Monthly Archives: December 2011

Tue 20th December 2011
Written by The Domains in EN
Afternic.com Sells $1.2MM In Domain Led By StockMarketWatch.com For $35K - Afternic.com reported $1,149,613 in domain sales for the week ending December 18th. The publicly reportable sales included in the total above were $733,857 led by StockMarketWatch.com at $35,000 followed by FirstAvenue.com at $25,000. Succeed.com was also sold, but the sales price and buyer were kept confidential. Below is the entire list of publicly reportable sales: Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Sedo.com Sells $2.42MM In Domains Let By 3d.com For $500K - Sedo.com just announced it’s weekly sales data for the week ending December 19th. In all $2.42MM of domains were sold. The top seller was 3D.com at $500,000 USD. We had previously discussed Sedo brokering the domain 3D.com in our post here back in April. Other domains topping the list of public sales were MarketAnalysis.com at $60,000 and News.co for $50,000. In all 883 domains were sold. Below is the entire list of publicly reportable sales in their respective currencies: Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
comScore: Record Week In Online US Holiday Shopping History - comScore.com reported today, for the holiday season-to-date, nearly $32 billion has been spent online, a 15% over last year. For the week ending Dec. 18, four days surpassing $1 billion in sales, making for  an all-time record of $6.3 billion in online retail spending for a week, up 14% from tthe same week last year. The final shopping weekend before Christmas reached $1.04 billion to rank as the second heaviest weekend of online spending on record. 2011 Holiday Season To Date vs. Corresponding ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Senators Asks The FTC To Investigate Google For Possible AntiTrust Violations - Two Senators, Herb Kohl, the Chairman of Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights along with Mike Lee, the ranking member of Subcommittee on AntiTrust sent a letter to the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission today asking the FTC to investigate Google as to whether they are violating Antitrust Laws and the FTC Act. In their letter to the FTC they write in relevant part: “””We are writing to you regarding our examination of competition  concerns arising from the ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
How Much Traffic is Buy.XXX Losing To BuyXXX.com? We Know The Exact Numbers - We have written pretty frequently  about ICM’s launching of an all out ad campaign for the .XXX extension,  with all Advertising leading back to Buy.XXX. You can read some stories on Buy.xxx here, here and here. So for the 1st time we can tell you EXACTLY how much traffic Buy.xxx is bleeding over to BuyXXX.com How do we know? We own the domain name BuyXXX.com. Yesterday we logged in over 2,000 visitors to BuyXXX.com. Since the advertising campaign started on November 23rd BuyXXX.com has received ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Hockey Hall-of-famer Doug Gilmour gets DougGilmour.com - Hockey great gets his namesake .com. Former NHL great Doug Gilmour, who was inducted into the hockey hall of fame this year, has won a UDRP proceeding over the domain name DougGilmour.com. I remember watching Gilmour play for the St. Louis Blues in the 1980s. The registrant of the domain name said he was Gilmour “biggest fan” and that he had registered it as a fan site. He also argued that Gilmours likeness belongs to the National Hockey League and not Gilmour, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Texas justice claims office over ICANN and says ICANN can stay a UDRP proceeding - An interesting case from a Texas court. The United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas has issued a ruling stating that it has jurisdiction over ICANN in a bankruptcy case and that ICANN must stay a UDRP proceeding. The case involves FunnyGames.com, which is in control of a receiver in a bankruptcy case. The receiver says the domain name has been appraised for $400,000. FunnyGames.com was hit with a UDRP last month. The receiver in the case asked ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Two Congressmen ask Commerce Department for check to new TLDs - Representatives ask for a delay or pilot program launch. Bob Goodlatte, Chairman, House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet, and Howard Berman, Ranking Member, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, have sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Commerce asking for a delay to the new top level domain rollout. The pair ask the Department of Commerce to answer five questions before January 5. To summarize: 1. Has the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New Pussycat Dolls to star in GoDaddy Super Bowl commercial - Super Bowl commercials to feature Pussycat Dolls and new .co girl. The latest incarnation of the Pussycat Dolls will star in one of GoDaddy.com’s Super Bowl commercials next year. The group will be featured in a commercial dubbed “The Cloud” that will feature many of Go Daddy’s products with a play on its cloud offerings. “The Cloud” will also feature Go Daddy Girl Danica Patrick. Patrick and other Go Daddy girl Jillian Michaels will star in a .co commercial ... read more ...
