed seven UDRP cases at the end of December for Kinect domain names. Today rulings in four of the cases were handed down and Microsoft won each of them. That includes wwwKinect.com, a typo of Kinect.com. Microsoft didn’t own Kinect.com at the time it filed the case, but has since purchased it from a marketing group. The company also won MicrosoftKinect.com, KinectGameStore.com, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Is Amazon.com Planning a Free 3 Day Shipping Plan? - Recent domain name registrations hint to new promotion. Amazon.com currently offers free ground shipping on purchases of $25 or more and free two day shipping to members of its paid “Amazon Prime” promotion. But is the company launching a new free three day shipping option? Some recent domain name registrations suggest this may be the case. Last Friday the domain names Amazon3Day.com, Free3Day.com, and Free3Ship.com were registered by DNStination, Inc. DNStination ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
How Does a Web Cookie Know What Domain Names we Own? - Ad shows a domain I own. [Updated: see update and probable answer at bottom.] You’ve probably come across a “re-targeted” ad on the web before. One day I searched for Puma shoes at Zappos. Later that day I visited a web site with an ad for the exact shoes I had searched for on Zappos. They’re highly targeted (and useful) ads. But I came across one the other day that has me puzzled: Needless to say, this ad caught my attention as I own ExecutivePay.com. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Judge Shuts Down Zuccarini Fight Against NameJet, NetSol, and VeriSign - Judge calls for an end to lengthy domain name battle. United States District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema has said enough is enough in a domain name lawsuit filed by John Zuccarini. Zuccarini filed the lawsuit after a court appointed receiver failed to renew domain names of his that were seized to settle a cybersquatting judgment. The domain names were at Network Solutions and subsequently auctioned off on NameJet when they expired. One of the domain names was bid up ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
.Jobs Changes Are Not an Example of a Power of New Top Level Domains - .Jobs changes could be done without the .jobs TLD. Over the weekend I read The Washington Post’s article about the liberalization of the .jobs TLD and what this means for companies such as Monster and Career Builder. Last week 40,000 .jobs web sites went live for just about every major profession (e.g. nurse.jobs) and city (e.g. austin.jobs). Companies that are members of Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) can post jobs for free on the job boards, which ... read more ...
Sun 23rd January 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Dine With an Expert during DOMAINfest, But Frank Schilling is Booked - Hurry if you want to “dine with an expert” at DOMAINfest. DOMAINfest is trying something new at its conference the first week of February: Dine With An Expert. Attendees can reserve a spot at the breakfast or lunch table with a handful of the event’s speakers. So who are the hottest tickets? Frank Schilling and SEO expert Bruce Clay. All 9 of their seats have already been reserved. You also need to hurry if you’d like to sit with Sedo’s Kathy Nielson ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Judge Issues Rulings in Lawsuit Over Women.com - Both sides in case have something to be happy (and upset) about after judge issues rulings on motions. A federal district judge has denied motions by both the plaintiff and the defendant in a lawsuit over the failed sale of Women.com. Done! Ventures says it made a $1 million offer for Women.com and Women.net via Sedo that was accepted by NBC Universal. After NBC Universal allegedly backed out of the deal, Done! Ventures filed a lawsuit to force the company to complete ... read more ...
Sat 22nd January 2011
Written by The Domains in EN
Amazon Buys Lovefilm.com For $200 Million, Bu.Mp Raises $16 Million; & DamnTheRadio.com Gets $2 Million - There were a bunch of acquisitions and investments involving hundreds of million that you probably didn’t hear about this week. BUMP technologies, a company that makes a App that allows people to share contact information by just bumping their smart phones together raised $16 Million dollars. The company uses a hack for its web site of BU.MP. If your wondering, MP is the country code for  (ccTLD) for Northern Mariana Islands (but you probably knew that already). Amazon bought the other 58% of ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New Top Level Domain Timeline Takes Another Hit - More delays likely to handle GAC issues. ICANN has released details about its upcoming meeting with the Governmental Advisory Committee regarding new top level domain names. Although the meeting will take place ahead of the ICANN meeting in San Francisco this March, the February 28-March 1 get together does not appear to be the final meeting between the two on the matter. As Kevin Murphy points out, ICANN’s release about the meeting states “This meeting is not ... read more ...
