Monthly Archives: August 2012

Mon 20th August 2012
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Melbourne IT Suggests Special Domain Protections For “High At-Risk Marks” In New gTLD’s - Melbourne IT the registrar/brand protection company published a paper that “makes the case that, despite the current protections ICANN has put in place, there is still a set of High At-Risk Marks (HARM) that remain particularly attractive to unscrupulous persons and organizations who will attempt to register these marks at the second level of new gTLDs”. Basically Melbourne IT proposes to create a new set of rules and rights for holders of these High at Risk Marks. The proposal is pretty in-depth ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Directi Looking To Raise $50 Million-$100 Million For New gTLD’s Auctions - According to a story in Vccircle.com, Directi Internet Solutions Pvt Ltd (Directi) is seeking to “secure a hefty sum between US$ 50 – 100 Million to fund its subsidiary Radix FZC“. Directi through its Radix subsidiary has already allocated $30 Million for its 31 new gTLD applications, according to this story they are seeking additional funds to cover the cost of anticipated auctions for some of the new gTLD’s. Many of Directi new gTLD applications have heavy competition including .Web, .Shop, ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ICANN Publishes RoadMap For New gTLD Applications & First Delegation Request Aug 2013. - ICANN published a “Roadmap” for new gTLD’s which we have republished below. I reviewed it a few times and its a best case scenario for an application that does not get any formal objections filed, one that doesn’t get early GAC advice against it, one in which there is not another application filed for the same or a confusing similar string. In such a case ICANN says that in August 2013 they will be ready for the “First delegation request”.  The roadmap doesn’t say from the “first ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
SportsRantz fixes the “z” problem - Online sports fan site acquires a key domain name for its branding. Now that I’m back from vacation I’m compiling the end user sales report for the past two weeks. As I was researching the purchase of SportsRants.com for $1,415 on Afternic by SportsRantz.com, I found that the buyer had posted a blog entry about why he bought the domain. Most domainers know why already: using a ‘z’ instead of ‘s’ in the domain name was sure to cause problems. It’s called ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
30 finish user domain sales including Microsoft and America’s Cup - Domain Name Wire’s end user domain sales report. It’s difficult to compile the end user sales report while traveling. It requires bulk whois lookups, yet many registrars rate limit how many whois searches you can run within a time period. When I’m in the office I have a whitelisted IP for lookups at the largest registrar. But when I’m out of the office a lot of whois searches are blocked. Why does this matter to you? Well, I’ve been out of the office for ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
How browser changes are creation a hole in approach navigation traffic - Browser features change the way people navigate the web. Last week I wrote about how Sedo’s domain name parking business continues to struggle. The company cites a few reasons for the decline, including “advances made in browser technologies, which alters the circumstances surrounding monetization in the parking business”. There’s no doubt that browsers are blurring the lines between typing in a domain name and a search. What that means for type-in traffic ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
UDRP panelists don’t do their pursuit determining retreat domain name hijacking - Panelists don’t always consider RDNH when asked, and both WIPO and NAF don’t seem to care. On Friday I wrote about the UDRP decision for AboutDotMed.com et al. This morning I read the decision for J-brand.com. In both cases the respondents won. In both cases the respondents asked for reverse domain name hijacking. But in neither case did the panelist make a decision (either way) about reverse domain name hijacking. Yet the World Intellectual Property Organization ... read more ...
Sun 19th August 2012
Written by The Domains in EN
RomneyRyan.com Hits The Auction Block during Flippa With A BIN of $100K - The domain name RomneyRyan.com has hit the auction block at Flippa.com. The domain was registered in 2010 and is the subject of numerous stories since Mitt Romney named Paul Ryan his running mate. The auction, which as of publication still has over two days to go, has a top bid of  $5,000, which has not hit the reserve price. The domain has a buy it now price of $100,000. Beyond being very opened about his desire to sell the domain, the domain owner Peter Crowley has been baiting the campaign to ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
China: “US Must Hand Over Internet Control to a World” - The Government of China said today that the US must hand over control of the Internet to the world. The Government’s position was made in today daily newspaper, The People’s Daily which “provides direct information on the policies and viewpoints of the Communist Party of China (CPC)“. Here is the full story of what China had to say: “”The Internet has become one of the most important resources in the world in just a few decades, but the governance mechanism for such an important international ... read more ...
