Monthly Archives: March 2012

Tue 27th March 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Kevin Ham’s NameView domain registrar now a parked page purebred during Moniker - NameView.com transferred to Moniker and forwards to a parked page. A reader notified me of something peculiar the other day. NameView.com, the ICANN accredited domain registrar that Kevin Ham was (is?) involved with, now leads to a parked page. I’ve noticed over the past year that Ham’s companies have transferred most of their domains out. The domains I’ve read about in UDRP proceedings recently have been registered at Fabulous. And as of last November, NameView ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Austin.com domain name sold - Austin.com domain name sold and will be relaunched. The domain name Austin.com has been purchased by iEstates, LLC for an undisclosed price. As an Austinite, I’ve paid close attention to Austin.com over the years. Previous attempts to develop it have fallen flat, and I feel that’s mostly because the previous owners took the wrong approach to developing and marketing it. I asked iEstates, LLC owner David Wieland for the scoop on why he bought the domain and what ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sedo updates stats and issues credit from DDOS - Domain parking company resolves stats issues. Domain parking company Sedo was hit with a DDOS attack on March 9. This caused a few hours of downtime, and then some difficulties with monetizing “related links” on its parking pages. Today the company announced that it has fully resolved the problems and compensated publishers. Customer parking daily statistics from for March 9th-19th have been updated. Customers have also been compensated for the three hours of ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Apple files censure over iTunes.net - Company requests transfer of domain name. [Update: Apple won the case.] Apple has filed a complaint with World Intellectual Property Organization over the iTunes.net domain name. The domain has long been a parked domain name with links related to downloading music, so it’s not clear to me why the company is suddenly making a move for the domain name. The current parked page has links exclusively about MP3, iPhones, iPod, and downloading music. The current registration ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Two Texas universities win .xxx domain disputes - Triple-X domains to be transferred to Texas universities in two separate arbitration proceedings. Two Texas universities have won arbitration disputes over the new .xxx domain names. The University of Texas System won a case for UTsystem.xxx and Baylor University won a case for BaylorGirls.xxx. Both organizations filed their complaints with the National Arbitration Forum. UTSystem.xxx got the attention of The University in part thanks to the domain owner forwarding ... read more ...
Mon 26th March 2012
Written by The Domains in EN
Another Family Business Secures A Category Killer As Nutsonline.com Acquires Nuts.com - In a story that reminds me a lot of the family business that acquired Candy.com, a family business that has been in operation for 82 years and since 1999 was operating online under the domain name NutsOnline.com acquired the category killer domain name Nuts.com. It looks like they got the domain mid last year and it is currently registered to Newark Nut Store, Inc of Cranford, New Jersey. We reached out to the company for comment but did not receive any additional information. Here is the story as ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Hot.net is hot! Gets $75,000 bid during Sedo - Hot.net gets a nice bid at Sedo and is now up for auction. The domain name Hot.net has landed a 56,700 EUR bid at Sedo — or about $75,000 USD at today’s exchange rates. The owner of the domain has pushed it to auction with this starting price. According to the listing page for the domain on Sedo, it gets more than 6,000 visits per month. It is currently parked with an adult lander. As best I can tell using the Wayback Machine, the domain name has never been developed. ... read more ...
Sun 25th March 2012
Written by The Domains in EN
Star Jones Becomes Lastest Celebrity To Lose Her Domain Name As StarJones.com Deletes Today - Star Jones has become the latest celebrity to lose the domain name of her official site, as today the domain name StarJones.com is being deleted by the central registry and dropped. In the past year we have covered stories of celebrities and athletes, or their management company’s who have let their domain names expire, including MichaelVick.com and BustaRhymes.com. The domain name StarJones.com was owned by Girlfriend Enterprises, Inc, of New York and first registered in 2000. According to Screenshots.com ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
NameCheap.com Is Giving Away $3K To Person That Registers a 3 Millionth Domain + 2K Free Domains - NameCheap.com just announced that it will be giving away $3,000 to the person or company that “registers” the three millionth domain name on NameCheap.com NameCheap.com, is quick approaching the 3 Million mark for domains under registration according to the counter on the site, NameCheap.com has over 2,990,990 domains under management so they are about 9,000 registrations from reaching the 3 Million domain milestone. They will also be giving away 1,000 free domains before the 3 million mark and ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
“Really cool” guys during Digimedia sole Box.com for about $1 million - Box.com sold for about $1 million. Last year file sharing service Box.net bought the Box.com domain name from Scott Day at Digimedia. The purchase price was not disclosed. But now it has — just shy of a million bucks. CNET writer Rafe Needleman discussed the domain name with Box CEO Aaron Levie. The net-net: the company bought the domain for between $900,000 and $999,000. About the negotiations with Digimedia, Levie said the Digimedia guys were “really cool”. ... read more ...
