Author Archives: DomainNameWire

About DomainNameWire

Domain Name Wire is a blog that deals with the domain name sector. The blog covers a range of domain related topics ranging from issues concerning expiring domains, monetization, domain registries and registrars, ICANN, policy, law etc. The blog began in March, 2005, after Mr. Allemann had dropped out of meetings to become involved in domain portfolio company, iREIT. The project began as a hobby to keep him involved in the domaining business, and then became his full-time business.

Wed 2nd January 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
L’Oreal Chief Digital Officer to keynote new TLD conference - L’Oreal to discuss its new TLD plans at conference. L’Oreal Chief Digital Officer Georges-Edouard Dias will be a keynote speaker at the Digital Marketing gTLD Strategy Congress in March. The even takes place March 11-12 at the Dream Downtown Hotel in New York City. This will be one of the first “end user” applicants to speak about new top level domains at a conference and it should be interesting to learn more about the company’s plans. L’Oreal has applied ... read more ...
 
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Go Daddy Auctions sole 32,767 domains in December, led by $50k Marchex deal - Travel domain sells for $50,000 to lead Go Daddy sales last month. Go Daddy Auctions is reporting 32,767 domain names sold in December. The top sale was VisitSanFrancisco.com, a domain sold by Marchex. The $50,000 purchase was made by San Francisco Travel Association, which owns SanFrancisco.travel. Other top sales include: league.com $40,005 zodia.com $35,421 silvergate.com $22,000 – purchased by Silvergate Bank in Southern California. The bank’s site is SilvergateBank.com. beats.us ... read more ...
Mon 31st December 2012
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2012 Domain Dunce: The .com agreement renewal - Verisign lost an awful lot of market cap but consumers won. It’s difficult to say who exactly is the deserving subject of this Domain Dunce Award. It goes way back. In 2006 ICANN settled a long running dispute with Verisign by giving it a very nice contract to run the .com registry. The contract allowed Verisign to increase prices 7% per year in four of the six years of the contract. The contract was up for renewal this year, and ICANN rubber stamped a new contract ... read more ...
Sat 29th December 2012
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Merry Christmas: Go Daddy Groupon understanding adult to 67% off - Go Daddy offers a Groupon that might be hard to pass up. Back in October Go Daddy ran a deal with Google Offers for $20 in credit for only $10. Now it is running a Groupon that’s even better: $10 for $30 or $25 for $70. It appears the deal is run in most if not all U.S. markets. For example, the Austin deal says 30 have been bought and the deal is on. But if you drop the city name it shows the deal but zero bought. Don’t worry, you can buy from any city. Adam ... read more ...
Fri 28th December 2012
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2012 Domain Dunce: TAS and Digital Archery - “Glitch” filled system gets Domain Dunce honors in 2012. ICANN’s new top level domain program is the most watched initiative in the non-profit’s entire history. So you’d think ICANN would have double and triple checked all of the technology supporting it, including the TLD Application System (TAS). Alas, TAS failed. Big time. In April ICANN had to take the system offline due to a technical “glitch”. The glitch made it possible for some applicants to ... read more ...
Thu 27th December 2012
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My initial (much) faster payments with Go Daddy Premium Listings - Go Daddy is paying for domain sales even faster than promised. It had been a couple months since I sold a Go Daddy Premium Listing, but over the past couple weeks I’ve sold two domains. These were the first domains I’ve sold with Go Daddy since it sped up the payment process. I’m happy to report that it paid even faster than promised. The first sale was on December 17. That particular domain sold through Go Daddy auctions rather than the registration path. That ... read more ...
 
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Marchex defends EuroBaby.com opposite Irish company - Company can keep domain acquired with UltSearch portfolio, panel rules. Marchex has successfully defended the domain name EuroBaby.com in a URDP proceeding brought by an Irish company. Eurocycles Eurobaby and Eurotrek Group Limited of Dublin, Ireland sell bikes and strollers. One of its brands, EuroBaby, sells strollers, car seats, baby furniture, and other baby goods. Its site for EuroBaby is EuroBabyNursery.com, so it’s no wonder it wants the better EuroBaby.com ... read more ...
 
