Monthly Archives: August 2011

Wed 17th August 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
TheKnot.com and Ask.com Make Domain Purchases - End users line up to find the perfect domain name. There were a lot of great end user domain purchases at Afternic this week. Here’s a look at some of the ones that caught my eye. Franklin Debt Relief, LLC of Chicago picked up Chapter7Bankruptcy.com for $18,000 and Chapter13Bankruptcy.com for $13,000. Smart move. Las Vegas based iPrepaid, which had been using the domain name iPrepaids.com, bought iPrepaid.com for $8,000. Cooper Safety Ltd, maker of Cooper Fire ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
VeriSign Gets Mobile with MobileView - New service makes mobile-friendly web sites obtainable by small businesses. Last week at HostingCon I caught up with Patti Kelly, director of product management at Verisign, to discuss the launch of a new product that makes it easy for small businesses to create a mobile friendly version of their web site. VeriSign MobileView uses mobile detection and redirection to render mobile friendly web sites while keeping the same domain name that customers already use. The ... read more ...
Tue 16th August 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Afternic.com Sells $550K In Domain Names Led By Chapter7Bankruptcy.com during $18K - Afternic.com just released its sales for the week ending Sunday August 14th and sold $550K in reportable domain sales this week $1k and over. The highest selling domain name of the week as Chapter7Bankruptcy.com which sold for $18K followed by fotonet.com for $10K and ePayDayLoans.com for $9,500 There was nothing on the non-.com report of note. Personally I like MusicMajor.com which sold for $4,800.   Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
.Co Says They Are Getting A 68% Renewal Rate - The .CO Registry today announced on its blog today, “that as of July 31, 2011, it is seeing a cumulative first time renewal rate of 66%; with late renewals still being counted for an estimated overall 68% renewal.” “Crystal Peterson, Director of Channel Marketing at .CO, notes in a blog post that “typically, first year domains (domains that have been in use for a year only) have a renewal rate in the low to mid 60%, then as a domain is in use a few years that renewal goes up to around 70-80%.” “According ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
MostWantedDomains.com Acquires MWD.com As A Shortener - We have just acquired the domain name MWD.com to use as a shortener for MostWantedDomains.com MostWantedDomains.com was hand registered back in 1999 and to date as Worldwide Media, Inc. MWD has sold eight figures in domain names. You can follow now follow MostWantedDomains.com on Twitter and on Facebook Please note that MWD.com’s Facebook and Twitter accounts are different than TheDomains.com which you can follow on Twitter  and Facebook as well. If you have an email address for MostWantedDomains.com ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
FriendFinder Networks Loses Another $12 Million - FriendFinder Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: FFN), announced financial results for the second quarter and six months ended June 30, 2011. Net Loss for the second quarter of 2011 was ($11.9 million), or ($0.55) per share, compared to ($4.9 million), or ($0.36) per share, for the second quarter of 2010. Net Loss for the six months ended June 30, 2011 was ($15.5 million), or ($0.88) per share, compared to ($13.2 million), or ($0.96) per share for the same period in 2010, representing a $2.3 million increase. Second ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Rod Beckstrom To Leave ICANN After End of Term - CEO to step down at end of three year tenure. ICANN President and CEO Rod Beckstrom will step down at the end of his three year term, the non-profit announced this afternoon. He has been at the helm of the company since July 2009 and will finish his three year contract at the end of June 2012. It’s been an interesting couple years since he joined the organization. Shortly after he started ICANN gained some independence from the U.S. government. But the relationship ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
A Quick Way to Slash Your Go Daddy Premium Commissions By 33% - Reduce your commission rate by changing your price. Last week I sold a domain through GoDaddy Premium Listings for $1,750. I’m happy with the sale, although is stings to pay a $525 commission. A couple weeks ago Adam Strong noted that GoDaddy reduced its fee on Premium Listings sales from 30% to 20%, but only on listings created in August. He suggested deleting and re-adding domains to take advantage of the lower commission rate. For the domain I just sold it would ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