Sat 24th March 2012
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
UPDATE In Kentucky Domain Name Case: Judge Orders Verisign to Transfer 132 Seized Domain Names To Kentucky - There has been an update in the Kentucky domain name seizure case and its not a good one. This week the original judge in the matter issued another forfeiture order on 132 domain names, this time not directed just to the registrars but to the registry, Verisign. You might remember in the original case, the Judge ordered the registrars, not the registry, to turn the domain names over to the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Some registrars reportedly complied with the order but many did not. For the record, ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Social.Org Sells For $228K - Social.org just sold on NameJet.com for $228,600 Social.com sold last year for $2.6 Million Dollars making it the highest priced domain sale of 2011. This sale on NameJet.com represents a little under 10% of the .com sales price which seems just about right. There were 21 bidders willing to pay $10K or more for the domain, 13 willing to pay $20K or more, 5 willing to pay $50K or more – and then the bidding came down to 3 bidders who were into the six figures. A total of 415 bidders signed up for ... read more ...
Fri 23rd March 2012
Written by The Domains in EN
DomainHoldings.com Releases Study On Almost 10k Domain Names & Shows a 46% Increase In Revenue in 7 Days & 91% in 30 Days Over Pure PPC - A couple of weeks ago we published a press release from DomainHoldings.com about their Monitization Decision Engine (MDE).  At the time DH promised they would be releasing a case study to back up their claims. Today DomainHoldings.com released details a the results of a 30 day test on its “DomainPower Montization Decision Engine (MDE)” comparing it to a pure PPC provider on almost 10,000 domain names. According to DH the revenue of the total portfolio of about 10K domains, increased 46% after ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Minds+Machines Gets .Miami & Applies For .Music - According to a press release issued today, Minds + Machines which is owned by Top Level Domain Holdings Limited (AIM:TLDH.L),  has been chosen by the City of Miami to apply for the .MIAMI top-level domain. “On 7 March  2012, the Commissioners of the City of Miami voted 4-0 to accept the proposal from Minds + Machines and requested Minds + Machines to begin work on the application for .MIAMI immediately. The Minds + Machines’ proposal was chosen following a competitive bid process.  Minds + ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
As new domains like .nyc get announced, watch out for fraudulent web sites like this one - Be careful about sites for new TLDs. Yesterday Information Week reported that Neustar will be running the .nyc domain name when it launches. As definitive news about new top level domains starts hitting the web, people should be careful about misleading web sites promoting the domains. Here’s one example: NYCDomain.org. The domain, owned by a Utah man, is all about the .nyc domain name. And that’s fine. What’s misleading is the description tag — the thing ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Microsoft’s latest ad campaign? Find your 25th hour. - Microsoft registers domains that could be used in marketing next major software release. Don’t we all wish we had an extra hour in a day? That might be the idea behind a possible new marketing campaign from Microsoft. Earlier this week it registered the domain name FindYour25thHour.com, according to whois records. I think this is a great slogan for a campaign about improving efficiency. It could be used for the next Microsoft Office or Microsoft Windows release. The ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Even .com registry Verisign has to buy an aftermarket domain each once in a while (end user sales report) - VeriSign among domain buyers this week. I’m a bit behind on getting the end user sales report out this week, but there are some good ones in here. One notable purchase is by .com registry VeriSign, which bought a .org domain to match one of its existing .com’s. All of the sales on this list took place at Afternic except for SharedValue.org, which sold at Sedo… New York cleaners Fine Line Cleaners found a short domain name with FLC.co for $1,088. Non-profit ... read more ...
