Monthly Archives: October 2011

Tue 18th October 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Stuart Lawley Doesn’t See Competition for .XXX - ICM Registry CEO doesn’t expect adult TLDs to be introduced in New TLD round. Will the new top level domains round that opens next year mean competition for the .xxx top level domain name? Stuart Lawley doesn’t think so. Lawley, CEO of .xxx registry ICM Registry, doesn’t think domains like .sex will be approved. Yesterday Lawley told the crowd at the TRAFFIC conference in Fort Lauderdale that he thinks some of the new objection procedures in the new TLD guidebook, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Defensive Domains Registered for Miami Casino Fight - Brand protection company Mark Monitor registers defensive domains for Las Vegas Sands. Casinos may be on their way to sunny Miami, and Las Vegas Sands corporation is going on the defensive when it comes to domain registrations. Last week Michael Berkens spotted that the company had registered a number of domains related to casinos in Miami. Now the company is going on the defensive, snapping up domains that may have been used by the group’s detractors. Among the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Sedo Adds Dotster to SedoMLS - SedoMLS gets another partner. Sedo has signed up domain name registrar Dotster to participate in its SedoMLS network. The news comes just one day after the company announced a similar deal with Moniker. SedoMLS is the companies distributed sales network that offers added exposure and “instant transfer” capability for domain name sales. Dotster is the 18th largest domain name registrar with just over a million domains under management according to Webhosting.info. Sedo ... read more ...
Mon 17th October 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
And A New Winner For The Most Inaccurate Story On New gTLD’s - The hurriyetdailynews.com which is a daily newspaper out of Turkey just published a story on the new gTLD’s and it is my current nomination for the most inaccurate story on the topic I have read anywhere at anytime. The article is entitled “Generic net domain names to be cancelled” According to its website the newspaper is “In the 50th Year as Turkey’s English Daily”. So here is a few quotes from the article: “”Generic domain names on the Internet such as “.com” or “.gov” ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
SheMales.XXX Sells For $200,000; 3 1/2 Times More Than The .Net Sold For - Stuart Lawley the CEO of the ICM Registry  just announced at the TRAFFIC conference that it has just sold the domain name SheMales.XXX for $200,000 Shemales.XXX is an impressive sale because there are other reported sales in the last few years in other extensions. Back in 2007 Moniker.com sold SheMale.com for $530,000 at an the Internext Adult Domain Name Auction. So a .XXX just sold for close to 40% of what a very similar .com sold for and the extension hasn’t even “launched” yet. Also back ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Sedo Partners With Moniker & Afternic.com’s DLS Expands To Include Godaddy.com - Two press releases out this morning announcing partnerships in the domain industry. Sedo.com and Moniker.com announced: “”Sedo, the online domain marketplace, and Moniker(R), a leading domain name registrar, auction house and brokerage, today announced an expansion of their partnership that will enable users to search for both new and previously registered domains in one convenient location. “A crucial factor to a business’s success is their domain name’s effectiveness in allowing users ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Inside Frank Schilling’s $1.65M .XXX Purchase - Schilling recounts a seven figure deal he made earlier this year. Within twenty minutes during this year’s DOMAINfest conference Frank Schilling agreed to pay $1.65 million for a collection of .xxx domain names — before .xxx was even approved. Schilling retold the tale today in a TRAFFIC session alongside ICM Registry CEO Stuart Lawley. During the DOMAINfest event in Santa Monica Schilling started discussing a purchase with Lawley. The next day the two met up ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Web.com to Cut More Network Solutions Employees - Company plans more pink slips at iconic domain registrar. Web.com plans to fire more Network Solutions employees after it acquires the company than it previously thought. The company, which also owns domain name registrar Register.com, originally thought it would save $30 million through efficiencies. Now it expects to save much more by “cutting senior manager posts, including Network Solutions’ chief executive, and consolidating data centres and applications”. “There ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
SedoMLS Lands Moniker - Moniker customers can now list domains on Sedo’s distributed listing service. Moniker customers can now list their domain names for sale on the SedoMLS system, the two companies announced this morning. This is a big win for Sedo. Not only is it the biggest U.S. registrar to sign up for SedoMLS to date, but it’s also a key registrar in terms of inventory. Moniker has long been a domainer-centric domain registrar. Moniker is also integrated with Afternic’s premium ... read more ...
