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.

Tue 13th November 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Major League Baseball and Miami Heat make domain purchases — and we won’t trust a prices - NBA team with team salary of $88 million buys a domain for $1,358. Last week’s end user domain sales report is a week late because I was traveling this week. Two sports domains traded hands this week at stunningly low prices given who the buyers were. Major League Baseball paid just $900 for TopOfTheOrder.com and while the Miami Heat paid just $1,358 for TheHeatStore.com. TheHeatStore.com isn’t a great domain, so it wasn’t necessarily worth more. It’s possible ... read more ...
 
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Moniker SnapNames year-end auction ends Thursday - Bidders active with two days left. The Moniker SnapNames premium year-end auction ends Thursday, and already 26 of 185 domain names have bids. Of those, 14 have met their reserves. 71 domain names have no reserve at all. The top domain so far is White.net at $7,650 with one bidder. VZG.com has attracted the most bidders with 14 people vying for the domain name. It has met its reserve and the top bid is currently $3,452. QRP.com has a $5,500 bid but hasn’t met its ... read more ...
 
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GoDaddy masks lapsed domain whois to forestall auction circumvention - Contact information made private after domain expires. GoDaddy.com has started masking contact information in whois records of expired domains in an effort to prevent people from circumventing auctions and bothering domain owners. The move, which the company announced today, is aimed at cutting down on email domain investors send to owners of expired domains. Domain investors see an expired domain auction for a domain they want and then contact the owner directly ... read more ...
Mon 12th November 2012
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MyICANN is a large step brazen for clarity during ICANN - System notifies users about new content on ICANN.org. ICANN launched a beta of MyICANN during last month’s meeting in Toronto. The site, hosted at MyICANN.org, provides notifications about new documents published to ICANN’s web site. It sounds simple and it is. It also only alerts you to documents that have been published, and these same documents have always been published to the site. Despite this, I believe MyICANN is a huge boost for transparency at ICANN. Even ... read more ...
 
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Coming soon: heading applications tip off new products - Ready to Go Mobile? What about using domainIQ? Before even launching a product, many companies will file “intent to use” trademark applications to protect their new brands and slogans. A couple domain related companies have filed such applications recently, which may indicate new products they’re working on. First up is Go Daddy, which submitted an application for “Go Mobile”. It’s a fairly broad application covering domain registration, auctions, hosting, ... read more ...
Fri 9th November 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
New gTLD discussion on daub for March - Conference to provide roadmap for new TLD strategy. Momentum Consulting is organizing The Digital Marketing gTLD Strategy Congress to take place in New York City March 11-12, 2013. The event is geared to applicants in this round as well as companies that might want to consider applying for a new top level domain in the future. The conference hopes to attract senior executives responsible for marketing, brand management, internet strategy, communications, digital ... read more ...
 
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.Co auctioning off 150+ domains on Sedo - Reserves start at $500 in .co auction on Sedo. A .co auction kicked off on Sedo Monday with a number of top keyword domain names. 164 domain names are for sale with reserve ranges from $500 to $25,000. You can participate in the auction by going to Sedo.co (that’s clever). Although the auction is billed as a .co auction for startups, the names aren’t necessarily geared to startups. Top domains include: Casinos.co Hot.co Latinos.co Chef.co Maps.co Sedo has a number ... read more ...
 
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Tarheel Take-Out guilty of retreat domain name hijacking over Takeout.com - Food delivery service guilty of abusing proceedings. When Tarheel Take-Out, LLC filed a UDRP against the domain name Takeout.com, it was a pretty good bet that it would be found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking. A three member World Intellectual Property Organization panel has just turned in its decision and has indeed determined that Tarheel Take-Out is guilty of abusing the UDRP process. The panel ruled that the domain name was not similar to a mark in which ... read more ...
Thu 8th November 2012
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NextDoor.com sues owners of NextDoor.cm - NextDoor.cm owner has claimed NextDoor.com stole his business idea. Neighborhood social networking site NextDoor.com has sued the owner of NextDoor.cm — but this isn’t a simple allegation of cybersquatting. The company filed the suit (pdf) in U.S. District Court in San Francisco to put an end to what it says are baseless claims that NextDoor.com stole its business idea from defendant Raj Abhyanker. You can read some details about Abhyanker’s previous claims ... read more ...
 