Sat 18th August 2012
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Orgainzation That Run Thailand’s ccTLD (.Th) Objects To new a gTLD .Thai - “Although, THNIC views ICANN’s new gTLDs program as a mean to open up opportunities for innovations thus drive for further developments for the Internet as a whole, the program should be carried out without causing confusions or disturbances to the users of the Internet.” “THNIC would like to provide the following comments for the panel for consideration:” “(1) The applicant has made a claim to work closely with THNIC in the following statement:” “BLM will closely collaborate with ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Compete.com Says HugeDomains.com Has More Traffic Than Sedo, Buydomains, Afternic, & DomainMarket Combined - According to Compete.com which measures US traffic sites get, HugeDomains.com is getting more monthly visitors than Sedo.com, Afternic.com, Buydomains.com, DomainMarket.com and MostWantedDomains.com combined. As impressive as that is, according to Complete.com, HugeDomains.com US traffic is increasing every month for the last year months, the only site of those mentioned above. According to Complete HugeDomains.com received monthly visitors topped 500,000 for the 1st time in July after having only ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
6 ways to solve new tip turn domain “metering” problem - Six examples of ways to meter top level domains, but many of them are basically the same things. ICANN plans to allow only 1,000 new top level domain names into the root per year, and as evenly as possible over a 12 months time span. Its initial idea for figuring out which domains go first — so called “digital archery” — was scrapped. Now the non-profit has come up with six new alternatives. It hopes to figure out a solution by December. Here are six examples ... read more ...
Fri 17th August 2012
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
WSJ: Banks Looking To New gTLD’s To Stop Phishing - The WallStretJournal published a story on how banks are looking to using their applied for new gTLD’s to cut down on phishing of bank sites on the net. “Financial-services companies are snatching up new, exclusive Internet addresses in an effort to crack down on cybercrime, which one analyst said cost the industry an estimated $2.5 billion last year.” “The companies buying up addresses include some of the biggest players in the industry: American Express Co., Capital One Financial Corp.,  ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
DomainDiscount24.com Teams With Google To Provide Domain Registrations For Google Apps Customers - According to a press release we received this morning, domaindiscount24.com, has signed an agreement with Google to allow customers of Google Apps to register the domain for the project through domaindiscount24.com “Domaindiscount24.com is part of the Luxembourg based  holding whose registrars manage more than 6 million domains together for more than 300,000 customers worldwide.” “Business customers that would like to use Google Apps may use their own domain, which must be provided ... read more ...
 
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DotMed applicant survives UDRP conflict on the .med code domain names - Panel sees through seemingly spurious claims by medical equipment seller. .Med applicant HEXAP SAS has staved off an attack on its promotional web sites aboutdotmed.com, supportdotmed.com and thedotmed.com in a UDRP. The company behind medical supplies company DotMed.com filed the complaint in June. DotMed.com has nothing to do with top level domain names, but it has applied for a trademark for “dotmed” as a top level domain. It has also been battling trademark ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Domain name observations from Australia - ccTLD pride and pricing dynamics. Here are some observations from my recent vacation to Australia: .com* rules! Nearly all of the domain names I saw advertised in Australia were .com domain names. But they weren’t just .com domain names, they were .com.au country code domain names. I’d say about 95% of the domains I saw were .com.au, maybe 3% were just .com, and a couple percent were other top level domains. Yep, Australians love their country code domain names. ... read more ...
