Monthly Archives: October 2012

Sat 27th October 2012
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
A Founders Program Buyer’s Thoughts On Why ICM Made A Huge Mistake In Putting Up Over 1K Premium Domains For Sale - On Wednesday ICM Registry the company that operates the .XXX registry put up for sale over 1,000 premium registry owned domains, with prices ranging from $330 to $220,000 and a total value of $7.7 Million. For those who don’t know my company Worldwide Media, Inc, purchased a few .XXX domains in the Founders Program although with Frank Schilling’s Name Administration. In addition to the Founders Domains, we got a couple of hundred more .XXX domains in Land Rush, Sunrise (matching domains in other ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Registrars Come Out Against Additional Rights Protections Policy Changes For New gTLD’s - In a letter sent by the Registrar Stakeholder Group to ICANN, today, the group has come out against making any additional changes to the Rights Protection Mechanisms (RPM) for trademark holders in the new gTLD’s. The letter was sent by the Chair of the Registrar Stakeholder Group Matt Serlin who wrote in part: “”We also understand various parties are advocating for the inclusion of additional Rights Protection Mechanisms (RPMs), in excess of what is currently in the Guidebook. We are extremely ... read more ...
Fri 26th October 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Commerce to Verisign: are we creation too most money? - U.S. government reviewing .com agreement price hikes. Verisign has a wonderful business model. Running the .com registry has huge efficiencies of scale. As the .com base gets bigger, it throws off more cash. For years the company and its investors have been able to count on two great upward trajectories: a growing base of .com domains and 7% price hikes in most years. Although the growth rate of .com is slowing, it isn’t slower growth that has sent the stock down ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
For VeriSign, it’s 2009 all over again - Growth in .Com/.net base slows down thanks in part to search engine changes. Immediately after Verisign released its earnings yesterday that showed slowing growth, fellow blogger Michael Berkens sent me this tweet: Michael was referring to my earlier article that stated the numbers he used in his own post saying .com/.net growth had slowed to a crawl weren’t a fair comparison, and that historically .com growth rates have been on a steady but measured decline. While ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Man claims he and friends were hoodwinked for $123,000 in new tip turn domain scheme - Man says he and friends invested $123,000 for new top level domain project that never got off the ground. [Update: the lawsuit has been dropped.] A Florida man has filed a lawsuit alleging he was duped by a new top level domain name scheme. David Ways planned to apply for the .bim top level domain name. According to the lawsuit, Ways says he contacted VeriSign about his plans and they referred him to Iain Roache as a potential funding source. Roache is listed as the ... read more ...
Thu 25th October 2012
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Verisign Reports: 119.9 .Com/Net Registrations; .Com Contract Still Pending & Stock Is Down 10% - VeriSign, Inc. ( NASDAQ : VRSN ), reported financial results for the third quarter ended Sept. 30, 2012 today after the market closed and the news disappointed the market as shares are down over 11% in after market trading, a huge move for a stock like Verisign. VeriSign, Inc.  (“Verisign”) reported revenue of $224 million for the third quarter of 2012, up 13% from the same quarter in 2011. Verisign reported net income of $78 million and diluted earnings per shares (EPS) of $0.47 for the third ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Flippa Inforgraphic On What is Powering Web Site Sales - Flippa just released an  infographic demonstrating what is powering the web based on website sales. “”We took over $26M in transactions from the last 18 months to work out what technologies are being used to power the internet and how this has changed in the last 12 month.  ” “Gone are the days of rampant WordPress, Tumblr growth. Meanwhile Blogger seems to be in permanent decline.” “CMS newbies Drupal and Joomla continue to see solid growth in buyer interest while demand for eBay’s ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Buyer Beware: Company Starts Selling Subdomains To Create The “City Level Domain For Manhattan” NYC.MN - A company seemingly taking advantage of the new gTLD program has started selling subdomains off of the domain name nyc.mn calling itself the “City Level Domain For Manhattan”. “”nyc.mn is a city-level domain for New York City’s Manhattan – created to provide a gold-standard online identity for the heart of NYC.” “Being based in the world’s most iconic city means having access to an iconic city-level domain. A concise nyc.mn address strikes a bold impression, saying more about who ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Verisign shares dump 14% after hours on pricing concerns, slower growth - Shares off sharply as .com price hikes in doubt. VeriSign shares are down 14% in after hours trading to about $40.00 at the time of writing. This is likely do mostly to concerns over VeriSign being able to hike prices 7% per year in its .com contract renewal. In its earnings release this afternoon, the company stated: As a result of communications beginning in October 2012 with the Commerce Department, we have concluded that the Commerce Department may not complete ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Will Lance Armstrong fallout harm Demand Media? - One of the risks disclosed in Demand Media’s S-1 has come true. When