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Buff.com spared by UDRP panel - Panel rules that buff.com likely registered as a dictionary keyword domain name. A three person World Intellectual Property Organization panel has ruled against Original Buff, S.A. in a case brought against the domain name Buff.com. The complainant sells head wear, and Buff.com has shown sponsored links related to headwear in the past. Buff argued “it is practically impossible to maintain that the Respondent’s choice of buff.com is a pure coincidence and not intentional.” The ... read more ...
Wed 7th November 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
As Obama wins, domains already snapped adult for 2016 battle - Key 2016 domain names not in politicans’ control. With Barrack Obama’s victory last night, we’re assured that a new president will enter the White House in 2016. Naturally, this year’s vice presidential candidates are likely to at least flirt with a run. It’s four years a way, but the candidates are already behind on one important marketing tool — their domain names. Because Joe Biden has been vice president already, the possibility of a 2016 run was known ... read more ...
 
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Inventa tries to invent the possess perspective of UDRP (but loses) - Company makes some big leaps in claiming Inventa.com domain name is cybersquatting. A World Intellectual Property Organization UDRP panel has just handed down a decision over the domain name Inventa.com. The complaint was brought by Inventa International Group. The owner of the domain is an apparently defunct U.S. technology consulting company called Inventa Technologies, Inc. Inventa Technologies registered the domain name in 1995 and set up its company. It filed ... read more ...
 
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Matt Cutts: don’t park your domain right before rising a web site - Cutts recommends taking down a parking page about a month before launching a new site. Google web spam czar Matt Cutts just published a video in which he asks himself a question (rather than taking it from the community): should I keep a domain name parked before I launch a web site? In short, Cutts says no. He works in a reference to eNom’s backpack girl and then goes on to explain that Google has a filter to try to keep parked domain names out of its search results. This ... read more ...
Tue 6th November 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Top Domain Name news stories from October - Domain auctions, lawsuits, and more. Here are the top five news stories on Domain Name Wire from last month, ranked by page views. 1. TRAFFIC domain auction was the most exciting in years – some people disagree, but most of them didn’t read the full article. Nor were they there. 2. ICM registry ups ante in online monopoly fight – The .xxx registry files counterclaims against Manwin. 3. 29 end user domain sales – one of my weekly end user sales reports attracted ... read more ...
 
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Ad-Tech kicks off in New York tomorrow - Conference going on as planned in NYC. I’m currently at 30,000 feet en route to Ad-Tech in New York City. Despite early concerns that the conference would be canceled due to Superstorm Sandy, the event is going on as planned. It will be interesting to see how the attendance is in light of last week’s events and a storm coming in this week. I will be at booth 1818 promoting Yahoo! Bing Network Contextual Ads, powered by Media.net. A couple domain name related companies ... read more ...
Mon 5th November 2012
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Sedo’s Q3 sales down 22% compared to final year - Another slow quarter, but a rebound might be in sight. Sedo’s domain name sales continue to fall short of last year. Today the company released its Q3 domain market study, showing sales of $15,147,216 in the quarter ended this September. Last year in the same quarter the company turned in $19,303,083 in sales, so sales this year in Q3 were 22% lower. Its sales performance in Q2 this year showed a similar 29% drop compared to the same quarter in 2011. However, Q2 ... read more ...
 
