Monthly Archives: February 2013

Mon 18th February 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
The Go Daddy lick that keeps on giving - This year’s Go Daddy commercial may have been its most effective yet. One thing Go Daddy founder Bob Parsons figured out a long time ago, before GoDaddy.com was a household name, was that the 30 seconds you buy during a Super Bowl is only part of what you’re buying when you advertise in the big game. If the only time people see or hear about your advertisement is during that 30 seconds, you got ripped off. Parsons was the master of getting press before and after ... read more ...
Sat 16th February 2013
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Report: Google To Open Google Stores By The Holidays: Will They Sell New gTLD’s? - According to 9to5google.com, Google is going to roll out retail stores cross metropolitan areas in the United States ahead of the holidays this year. Google Stores will be used to show off Google’s own brand of products, such as the Nexus lineup of Android smartphones and tablets, as well as Chromebooks. I guess if Google goes ahead with opening retail stores they might as well sell their new gTLD’s out the stores as well. If Google went ahead with retail stores there would be no reason why you ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
FreshLook.com Sold On Snap 2 Weeks Ago for $3,500 Hit With UDRP For 2nd Time - The domain name FreshLook.com just got this with a UDRP filed with the National Arbitration Forum for a second time. The domain FreshLook.com dropped and was in a auction at Snapnames.com which closed on January 30, 2013 with a high bid of $3,407. Interestingly this exact domain name was the subject of a UDRP decided in December 2011, by the same complainant Novartis AG. against the domain owner at the time a Jose Maria Valdez. In the December 2011 decision, the one member panel awarded the domain ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
.GMC Becomes 15th New gTLD Application To Be Withdrawn: General Motors - Add General Motors to the list of companies that have withdrawn their application for a New gTLD with ICANN as .GMC has becomes the 15th withdrawn New gTLD application. The application which had a priority number of 1911 which means General Motors didn’t bother to spend the $100 to pull a ticket in the prioritization draw. General Motors known throughout the world as GM planned on operating the .GMC extension on a closed basis, not allowing members of the public to register a .GMC domain. Although ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Dear Miami Beach: save yourself some difficulty and don’t buy this domain - City is apparently spending internal resources looking at a domain it shouldn’t bother with. Today’s Miami Herald reports about the domain name CityOfMiamiBeach.net. The article explains that the husband of a Miami Beach Commissioner is brokering the sale of the domain name. It goes on to discuss the city’s ethics rules and the problems of having a commissioner’s husband broker the sale. The broker said he’d hand negotiations over directly to the seller ... read more ...
Fri 15th February 2013
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Huffington Post Files 2 UDRP For 21 Domain Names - The Huffington Post has filed 2 separate UDRP’s seeking 21 typo domains both filed with the National Arbitration Forum In the first case Huffington Post (HP) is seeking 19 domain names (case no 1485082):   Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Gucci Wins The Rights to 129 Domain Names In One UDRP - Talk about getting a bang for your buck Gucci just won the rights to 129 domain names in one UDRP The domain names were registered with three different registrars but owned by many different registrants listed as: Andrea Hubner of Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China; Beijing Harmony Software Co.Ltd., jiang wang of Beijing, China; brian miller, Pornsawang Chotima of Hefei, Anhui, China; Domain Whois Protection Service, Whois Agent of Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China; Jie Zhou, Jayzhou, Hi to every day in Zhengzhou ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
City Of Providence Awarded ProvidencePolice.com A Domain It Let Drop & Sold On Namejet.com - The City of Providence in Providence, RI, USA; and the Providence Police Department (“Complainant”), just was awarded the domain name providencepolice.com a domain that it used to own, and was won in a NameJet.com Auction back in  July 15, 2012. The panel rejected the argument of the domain holder that PROVIDENCE POLICE is not a registered trademark.” Here are the facts and findings of the one member UDRP panel: “Complainant initially owned the disputed domain name beginning in February ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Trademark Holder Kanal, Inc Loses Bid To Obtain Kanal.com In UDRP - A three member panel UDRP panel has just rejected the Complaint by Kanal, Inc. on the domain name kanal.com. Complainant is a New