Demand Media filed to go public in 2010 it disclosed a laundry list of risk factors for the company. One of those risks was the reputation hit the company could take if any of the celebrities associated with its brands ran into trouble. On page 20, the company disclosed: “Poor perception of our brand, business or industry could harm our reputation and adversely affect our business, financial ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Go Daddy files obvious applications for geo domain idea tools - Patent applications are related to geo domain search tool released in 2009. In 2009 Go Daddy released a geo domain research tool to help domainers find local domains, such as cityHotels.com. The tool is online at geo.godaddy.com/. The company subsequently filed three patent applications covering various ways to generate geographic-specific related domain names. These three applications were filed in 2011 but just published today. The applications are: SUGGESTING DOMAIN ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Locksmiths “pick” quarrel with Frank Schilling - …and they lose. IDN, Inc., the company that runs Locksmith Dealers of America (LSDA), picked a fight with the wrong guy. (Sorry, I couldn’t help it.) The company filed a UDRP against Frank Schilling’s Name Administration over the domain name LSDA.com. Apparently IDN, Inc. decided that 2012 was a good year to create a web site after many years in business. Hey, better late than never. But it wanted the short and simple domain LSDA.com. It offered up to $5,000 ... read more ...
Wed 24th October 2012
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
UDRP Panel Rejects Claim of TM Holder On The Generic Domain Name; Six.com Despite $2M Offer For Sale - In a UDRP panel decision that will be published tomorrow, the domain holder, beat back The Complaint of SIX Group AG of Zürich, Switzerland on the domain name Six.com. The domain holder, Xedoc Holding SA of Luxembourg, was represented by Paul Keating of  Law.es, Spain. To summarize, the complainant held a trademark for the term Six in a number of countries; the domain was parked prior to 2011 and pointed to an adult site after; the domain holder offered to sell it to the complainant for $2 Million ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
The Worst Domain To Ever Be Hit With A UDRP? Anytime-Fitness-Bridgeport-wv.com - We have seen thousands of domain names hit with UDRP’s over the year but this maybe the worst domain I have ever seen. The domain name is: anytime-fitness-bridgeport-wv.com I assume the UDRP was filed by the health chain, AnytimeFitness.com but right now the complainant is not listed. I have no idea of why someone would ever have spent $10 to register this domain nor why its important enough domain to the TM holder to spend $1,500 in just filing fees to get the domain.       Google+Michael ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
UDRP Panel Rejects Trademark Holder Complaint’s Over Publicare.com - The Complainant is a German company offering services of development and implementation of dialog-base email communications, online advertising and e-business applications and operating under the company name “Publicare Marketing Communications”. “The Complainant owns a German word trademark PUBLICARE 30560520 which was registered on November 16, 2005 and which covers various services in classes 35, 38 and 42 (the “Trademark”). The Complainant has registered different domain names reflecting ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Lawley: “If You Buy One Of These Premium .XXX You Get The .Sex, .Porn & .Adult For Free” - After releasing all but a few hundred of the balance of  premium reserved .XXX domain names and putting them up for sale, we reached out to Stuart Lawley the CEO of  ICM the operator of the .XXX registry. “”Each and every one of the 1,000 names up for sale , will come with entitlement under our “grandfathering” program we previously announced.”” “This means , if we are successful in obtaining the rights for .sex, .porn and .adult via our pending applications to ICANN in the new gTLD ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Cognac.com sells for $140,000 - Cognac.com changes hands again in $140,000 sale. Dallas company Weblabcenter has sold Cognac.com for $140,000, Domain Name Wire has learned. Weblabcenter bought the domain name in a Sedo GreatDomains auction in 2008 for $88,000. That’s nearly a 60% return in about four years. Nhatvi Nguyen of Weblabcenter told me that the company started a blog on the domain name after buying it, but it never amounted to much. The buyer of the domain name is anonymous for now. The ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
40 finish user domain sales - 40 end user domain sales from the past week. It was a busy week for end user domain sales: A university bought the name for its new mascot, a rehab center spent $30k on a category defining domain name, and a company bought a three letter .com as an acronym that likely cost less than it would have paid to get its longer name. Afternic Recruitment company Bernard Hodes Group bought BaptistHealthJobs.net for $1,477. It doesn’t own the .com version. International Pharmaceutical ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain sale roundup: Bankruptcy auction, .xxx, GreatDomains, and SnapNames - Some interesting domain offerings and auctions are on tap over the next 30 days. I’ve received a number of recent announcements regarding domains sales and auctions, and some of them are rather interesting. First, there’s a bankruptcy auction for two portfolios of domain names. One is of 3,000 premium domain names and the other a portfolio of 150,000 domains. There is significant traffic in this portfolio. The auction is result of a long and intriguing battle. ... read more ...