Sun 16th October 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Breaking: Afternic Domains to be Listed on Go Daddy Registration Path - Fixed price Afternic listings to be featured on Go Daddy registration path. Customers who sell domain names through Afternic are about to get a lot more exposure. Afternic has struck a deal with Go Daddy to start showing its fixed price listings in the Go Daddy registration path. The listings will show up whenever someone searches for the exact domain name that is offered for sale. The integration, which will go live later tonight or on Monday, will provide added ... read more ...
Sat 15th October 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
1st Hands On Pics and Video of a .XXX Racing Boat - I’m here at the 15th Street Marina in Fort Lauderdale to get a hands on look at the .XXX racing boat, which is about to make it’s maiden voyage. It’s pretty windy out today with the water conditions being described as gnarly by mike Schriefer President of the Speedway Group.    Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Bloomberg: Google Is Getting Audited By The IRS - According to a story in Bloomberg this week, Google (GOOG) is getting audited by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to see if they “avoided federal income taxes by shifting profit into offshore subsidiaries” “The IRS has requested information from Google about its offshore deals after three acquisitions, including its $1.65 billion purchase of YouTube” “The transfer overseas of these kinds of rights has enabled Google to attribute earnings to foreign units that pay lower taxes” “Google, ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Sedo Lands Teaparty.com Domain Name - A few weeks we wrote about the Canadian rock band that found themselves holding one of the most valuable domain names in the world, certainly one of hottest, TeaParty.com The domain name story was so hot that TheDomains.com briefly appeared on CNN.com, when they covered the story According to a press release out today Sedo.com has landed the exclusive brokerage for the domain. From the press release: “”Currently owned by Canadian rock band The Tea Party, the site was developed in the ’90s to ... read more ...
Fri 14th October 2011
Written by The Domains in EN
Generic Search Leads To Clicks On Organic Links 142% Of The Time - According to the GroupM Search study conducted by Kantar Media Compete entitled “From Intent to In-Store: Search’s Role In The New Retail Shopper Profile: 93% of all buyers online or in stores use search prior to making a purchase. 86% of searchers conduct generic queries. Consumers who click on generic terms are often more likely to buy than someone who does not. Compete’s research of the Top 100 Retailers shows that 73% of referrals are from non-branded queries Buyers click on a search engine ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Herman Cain Is Surging In a Polls But He Didn’t Wrap Up His 999 Plan Domains: 999plan.com, 9-9-9plan.com - Herman Cain is absolutely surging in the polls and now leading the Republican Field based in large part to his 999 tax Plan. While Mr. Cain is a hugely successful self-made businessman he still have could used a good domainer on his staff to lock up some valuable domain names essential to his campaign. How essential? Mr. Cain now seems to be completing with Bing.com to buy space under Google adwords for the term 999 plan. If you do a search under Google for 999 plan the first advertiser is HermanCain.com ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
5 Questions To Be Answered during Next Week’s TRAFFIC Conference - The only TRAFFIC of the year is upon us. This year TRAFFIC will host just one conference, which kicks off Sunday in Fort Lauderdale. Last year there was a TRAFFIC conference just about every other month. Combined with other domain conferences it was simply too much. Having just one TRAFFIC this year means a greater concentration of domainers and a bigger focus on business. Here are five questions to be answered next week in Fort Lauderdale. 1. How will the auction ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Got Milk Domains? - If so, you might be in trouble. If you have “Got Milk” domains, the milkman is a’coming. The California Milk Processor Board, which has a trademark on the slogan, just filed UDRP cases against the owners of GotMilk.me and GotMilk.biz. I’ve written before about the group’s frequent use of UDRP to get domain names including the “Got Milk” slogan. It recently won the domain GotMilkBand.com from a punk rock band that didn’t understand trademarks when ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN’s Assets Grow to $100 Million - ICANN releases audited financial statements for FY11. Today ICANN posted its audited financial statements (pdf) for Financial Year 2011 (which ended in June). Here are some highlights: Total assets grew to $100 million from $83 million the year prior. When accounting for liabilities ICANN has $80 million in “unrestricted net assets”. ICANN has $29 million in cash. It also had close to $52 million in investments (equities and fixed income) as of the end of June, ... read more ...