York corporation that is the registrant of the U.S. trademark KANAL, registration number 4,220,349, for advertising and business management consultancy services. Complainant was incorporated in 2005, but claims common-law rights in the KANAL mark dating back to August 9, 2002, based upon prior use of the mark by Gaurrav Kanal, the incorporator of Kanal, Inc., who transferred ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Warren Buffet Invests In $165 Million Dollars into Domain Industry - According to TheStreet.com, the most famous stock investor on earth, Warren Buffet’s company Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) has purchased 3,685,700 shares  of Verisign (VRSN). At the closing price of Verisign yesterday he investment represents around $165 Million dollars or about the size of the investment Marchex made in the purchase of Yung Ye’s domain name portfolio some 8 years ago. We told you that more money is going to come into the domain industry than ever before, here is another $165 Million ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
April 23 for a new TLD approval? Will anyone be means to sell them? - ICANN CEO sets a surprising date for the first new TLD approval. ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé has disclosed a target date of April 23 to recommend for delegation the first new top level domain. [Note: I originally misheard Chehadé in the video to say April 23 would be the date of delegation, not to recommend for delegation. That takes some pressure off.] Although he admits the timeline might slip, he suggests it will be a slippage of days or weeks, not months. That sounds ... read more ...
Thu 14th February 2013
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ICM Sells 25 Domains Including Singles.xxx, SexVideos.xxx, AdultChat.xxx For $185K - ICM Registry, the registry operator for the .XXX top-level domain announced today in a press release  that “IRIS SARL, based in Luxembourg, has secured an additional 25 Premium Domains in a deal worth $185,000″. “This is the second significant order from IRIS who previously acquired $650,000 of premium names back in September 2012.” The new .XXX names include singles.xxx, sexvideos.xxx, adultchat.xxx and many more popular niche sectors of the adult market”. “The Chairman of IRIS commented.” ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Tucows Reports: Revenue Up 13%: Domain Sales & Parking Revenue adult 12% - After the stock market closed last night Tucows (TCX) reported its earnings for the 4th quarter ending Devember 31, 2012 Most of the good numbers were in the earnings call: “”Total revenue for the quarter grew 13%, from the same quarter in 2011 to $29.8 million, our eleventh consecutive quarter of growth and revenue for the year grew 18% net percent to just shy of $115 million both records for the respective periods.” “Cash flow from operations for Q4 was $2 million and for the year was $6.3 ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Forbes Calls New gTLD’s “Rich New Territories For Cybersquatters” & Why Forbes IS Wrong - Forbes just published a story entitled “Cybersquatters Get Rich New Territories With Generic Domains” The Forbes Article of course chats about Donuts which Forbes says  “raised $100 million to take control of as many generic top-level domains as it could.” The story goes on to quote Jeffrey Stoler,  a partner with Holland Knight, who complained that Donuts appeared to have close ties with Demand Media, a domain registry operator with a long history of complaints about cybersquatting, “typosquatting” ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
To The DNForum Guy: No Domaing Is Not Going To End - Admittedly I’m not a forum kind of guy. Except for Ricks old Board, I don’t go into forums nor do I participate in them. The only time I notice them is if someone links to a post to the forum on my blog, or if some Tweets something that catches my eye, which is in fact what happened last night when I read a Tweet saying Domaining is Going to End. The Tweet linked to a post in DNForum.com of which I’m bought a lifetime membership to a lifetime ago. So here is how the post appeared on Dnforum.com ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Registrars competence have to adopt new RAA in sequence to sell new tip turn domains - In October I wrote about negotiations for a new registrar accreditation agreement (RAA). The RAA is the contract between domain name registrars and ICANN. It is periodically updated. When it’s updated, ICANN provides some sort of incentive to existing registrars to abandon their existing RAA before it expires and adopt a new one. For example, ICANN has previously reduced per-domain fees in a newer version of the RAA. One idea that was being tossed around in October ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