.XXX Plans to Spend $15 Million in First Year Promoting New Domain to Web Users - Registry has ambitious plans for letting web surfers know it exists. With the first .xxx domain names from the “Founder’s” program coming online and the trademark sunrise period soon to get underway, .XXX backer ICM Registry has some very ambitious marketing plans. I caught up with ICM Registry CEO Stuart Lawley today to understand the latest on .xxx and the company’s marketing plans. Ambitious Marketing One of the striking differences between .xxx and new ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
UDRP Cyberbullying Hits a New Low - German company goes after three letter domain 16 years after it’s registered. I’ve seen a lot of egregious UDRP cases over the years. This one may take the cake. Imagine the year is 1995. You register the domain name GEA.com because your personal initials are GEA and you have a business called G.E.A. Design. Then 14 years later, in 2009, a German company starts complaining that its acronym is GEA and you should sell it the domain name for a nominal amount so it ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Rick Perry’s dot.com Problem - Republican presidential candidate could have easily gotten his .com domain name. Over the weekend Texas governor Rick Perry confirmed what a lot of us already knew: he’s running for president in 2012. Perry’s official web site is RickPerry.org, which makes sense. But unfortunately for Perry, he doesn’t own RickPerry.com. Even more unfortunate is that he could have easily acquired the domain name last year. As I wrote in May of 2010, the domain name RickPerry.com ... read more ...
Mon 15th August 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
The Free Speach Coalition Urges “Trademark Holders to Protect Brands from .XXX With Letter of Notice” - I just received this from  Diane Duke of the FreeSpeechCoalition.com which “Urges Adult Trademark Holders to Protect Brands from .XXX with Letter of Notice for ICM Registry”:  A letter template has been created by Free Speech Coalition (FSC) for adult online business owners to send to ICM Registry, to demand that their trademarks be protected from sale on .XXX domains to third parties. The “letter of notice” informs ICM Registry – operators of the .XXX domain – that the sender will ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
TechCrunch: Google Gets Android.Me: “.Me Domain Names Are Starting To Get In Vogue” - According to TechCrunch.com, Google has very recently gained ownership over the domain Android.me. “.me domain names are starting to get in vogue lately.” “Google worked on the Ro.me project, for instance, and there are plenty of other examples such as About.me, which was acquired by our parent company AOL, but also Ask.me, Connect.me, txt.me, Blog.me, Blip.me, With.me and News.me, a joint project from bit.ly and The New York Times).” “then there are startups like Tango, Kiip and Formspring, ... read more ...
 
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Breaking: Smartphone Wars Heat Up: Google To Acquire Motorola Mobility For $12.5 Billion - Google announced early on Monday morning that it will acquire Motorola Mobility Holdings, for around $40 per share or $12.5 Billion Dollars  “a premium of 63% to the closing price of  shares on Friday, August 12, 2011,” According to CNN.com “it would be Google’s largest-ever acquisition. It’s previous largest deal was for online ad company DoubleClick ($3.1 billion), followed by the 2006 purchase of YouTube ($1.65 billion). Google also was part of an investor group that purchased a 22% ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Will a 2 Letter Domain Help a Daily Deals Aggregator Stand Out in a Crowd? - DX.com may give site a leg up against the competition. There are dozens — perhaps hundreds — of daily deals sites on the web a la Groupon and LivingSocial. As consumers struggle to find the best deals amongst them, a number of daily deals aggregator sites have popped up as well. The aggregators collate deals from all of the daily deals sites into an easy-to-consume format. With so many of these sites coming online, how do you stand out? Andrew Rosener, who you ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Free Speech Coalition Provides Template Trademark Protection Letter to Adult Sites - “The money generated should come from legitimate adult and explicit content users.” If I am a legitimate registrant, why should I have to pay a “trademark tax” to protect the interests of people who ate perfectly capable of taking care of themselves? “ICANN can create a gang of six” And who pays them? Some other group of people who should pay to protect someone else’s property rights? If you want to keep people out of your yard, do you make everyone else buy you a fence? ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Kohler Files Cybersquatting Lawsuit Against Repeat Offenders - After paying off cybersquatters, Kohler says it got burned. Plumbing fixtures giant Kohler has filed an anticybersquatting lawsuit against a company that it had already paid to stop registering its trademarks as domain names. The federal district suit was filed against DomainJet, Inc, Jack Sun, and one or more of the company’s employees. According to Kohler, it approached the defendants after it noticed they registered Kohlerco.in. The defendants demanded $1,000 ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Google Toolbar Doesn’t Recognize .XXX Yet - Toolbar treats .xxx domains as search queries rather than web site addresses. When you type a domain name into the Google Toolbar — e.g. DNW.com — it takes you directly to the URL rather than Google’s search page. The same thing happens when you type in most top level domain names, save for a few examples such as .cat. But for now, .xxx is in the same category as .cat. If you type in casting.xxx, the toolbar brings you to Google’s search results page for ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Masala.xxx Didn’t Get a Memo About India and .XXX Domain Names - Users might have a hard time reaching Indian .xxx site. I was caught a bit off guard when reading Elliot’s story today about Masala.xxx launching. This is apparently an adult site aimed at India. Although I don’t believe anything is done yet, India is high up on list of countries that will try to block .xxx domain names from resolving. It seems odd that you’d launch a .xxx site aimed squarely and India in the face of it being hard for your target visitors to ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
PIR Confirms Continued .Org Domain Name Registration Growth - Total .org domains registered hits 9.2 million at end of June. Public Interest Registry, which operates .org, today confirmed continued strong registration growth of .org domain names. Total domains under management eclipsed 9 million on March 2 and ended at 9.2 million at the end of the first half of the year. The company’s .Org “Dashboard Report” shows a 10.1% increase in domains under management for the first half of the year. That compares to 9.7% growth ... read more ...
Sun 14th August 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
10 Days After Launch, The 1st .XXX Site, Casting.XXX Has As Much Traffic As The $13 Million Dollar Domain Sex.com - It was just 10 days ago that the 1st .XXX site was launched, Casting.XXX and it already has as much traffic as Sex.com which was purchase for $13 Million dollars late last year. According to Alexa.com Casting.XXX over the last 7 days is in a virtual tie for traffic with Sex.com (graph is below) Yup I know its hard to believe. It was hard for me to believe. So I reached out to the owner of Casting.XXX,  The Really Useful Ltd, yesterday for more info and they sent a ton of information including the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Trader Joe’s Sues Grocery Delivery Web Site - Trader Joe’s unhappy with food delivery service. Fast growing and trendy grocery store chain Trader Joe’s has sued the owner of TJsDeliveryService.com for trademark infringement. The web site technically stands for “Traffic Jam’s” delivery service, but the site is forward about what it does: delivers groceries from Trader Joe’s directly to your home: After taking requests from family and friends to bring these products with us when visiting, we realized ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
The Confusing State of ICANN’s Web Site - ICANN’s web site gets a minor face lift, but there’s a long way to go. It’s not a big change, and it’s welcome, but why can’t there be a reasonably usable ICANN web site? ICANN has refreshed the color scheme on its ICANN.org web site so it no longer looks like it was created in 1994. The new design as a more pleasing white color scheme rather than the dark blue one we had become accustomed to. Here’s the old design: And here’s the new one: The social ... read more ...
Sat 13th August 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
$5 Billion Reasons You Should Know About New TLDs - Adrian Kinderis, CEO of AusRegistry International, published a post on domainnews.com today entitled: $5 billion Reasons You Should Know About New TLD’s Its one of the best articles on the subject I have read and here are some of the highlights: 1. Don’t try to be the next .com “Rather than trying to become the next .com, entrepreneurs should look to create boutique name spaces, turning over lower registration volumes, but at higher margins – the online equivalent of running an exclusive ... read more ...