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FreshDirect.com latest association to go down interjection to lapsed domain - Company forgot to renew its domain name, which expired December 23. Add FreshDirect.com to a long list of companies that suffered downtime thanks to not renewing their domain names. The company suffered an “outage” (a.k.a. registrar renewal notice page) when it neglected to renew its domain name earlier this week. The Wall Street Journal discusses the lapse in an article here, although the “person familiar with the matter” has the dates wrong. The domain name ... read more ...
Wed 26th December 2012
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4 domains in Stephen Colbert’s latest book (and one we can buy for $100) - New Stephen Colbert book references a number of domain names, none of which are in use. What did you do for Christmas? I’ll tell you what I did. I curled up in front of the fire with Stephen Colbert’s latest book, America Again. It comes in 3-D, which should be music to the ears of domain name investors that spent money registering ridiculous 3-D domain names. Colbert says 3-D movies make a lot of money, so he figured why not throw it in his book. I noticed four ... read more ...
Fri 21st December 2012
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Iran: .Gay domain would widespread hatred - Republic of Iran wants to stop .gay top level domain. The government of Iran has filed an early late warning to applicants for the .gay top level domain name. Iran thinks that a .gay top level domain will “spread of hatred and hostility in the society”. And it doesn’t think that’s an ironic statement. It further states: We believe that the right approach in new gTLD program should be based on creation of healthy environment in all the societies. Thus for ... read more ...
 
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Wait, Pool.com is still in a dump throwing business? - Pool has long been irrelevant in the expired domain business. This morning I read Michael’s post about Pool “de-emphasizing” its expired domain drop catching business in favor of new TLD business opportunities. My first reaction was “Wait, Pool.com still does drop catching?” Alright, so obviously the first thing domainers think of when they hear the term “Pool” is expired domains. But I can’t think of the last time I’ve used the service or recommended ... read more ...
Thu 20th December 2012
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.Co domain bottom adult 24% this year to 1.4 million - Registered domain base up about 24% in a year. .Co Internet just released stats about its domain registrations. As of the end of November, there were about 1.4 million registered .co domain names. This is up 24% from last year. It has a “blended renewal rate” of 63%, although the graph on its blog post about the stats shows a steep drop off in November. [Update: the November renewal rate number on .co’s blog is not final, and should be in line with the average.] First ... read more ...
 
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UDRP row got BidPal.com box right, though complainant’s lawyers did it a disservice - Ultimate decision in case is right, but complainant’s case could have been stronger than it was. It’s no wonder that BidPal, Inc wants the domain name BidPal.com. It has the decidedly inferior domain name BidPalNetwork.com. In October it filed a UDRP against the owner of the domain name. A three member UDRP panel ruled against the complainant, arguing that it did not prove lack of rights/legitimate interests in the domain and that it was registered and used in ... read more ...
 
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No surprise: UDRP row denies explain on InteriorDesign.com - Magazine publisher loses case for valuable InteriorDesign.com domain name. A three person National Arbitration Forum UDRP panel has denied Interior Design Media Group, LLC’s claim on the domain name InteriorDesign.com. As I wrote about in October, the domain name was been owned by domain investor P. A. Gordon for about 15 years. Gordon owns some great domain names and explained to the panel that he buys generic domains that may have commercial value. He lists laptops.com, ... read more ...
Wed 19th December 2012
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.Co earnings to Super Bowl in Go Daddy commercial - Danica Patrick to start in GoDaddy.co commercial in Super Bowl XLVII. .Co will be featured in a Go Daddy Super Bowl commercial for the third year in a row this coming February, Go Daddy and .Co Internet announced today. The .co commercial will featured NASCAR star and Go Daddy girl Danica Patrick. Last year’s .co commercial starred lingerie model Natalia Velez being body painted by Jillian Michaels and Danica Patrick. The first .co Go Daddy commercial teased viewers ... read more ...
 
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Funny: UDRP complainant says registration in bad faith is “not applicable” - Software company files UDRP and says registration in bad faith was “not applicable” to the case. Just when you thought you’d seen it all… Swiss digital publishing software company BlankPage AG has lost a UDRP decision for the domain name keetab.com. Keetab is the name of one of its software products, which appears to have been launched this year. So its UDRP against a domain name registered in 2004 was dead on arrival. But you won’t believe what the company ... read more ...
 