BuzzFeed buys BuzzFeed.co.uk - BuzzFeed gets a country code domain and other end user domain purchases. There aren’t a lot of end user domain purchases from Sedo to report this week. A lot of domains that are probably end user sales are still in escrow. But there are a couple big names on this week’s list, including BuzzFeed and Eli Lilly. Swiss company HRsolution International AG bought HRSolution.co.uk for $1,300 BuzzFeed bought Buzzfeed.co.uk for 2,150 GBP. It is forwarding the domain name ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Tucows: fewer large domain sales, though good numbers on reduce labelled domains - Tucows generates less revenue from its portfolio but sales of $2,000-$3,000 domains still strong. Tucows reported earnings yesterday, which should give domainers some insight into how large domain portfolio holders are doing. The headline number is that sales from Tucows’ domain portfolio in Q4 2012 were $300,000 less than the same quarter of 2011. But a lot of that has to do with the lumpiness of high dollar domain sales. Here’s how Tucows CEO Elliot Noss explained ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New domain parking association adds a free twist - New domain parking company offers charity donation and no cost brokerage services. A domain industry vet has started a new parking company with a charitable twist. Jakob Knightly, formerly with NameDrive, is launching Rikimu.com next week. At a high level, Rikimu is a domain parking service with a charitable element: the company donates 5% of its share of revenue to charity. Currently you can choose from three different charities. Two of them are domain industry favorites: ... read more ...
Wed 13th February 2013
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Sedo Transactions Total $1.57 Million - Sedo just released its weekly report and in all 800 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling over $1.57m. Over 41% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings. Highlights of public sales include: ·         Top .com: apuestas.com at 165,000 EUR ·         Top ccTLD: veterinar.se at 8,000 EUR ·         Top “other” TLD: hausverwaltung.net at 5,900 EUR Here are the reportable sales:   Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Sports.TV Sold to Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios - The domain name Sports.TV has been sold to Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios of Los Angeles California. The price was not disclosed. The domain was listed for sale back in November of 2012 in a Domainstore.TV newsletter for $650,000. The sale is under NDA so we don’t know what the purchase price of the domain is, but we do know that the buyer of Sports.TV owns one of the best .TV domain portfolios in the world. We covered Bryon Allen’s company back in October 2010 and we noted at TheDomains.com ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
American and US Airways play opinion to merge, so those domains will come in handy - Company registered domains related to merger nearly a year ago. Last March I wrote about how a number of domain names related to a combined American Airlines (AMR) and U.S. Airways had been registered, signaling a possible merger. Now, nearly a year later, it looks like those domains will be able to be put to good use. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the boards of the two airlines have approved a merger. The domains included a number of combinations of the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
The good Domain Name Wire consult fraud - Someone went through quite a bit of effort to game this year’s survey. The 8th annual Domain Name Wire survey has now closed. I do the survey every year, and I think it provides a pretty good snapshot of what’s going on in the domain industry: how domainers are doing, what they think of various domain companies, etc. Of course, every year there’s a bit of ballot stuffing. It’s not a scientific survey and anyone can respond. Companies sometimes ask their customers ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Why I’m not worried by sealed general tip turn domain names - As a domain investor, I find it difficult to oppose the idea of closed generic top level domains. There’s been a lot of talk in the domain industry about “closed generic” top level domain names. A closed generic is a generic term (non brand) such as .baby, .kid, .cloud, in which the applicant wants to keep all of the second level domains for themselves. If the applicant wants to run a closed registry on .cloud, that means no one other than the applicant would ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Some humorous things about that RonPaul.com domain dispute… - Both sides in the dispute have some explaining to do. Over the past few days the tech media has been abuzz about Ron Paul filing a UDRP against the owners of RonPaul.com. For the most part the press has been taking the side of the Ron Paul supporters who have been operating the site for the past 4+ years, apparently selflessly. There are definitely many things about Paul’s complaint that stink, as the tech press has pointed out. But the same can be said for what’s ... read more ...