Thu 16th August 2012
Written by The Domains in EN
HP Buys The Hack Gr.am For $18K, As Palm Becomes Gram - AllthingsD.com is reporting that HP just bought the domain name hack of Gr.Am for $18,000 for its new business division, named Gram According to AllthingsD, Gram is the new brand name for the Hewlett-Packard subsidiary formerly known as Palm.” The publication was actually citing a Namepros post for the price HP paid for the domain. As we noted a month or so ago domaining 6.0 is all about branding. Yesterday we saw it when we reported that Ediblearrangements.com acquired the domain name Edible.com ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Objection To .Earth: We Already Own It & ICANN Awarding It To Any Applicant “Would be Larceny” - In interesting objection was just filed with ICANN on the new gTLD .Earth, by John Palmer of American Webmasters, Inc who claims to already own the TLD since 1995 having been granted the TLD by none other than Dr. Jon Postel. “The TLD “.EARTH” is an existing TLD which is the property of American Webmasters, Inc / dba AGN Domain Name Service, Inc, a Delaware Corporation.” “We have been operating this TLD since 1995 when we claimed it from IANA (Dr. Jon Postel). ” “This is documented ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Invest.com Which Sold For Over $1 Million In 2008, Is Back on The Market - According to a press release out today the domain name Invest.com is back on the sale block. The domain sold in 2008 for $1,015,000. No price is mentioned in the release. Here is the press release: “‘DigitalDNA, a leading digital advisory firm, has been engaged to conduct a private sale process for one of the world’s most valuable domain names, Invest.com. “Due to recent trends in the evolving financial services industry, the timing is now optimal for the right company to acquire this rare ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
August 16th For Facebook Insiders: Happy Facebook Unlock Up Day - Today is the day where insiders of Facebook (FB) which acquired shares prior to the IPO can start selling them. Typically shares received of a private company are restricted from being sold until 6 months after the company goes public. Usually these shares are held by true insiders of a company; their officers, directors and shareholders but in the case of Facebook there was a lot of VC money, angel investors and due to sites like SecondMarket.com which we talked about a couple of years ago, a lot ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Bankrate May Have Paid $24 Million For InsuranceAgents.com - Back in March it was reported that Bankrate, Inc. acquired InsuranceAgents.com for an unknown price. According to a SEC filing it appears the company may have spent $24 to acquire InsuranceAgents.com “During the six months ended June 30, 2012, the Company acquired certain assets and liabilities of certain entities for an aggregate purchase price of $24.2 million, including $10 million in potential earn out consideration. ” “These certain entities are individually and in the aggregate immaterial ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainHack.er in NO and tagged
Protesterer mot nye toppdomener - ICANN har mottatt nesten 2000 søknader om nye, generiske toppdomenenavn (gTLD), etter en mye omtalt søknadsperiode denne våren. Søknadene er offentlige og er nå inne i en periode hvor aktører kan komme med støtte eller protester mot søknadene. Samtlige kommentarer er tilgjengelige her. Blant aktørene som mest aktivt har protestert mot en rekke av de foreslåtte toppdomenenavnene, er Communication and Information Technology Commission, Kindom of Saudi Arabia, ved brukeren ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Romney-Ryan domain names snapped adult in a hurry - Republican ticket follows patterns for domain name registration. Whenever there’s a big political announcement we tend to see people register related domain names. Mitt Romney’s announcement of Paul Ryan as his running mate is one example. Since June 2012, Go Daddy says more than 1,600 domain names were registered with the registrar containing Mitt Romney and or Paul Ryan. While many of these were surely registered in the past week when Ryan was named, someone ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
While we was out… - It’s hard to blog on while over the ocean. Here’s some stuff I missed. I just returned from an eleven day vacation in Australia (more on that later). It’s good to be back, especially after trying to blog from a time zone 15 hours from my usual. As I mentioned in an earlier post, it’s really hard to keep up with all the latest news while on the road. Especially when you’re on a 15 hour flight. Here are two particularly interesting news stories from the past ... read more ...