Thu 22nd March 2012
Written by The Domains in EN
NameMedia Promotes Jason Miner To COO - In its second promotion in two weeks, NameMedia, today announced the promotion of Jason Miner to Chief Operating Officer. Two weeks ago it promoted Bob Mountain to Vice President of Business Development. “”Miner has been a key executive throughout the company’s continuing growth and development. He joined the company in 2005 as the Director of Sales for the company’s domain marketplace, and has since added responsibilities for business development, marketing, customer service and portfolio ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
OMGPOP Purchased Yesterday By Zynga For $210 Million Was The Buyer Of DrawSomething.com - A week ago we wrote about the domain name DrawSomething.com selling on Afternic for $3,000 As we noted the domain was under privacy at Godaddy and actually still is but the domain is now forwarding to the developer of the App omgpop.com. Meaning that the developer of the App, which has been downloaded more than 35 Million times, bought the exact match .com from BuyDomains.com for $3k. Yesterday  Zynga bought OMGPOP for $210 Million dollars.     Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainHack.er in HU and tagged
[megoldva] Bind + godaddy domain beállítás - Sziasztok! Van egy terv, és a terv megvalósításához kérek egy kis segítséget. Van egy szerver (vps), annak egy valamilyen ip címe. Tegyük fel: 1.2.3.4 Szeretnék több domaint venni a godaddy-nél, melynek ezt a gépet szeretném beállítani primary dns szervernek. A dns beállítást bind-el oldalnám meg. A probléma, hogy godaddynél, nem lehet ip-t megadni a dns-nek. Ha esetleg a megoldáshoz szükséges egy secondary ns szerver, akkor megoldható. Tehát röviden: Tegyük fel, ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Eye Tracking Study Says A Visitors 1st Impression Of A Site Is Made In Fraction Of A Second & The Site’s Logo’s Is The Most Important - According to a new report by the Missouri University of Science and Technology, it takes a website visitor less than two-tenths of a second to form a first impression. Using eye-tracking software and an infrared camera the research found that the sections of a website that drew the most interest were: Logo – users spent 6.48 seconds focused on this area. Main navigation – users spent 6.44 seconds on this area. Search box – user spent just over 6 seconds on this area. Social networking links ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain sales are going up. Way up. - Just ask the company that handles a good portion of the private transactions. Afternic and Sedo release weekly sales reports that are reported by a number of domain blogs. DNJournal aggregates reports from these sources and others. But at the end of the day, public sales figures probably account for about 10% of the domain sales market. A lot of private sales take place with the help of Escrow.com. The majority of domain transactions the company handles are with end ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Kraft gets domain for break multiplication spin-off for only $10 - Kraft able to hand register domains for spin-off snack company. Yesterday I wrote about how Abbott Labs was able to freely register the domain name for its new pharmaceuticals spin-off, AbbVie. AbbVie.com was available. Now Kraft has announced the name of its spin-off $31 billion global snacks business: MondelÄ“z International Inc. What’s more, it appears the company was also able to hand register the domain for its new Moniker, Mondelez.com. It probably spent ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain remoteness isn’t free, Thursday edition - Responding to lawsuits is expensive. I keep preaching about how providing whois privacy services isn’t free for domain registrars, and here’s another example. Timothy Sykes has just sued Moniker (pdf) in federal district court to find out the identity of the owner of PennyStockAlerts.com, which is protected by whois privacy. Skyes is only after the identify of the owner, not Moniker itself. But the company will have to respond. That costs money. Skyes wants ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
New TLD registrations now adult to during slightest 329 - 329 people have registered for ICANN’s new TLD system. ICANN has updated its new top level domain program statistics to show that it has 329 registrants for its TLD Application System (TAS). Each registrant can apply for up to 50 top level domains. So in theory, you could be looking at 16,450 new top level domains. However, most of these registrants are likely just for one or two top level domains. And not everyone who has registered will end up seeing their top ... read more ...