Thu 13th October 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Google Reports: Revenue Up 33%; AdSense Up 18%;Paid Clicks Up 28% CPC Up 5%; Stock Up $43 A Share - After the market closed today Google (GOOG), a stock we follow in our domain name stock index, reported earnings and they had a blowout quarter by any measure. Shares of Google are already up over 7% on the news or $43 a share at $590 in after hours trading. Google’s revenue was up 33%, Adsense Revenues were up 18%, paid clicks were up 28%, Cost per Click was up 5% and Google ended the third quarter with $42 Billion in the bank. Google+, now has 40 million users, an increase from the 10 million ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Sands Casino Coming To Miami? New Domain Name Registrations: SandsFlorida.com: SandsFlorida.net; Venetianfl.com - Over the last couple of months there have been some stories about a huge casino complex that maybe coming to Miami and Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE: LVS) is leading the charge. You can read some stories on it here, here and here The Sands of course operates the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, and in Macao, and the Sands In Singapore. Its also owns and operates Palazzo.com Today we noticed a slew of new domain registrations by Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE: LVS)  using MarkMonitor.com, for it’s possible ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
.HIV Domain Name Initiative Turns to Crowd Funding - A charity top level domain wants you to be charitable to get it off the ground. A group hoping to launch the .HIV top level domain name is turning to crowdfunding to raise the six figures required to apply for the domain. The idea is that companies can use a .hiv domain in addition to .com to generate money for HIV/AIDS research. The group’s site says that money will be earned with each click to a .hiv web site, although it’s unclear if the owner of the second ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
VeriSign Withdraws Request for Domain Takedown - VeriSign cancels request to ICANN to allow it to offer new anti abuse service. Just two days after formally proposing a controversial mechanism to scan domain names and take down web sites used for certain malicious purposes, VeriSign has withdrawn the request. No information about the withdrawal is available on the company’s web site. The plan, dubbed Verisign Anti-Abuse Domain Use Policy, raised a lot of concern about government involvement on the internet. It ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Go Daddy Wants to Patent Way to Monetize URL Shorteners - A way to make money off of shortened URLs? There’s not a whole lot of money in shortening links. Go Daddy has devised a way to change that. The company filed a trio of patent applications (here’s one) for methods of monetizing shortened URLs. The applications were filed in April 2010 and just published today. The idea is to monetize each visitor to a shortened URL with some sort of advertising. The method parses the URL that was shortened to come up with relevant ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN’s Reply Cycle Falling Flat - Circular-reference comment period not eliciting more comments. If you held a comment period about comment periods, then tested a new comment period idea called “reply cycle” on that same comment period about comment periods, would anybody come? Not yet. At the end of August ICANN opened a comment period for “Public Comments Process Enhancements”. In other words, a comment period about comment periods. The comment period closed September 30 with 8 comments. ... read more ...
Wed 12th October 2011
Written by The Domains in EN
American Express Rolls Out Serve.com As It Mobile Wallet Solution In Another Domain Sale We Never Heard About - American Express rolled out its mobile wallet solution and its going with the domain name Serve.com for the product. The domain was owned by Datarealm Internet Services who was the original registrant of the Domain in 1995. Amex seems to have acquired the domain name in October of 2010. Its another one of the domain name sales we never heard about. “With Serve you can spend, send, and swipe — online, offline, and mobile.” “”The Serve card is accepted wherever American Express® Cards are ... read more ...