Mon 19th December 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
PerezHilton.com Says A Godaddy.com Super Bowl Commercial Will Star a New Pussycat Dolls - According to Perezhilton.com the “new” Pussycat Dolls will be featured in one of the upcoming Godaddy.com Super Bowl Commercials. The dolls have gone through a make over since the original group which featured as lead singer, the now X-Factor judge and Dancing with the Stars winner Nicole Scherzinger. According to Perez the New PussyCat Dolls will include Chrystina Sayers formerly of the group Girlicious. We look forward to seeing the commercial and apparently some new star power for Godaddy   Google+Michael ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Vertical Axis Wins Two UDRP’s & Gets A Reverse Hijacking Finding On 1: Planate.com & Trucco.com - Vertical Axis, Inc.  represented by ESQwire.com, just won a Reverse Domain Hijacking UDRP against Planate Management Group LLC of Alexandria, Virginia, who bought a UDRP on the domain name Planate.com Also in a separate ruling issued today,  Vertical Axis, Inc beat back a UDRP on the domain name Trucco.com despite a trademark citing in part the doctrine of Latches where the complainant waited more than 10 years to bring the UDRP. So we have a rare day where the same domain holder won two UDRP’s ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Facebook Can Be Sued For Like Ads & Allows A Class Action Suit To Move Forward - The ads typically display the friend’s name, photo, and a caption asserting that the person likes a certain advertiser. The ads are generated when a Facebook member clicks on the “Like” button for a particular page, product, or company. The plaintiffs claimed that sponsored stories violate California’s Right of Publicity Statute, which prevents the use of a person’s name or photo in a paid advertisement without that person’s consent. They also allege that they were unaware that the act ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
.Me Announces Another Auction Of Registry Owned .Me Domains On Sedo - SEDO and the .ME Registry have announced they have partnered for domain name auction of registry owned .Me domain names. The auction begins Feb. 2, 2012. There are 179 .Me domain names in the auction and here they are:   Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Ari Goldberger gets retreat domain hijacking win for Kevin Ham - Planate Management Group guilty of attempting reverse domain name hijacking. Ari Goldberger’s lawfirm ESQwire has won a reverse domain name hijacking claim on behalf of client Vertical Axis, which is Kevin Ham’s company. The guilty party is Planate Management Group LLC of Alexandria, Virginia. The company owns Planate.net but wanted to get its hands on Planate.com in this dispute. Yet Planate didn’t start using the name “planate” until 2008 according to ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Verisign predicts 1,000-1,500 new TLD applications and adult to 2/3 .brand - Web could see a flood of .brand domain names. There are a lot of new top level domain name service providers out there, and each has its own estimates on how many new TLD applications will be submitted next year. Here are the numbers from Verisign: 1,000 to 1,500 applications and 2/3rds of them from brand owners. This isn’t just another wild guess. Verisign runs the .com registry, so you can expect that many potential top level domain applicants have at least talked ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Vistaprint acquires Webs.com, pulling serve into domain registrar territory - Vistaprint bolsters its small business web site offerings with acquisition. If you think Vistaprint is just about “free” business cards, you are mistaken. It’s actually a big competitor in the small business domain registration and web site business. It offers domain names and web sites on a monthly billing basis. How big is its web site operation? Its nameservers for the product, vpweb.com, host over 333,000 domain names according to DomainTools. Now the company ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Holidays are good time to measure understanding on domain auctions - You might just catch a bidding foe sleeping. Is it possible to catch other domainers sleeping? It’s not easy, but the holidays are your best chance. With many domainers either traveling or taking time off to be with family, expired and regular domain auctions ending over the next couple weeks present your best opportunity to not face the usual competition. This is easier said than done. After all, a lot of home grown systems (as well as publicly available ones like ... read more ...