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What domains BASF and 13 other finish users bought this week - BASF among the big companies buying domain names last week. This week’s end user sales report is shorter than usual. That doesn’t mean fewer domains were purchased by end users. It’s likely a combination of two factors. First, more domains are still in the escrow process this week than usual. If they’re in escrow I have no way of figuring out who owns the domains. Second, there were companies with names in which I couldn’t easily figure out if they were ... read more ...
 
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“Internet Villain” Stephen Conroy wants purpose on ICANN ATRT - Australian politician behind censorship plan wants to be part of ICANN review team. A politician who, together with his government, was named “Internet Villain of the Year” in 2009 by an ISP trade group, wants a role on ICANN’s Accountability Transparency Review Team (ATRT). Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband in Australia, submitted his nomination to ICANN on December 14. Conroy is perhaps best known in internet circles for wanting to set up a firewall ... read more ...
Tue 18th December 2012
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.Green gets corner on .eco in new TLD priority draw - .Green draws are better overall, but that doesn’t mean it will come to market first. When ICANN planned “digital archery” to determine the order in which it would review top level domain applications, there was a benefit to applying for a domain other people were applying for: all applications would be moved up in the queue to the top spot in the contention set. You could say the opposite for the prioritization draw that happened yesterday. Basically a draw ... read more ...
 
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Why Swiss International Airlines withdrew the .swiss application - Faced with government approval, airline gives up fight for .swiss. While it should come as no surprise, here’s an official response to Domain Name Wire’s inquiry to why Swiss International Airlines withdrew its top level domain application .swiss: After further discussions with the Swiss Government, we decided to withdraw our application and will support their community application. We will work closely with them in the future. The airline was in a contention ... read more ...
 
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Lowlife losers try to distinction from Sandy Hook domain names - How do you describe someone who tries to profit off the massacre of twenty children? It’s a fact. People register domains related to big news stories. They sometimes park them and sometimes try to sell them. For example, Clint Eastwood’s famous empty chair. Surely, however, people wouldn’t be so vile as to try to profit off of domain names related to last week’s mass shooting in Sandy Hook. Right? Wrong. Consider this Houston man who registered SandyHookMovie.com ... read more ...
 
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2012 Impact Stories: changing of a ensure during Go Daddy - Major changes at the top of the world’s largest domain name registrar. In late 2011 Go Daddy closed on an investment from KKR, Silver Lake, and Technology Crossover Ventures. We all knew changes would result, but how they manifested themselves in the C-suite was a big story this year. When the investment closed last year, Go Daddy founder Bob Parsons stepped down from the CEO position and tapped longtime Go Daddy president Warren Adelman to fill his shoes. The first ... read more ...
Mon 17th December 2012
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Stirring adult a beehive: a many gross UDRP of 2012? - Perhaps the worst UDRP filing of 2012. A single member World Intellectual Property Organization UDRP panel has handed down a ruling in favor of the current owner of Beehive.com. In doing so, panelist Richard W. Page got the decision right. But he also failed. This case is one of the most egregious abuses of the UDRP I’ve ever read, and Page should have found the complainant guilty of reverse domain name hijacking even if the respondent’s attorneys didn’t ask ... read more ...
 
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Go Daddy hirings uncover acquisitions, product growth holding priority - New CEO and executives point to a company growing by acquisition and new products. Last week Go Daddy announced that Blake Irving, former Chief Product Officer at Yahoo, will take over as its CEO next year. Now the company has made two more hires, and all signs point to the company focusing on acquisitions and product development. First is former investment banker David Popowitz. He will be the company’s first Senior Vice President of Corporate Development. He’s ... read more ...
Fri 14th December 2012
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2012 Impact Stories: Frank Schilling becomes a use provider - Schilling shakes up domain parking — and that’s not all he wants to do. Last year domain name investor Frank Schilling signed a domain parking contract with Google and opened up a new domain parking company, Internet Traffic. The service instantly attracted some of the largest domain name investors. There are two key reasons people rushed to try the service: 1. People know, like, and trust Frank. 2. Frank gave a very high revenue share. Although people were willing ... read more ...