Fri 21st January 2011
Written by The Domains in EN
Facebook Raises $1.5 Billion Based on a $50 Billion Dollar Valuation - Today Facebook.com said in a press release, that they completed  raising $1.5 Billion Dollars which makes the companies valuation $50 Billion. This $1.5 Billion includes the $450 Million dollar investment previously announced as made from Goldman Sachs. Here is some information from the press release: “The transaction consisted of two parts.” “Today, Goldman Sachs completed an oversubscribed offering to its non-U.S. clients in a fund that invested $1 billion in Facebook Class A common stock.” “In ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Google: Content Farms & Mini-Sites We Are Gunning For For You - Today Matt Cutts who is the Principal Engineer at Google, posted on Google’s blog that they was gunning to eliminate junk sites, including what many would refer to as mini-sites and content farms from being indexed in Google. “Just as a reminder, webspam is junk you see in search results when websites try to cheat their way into higher positions in search results or otherwise violate search engine quality guidelines.” “As we’ve increased both our size and freshness in recent months, we’ve ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Watch Out Groupon.com Here Comes Google Offers - Mashable reported last night that Google looks like its gearing up to take on Groupon.com head to head with its own Product Google Offers. Google does own the domain name GoogleOffers.com According to Mashable they have a “confidential fact sheet straight from the Googleplex about the company’s new group buying service. “Google Offers is a new product to help potential customers and clientele find great deals in their area through a daily email,” the fact sheet says.” Google Offers ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Overstock.com Rolls Out O.co Commercials For Valentine’s Day - Not only has Overstock.com  named O.co as its shortcut for its website but today also released a couple of TV commercials to go with the news just in time for Valentine’s Day In one commercial promoting gifts for Valentine’s Day, Overstock says: “Looking for a new way to discover the secret of the O? O.co Now you can shop the O with our shortcut O.co. If you shop with us through O.co your whole order ships for free no matter how many items” In the second commercial they urge you to “visit ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
WikiLeaks.com is Expired. Who Will Register it? - Wikileaks.com expires but fate of domain name unknown Elliot Silver has written a series of articles about Wikileaks.COM, a domain name that was registered at Go Daddy. Here’s something else that’s interesting: wikileaks.com is expired. I noticed this after reading a TechDirt article today about how the domain name is owned by the group behind Wikipedia. Wikia registered the domain name defensively after Wikileaks said it would be a “Wikipedia of secrets”. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
NameDrive Releases Details on Investment and Reorganization - Parking company confirms recent investment and restructuring. Today I received information from domain name parking and sales company NameDrive about its recent investment from BIP Investment Partners and its company reorganization. News of the investment and reorganization was first reported by Domain Name News on Tuesday. [Update: DNN’s source was DVmag.de.] BIP Investment Partners S.A., a public investor listed on the Luxembourg stock exchange, made an undisclosed ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Domain Name Wire: Mumbai Edition - Highlights from my recent trip to Mumbai. I spent last week in Mumbai at the Directi headquarters. It was great to sit down and work beside many of the people that I’ve only met over email and video conferences to date. Experiencing Mumbai I spent much of the time in the office and it was a fairly short trip. But I did get part of the “Mumbai experience”. The first experience you have upon arriving in Mumbai is what locals call “driving”. I call it one ... read more ...
Thu 20th January 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Google: Revenues Up 26%; Paid Clicks Up 22%; Cost Per Click adult 5% & Eric Schmidt Is Out as CEO - After the market closed today Google reported earnings for the 4th Quarter of 2010 ending on December 31, 2010. Google reported revenues of $8.44 billion for the quarter ended December 31, 2010, an increase of 26% compared to the fourth quarter of 2009. ” “In the fourth quarter of 2010, TAC (Traffic Acquisition Costs)  totaled $2.07 billion, or 25% of advertising revenues. GAAP operating income in the fourth quarter of 2010 was $2.98 billion, or 35% of revenues.” This ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Fox Rejects AshleyMadison.com Super Bowl Ad As “Not Acceptable To Air” But You Can Watch It Here - While Godaddy.com Super Bowl ads have been getting a lot of hype, another .Com company’s commercial has been rejected by Fox. The site  AshleyMadison.com, which can best be described as a dating site for married people that are looking to meet other people for some adult activity, often uses the tag line in its ads of: “Life is Short. Have an Affair.” Fox said that their department of “standards and practices has deemed the Ashley Madison spot is not acceptable to air on FOX.” Noel Biderman ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Overstock.com: “We have turn O.CO” - Overstock.com, Inc. today announced the introduction of the domain name O.CO as a shortcut for its Overstock.com website. “During the initial introduction period, consumers who shop O.CO will receive free shipping on their entire order.” Now I just typed in O.co into the browser and although the domain redirected to Overstock.com the site now reads: “Welcome to O.co, also known as Overstock.com” That’s big “Over the eleven years we’ve been in business we’ve evolved into a savings ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
“Purely Descriptive, Commonly Used” Generic Domain, PokerStrategy.co Taken In UDRP - A one member UDRP panel awarded the generic domain name PokerStrategy.co was awarded to the holder of the .com despite the one member panel finding the term Poker Strategy was a “”Purely Descriptive, Commonly Used” term. This decision should be particularly troubling to .Co domain owners as the language in the decision seems to indicate that any .Co maybe in jeopardy if the .Com domain holder files a UDRP. In this case the domain was not parked but was directed to another one of its other gambling ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Kevin Ham Buys ThreeWords.Me - A couple of nights ago we wrote about the domain name threewords.me which was for sale based off its huge visitor and user count. Tonight comes word via Mashable.com that none other than Kevin Ham has stepped up to buy the site. Terms we not disclosed bu considering that the in-house auction was suppose to run for 5 days and the site sold in just 2 might indicate a pretty nice price for Mark Bao the 18 year old creator of the less than 30 day old site. Of course no Kevin Ham story would be complete ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Marchex Stock More Than Doubles In Less Than 5 Months - Marchex stock on a tear. Owners of Marchex stock in recent years haven’t had a lot to cheer about. The company, perhaps best known in domain name circles for buying Yun Ye’s domain name portfolio for $164 million, has traded at over $20 per share within the past five years. But more recently it has also traded as low as $2.98. Yet the tide has turned in recent months. The stock closed today at $9.50, a 133% improvement over its September 1 opening price. One ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Overstock.com Releases New o.Co TV Commercials - Online retailer releases new commercials for o.co. Overstock.com — or should I call it o.co? — has released two new commercials touting its o.co web address after announcing this morning it is using o.co as a “shortcut”. One of the ads is embedded below. It’s all a bit confusing, honestly. In some cases the company refers to o.co as merely a shortcut. But its logo is now o.co with “also known as Overstock.com” next to it. This seems bigger than a ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
VeriSign Devises Way to Sell More Expiring Domain Names - System would discount price of domain names until a buyer is found. VeriSign has devised a system to sell more dropping domain names by discounting their price over time. Details of the idea are in a patent application the company filed in 2009 that was just published today. U.S. patent application number 12/504396 (pdf) for “METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR SALE OF DOMAIN NAMES” describes a way that a domain name registry can discount the price of domain names within ... read more ...