Sun 18th December 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Facebook awarded FacebookLive.com domain in dispute - Company wins dispute over FacebookLive.com domain name A National Arbitration Forum panelist has awarded Facebook the domain name FacebookLive.com. The domain name was originally registered in 2006 but its whois record was protected by a proxy service. The whois proxy was lifted in 2009, revealing Domainstand.com LLC as the owner. After the dispute was filed the registrant’s name was changed to CT nice Homes LLC. The domain owner didn’t respond to Facebook’s ... read more ...
Sat 17th December 2011
Written by The Domains in EN
BusinessInsider.com Covers The Top 20 Top Domain Name Sales of 2011 - BusinessInsider.com just covered the top 20 domain name sales of 2011, based off of information provided by DnJournal.com We are excited to make the list at #11 with the sale of Meet.me for $450,000. Of course inside the industry we all check out DnJournal.com each week to see the sales but its certainly nice to get mainstream press coverage. You problem know this already but Social.com at $2.6 Million led the charts for 2011 (well so far)   Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
FTC asks ICANN to run commander new TLD launch - FTC says adding just 22 new TLDs would be “aggressive”. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has sent a letter (pdf) to ICANN asking it to significantly curtail its plans for new top level domain names. The FTC believes the mass introduction of new top level domains will lead to more fraud on the internet including phishing and malware distribution. It is asking ICANN to run a pilot program of new TLDs. How small of a pilot? We strongly believe that ICANN should ... read more ...
Fri 16th December 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
BestValue.com Sells For $9K On NameJet.com; Blogging.Org For $5K + More - Several interesting auctions closed today on Namejet.com highlighted by the sale of the domain name BestValue.com for $8,913 In all there were 5 people willing to pay more than the reserve price which appeared to be around $7,200. The domain Blogging.org sold for $5K even after hitting its reserve of $4,900. MexicanVacation.com sold for $2,400. Several domains got some nice bids but failed to sell as they failed to meet reserves set by the sellers including CreditLimit.com which got a $7,500 bid; ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
2 Day House Mark Up Session Ends: SOPA Done For This Year - The House Judiciary Committee Markup of SOPA,  the Stop Online Piracy Act just ended. The House Judiciary Committee halted its contentious markup of the Sat approximately 1:30 pm this afternoon. The hearing started yesterday around 10 am with a one hour reading of the bill and did not stop until 9:30 pm. According to Phil Corwin of the ICA which listened to the hearing non-stop for the two days, “prior to halting the markup, Chairman Smith committed to hold either a hearing and/or a classified ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Zynga Goes Public Tomorrow At $10 A Share & A $7 Billion Dollar Valuation - The gaming company Zynga is going public tomorrow on the NASDAQ, after pricing its initial public offering tonight on top of its initially announced range of $8.50 to $10 per share. The $10 price means Zynga will have a valuation of roughly $7 billion. Zynga is the operator of many games including Farmville, Cityville,  CastleVille has been and a buyer of domains It will be interesting to see how the stock does tomorrow.   Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Done deal: KKR, Silver Lake & TCV now partial owners of Go Daddy - Largest domain name registrar gets big financial backing. GoDaddy is now (partly) private-equity owned. The company finally closed on its investment from KKR, Silver Lake and Technology Crossover Ventures today. Bob Parsons remains the single largest shareholder, which should assuage concerns of what can happen when a company is owned by investors only interested in the bottom line. With the closing Parsons is no longer CEO. He is now Executive Chairman Founder. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Manwin reminds affiliates not to register the trademarks in .xxx - Hi All Webmasters, It is very important that you read and understand the below change. If there are any questions, do not hesitate to contact your affiliate manager Change to Section 9 of the Affiliate terms and conditions 9) Affiliate acknowledges and agrees that they shall not be entitled to a commission or referral fee for any and all referrals, which are in breach/violation of the terms of this agreement. Affiliate also acknowledges and agrees they shall not be entitled to a commission or ... read more ...