Tue 23rd October 2012
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Afternic.com Sells $1,042,000 In Domains Led By SixPackAbs.com For $58K; Sobriety.com For $30K - Afternic.com just released its weekly report and its quite nice to see some higher dollar transactions on the list. SixPackAbs.com a really nice domain name that was sold by Frank Schilling’s Name Administration Inc led all sales at $58,000. Frank’s Name Administration scored again with the third highest sale of the week vetonline.com for $20K Tucows.com owned names took 2 of th eother 4 spots selling Sobriety.com for $30,000 and HotelBedding.com for $10K Peoplefinders.net was the highest non.com ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
UPDATED: Sedo.com Transactions For The Week Total $1.35 Million Led By MexicoCityHotels.com For $45K - Sedo just published its weekly report, and in all 867 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1.35 million. Over 39% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings. Highlights of public sales include: Top .com: mexicocityhotels.com at $45,000 USD Top ccTLD: monkey.co.uk at 14,000 GBP Top “other” TLD: ria.biz at 8,000 EUR Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
153,000 Premium Domain Names Owned By Ondova Hits The Bankruptcy Court Auction Block: Minimum Bid $4.3 Million - The U. S. Bankruptcy Court has just issued a Court Ordered for the sale of two portfolios of domain names, one containing more than 150,000 domain names and separate portfolio of more than 3,000 domain names (the “Portfolios”), plus related monetization and registrar contracts. The minimum bid is $4.3 million dollars and you will have to put up $500,000 into escrow to bid on the auction. The domain names are owned by Ondova a company that Jeff Baron was involved in and which we wrote about in ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Site Dedicated To Stir Up Support Against Nominet Plan To Sell .UK Domains Goes Live: That.co.uk - Within what appears to be the last week, a new site has gone up to dedicated to the proposed change by Nominet,  the organization  that runs the .uk ccTLD, to start selling domain names ending in just .UK rather than .co.uk or .net.uk. This is what the site, That.co.uk decribes about itself: “This site is here to make people aware of some drastic changes that are being proposed to the UK Internet. Nominet are proposing making changes that in our opinion will hurt both business and public confidence ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
UDRP Filed Against Generic Domain Name: InteriorDesign.com - A UDRP has just been filed against a great generic domain name InteriorDesign.com The domain name is owned a by a P. A. Gordon of  Guam, who lists as his email address getaway@getaway.com Getaway.com seems to be used as a travel site, however the domain in question goes to a Sedo parked page. The complainant is not yet listed. A quick check of the USPTO did not find a match for a trademark for either “interior design” or interiordesign.com The domain name has an original registration date of ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Directi Now Employees Over 1,000 People - I had a chance to catch up with Directi at the recent conferences and found the company is growing like crazy and adding jobs. The company recently broke the 1,000 employee mark. The company was founded by Divyank Turakhia Bhavin Turakhia and according to the company they have over 7 million domain names in their system through one or more of their companies. Directi owns the following businesses: Web Services: * ResellerClub * Logicboxes Back end provider to Registrars * BigRock  ICANN accredited ... read more ...