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Marchex finish user sales, partial one - 20 big end user domain sales courtesy of Marchex. Marchex’ release of a list of its top 500 domain names sales of all time last week gave data junkies like me fresh data to sort through. I do a weekly end user sales report, and I thought it would be interesting to check which of Marchex’ sales were to end users. I checked all 500 domains and found close to 70 with end users. I suspect the total number of end user purchases was much higher, but I ignored ones I ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Marchex finish user sales, partial 2: Disney, EA, GE, and Google - More Marchex end user sales. Here’s the second round of end user sales courtesy of Marchex. See more Marchex end user sales here. I’ve tried my best to verify the actual buyer using DomainTools’ historical whois records. In some cases it’s tricky because domains may have been purchased through brokers or the whois records had privacy. Disney bought two domain names from Marchex in the 2006 to 2007 timeframe: GameKingdom.com for $40,000 and PiratesOnline.com ... read more ...
Fri 2nd November 2012
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Interview: Marchex CEO Russell Horowitz on Archeo - Marchex will finally focus on its domain name business. Yesterday Marchex announced it was splitting the company in two, forming a new domain-centric business called Archeo. Archeo will manage a portfolio of over 200,000 domain names, many of which were acquired when Marchex bought Yun Ye’s domain portfolio for $164 million back in 2005. Despite its big domain purchase, the company has largely neglected its domain business until now. Yesterday I talked with Marchex ... read more ...
 
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GoDaddy and AOL sued over email patents - Ziplink claims companies’ email services infringe its patents. A Connecticut company sued domain name registrar and hosting company Go Daddy yesterday in federal district court. Ziplink, Inc. alleges that Go Daddy’s email services infringe two of its patents. Go Daddy is in good company on this one. Ziplink also sued AOL yesterday. Its first patent infringement target was Microsoft, in which Ziplink argued that Hotmail violated its patents. The two patents in ... read more ...
 
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ICANN publishes 29 change requests to new tip turn domains - VeriSign, DotConnectAfrica among applicants requesting changes. A lot of new top level domain name applicants have requested changes to their new top level domain applications. As of 29 October, ICANN has received 138 change requests and approved and posted 29. You can now see which applications have posted change requests by going to the current application status web page. Scroll to the right and there’s a column labeled “application updates”. Some of the ... read more ...
Thu 1st November 2012
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“Free” .xxx domains with PornWords promotional credit - .xxx registry giving advertising credit to each registrant. ICM Registry announced this morning that it is offering a $75 advertising credit to existing .xxx domain owners and anyone who registers a domain by January 31. The advertising credit can be used toward ads on the company’s search.xxx site. I’ll call the search.xxx advertising program PornWords, because it’s basically like Google Adwords for adult entertainment sites. (Granted, they won’t call it ... read more ...
 
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For new TLD companies, round finally gets rolling - Applicant talks revenue and jobs — two things mostly missing from new TLD companies so far. Finally. After years and years of false starts, it looks like the business engine behind new top level domains is starting to fire up. That’s certainly the case with the only publicly traded pure-play new top level domain company: Top Level Domain Holdings Inc. (TLDH). The company put out a press release late yesterday explaining what it thinks will happen over the coming ... read more ...
 
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Adam Dicker’s video blog is value checking out - A great resource for new and old domainers alike. I’m not a big fan of video, especially when the message can be conveyed in writing. It’s why I always read the transcripts at DomainSherpa instead of watching the videos. It’s a lot faster. That said, I think Adam Dicker’s new video blog is worth checking out. Dicker has a long history in the domain industry. He’s best known as the owner of DNForum. But he also worked at iREIT and Go Daddy. Each video covers ... read more ...
 
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VeriSign shares burst $4 in 15 mins, association issues matter about .com contract - VeriSign details .com contract renewal and its current status. Last week VeriSign made the surprising announcement that The Department of Commerce was evaluating the pricing in its .com registry contract renewal. Its shares plunged from $46 to around $36. Shares have jumped up about $4 in the past 15 minutes or so (around 2 pm EDT), shortly after the company just put out a statement about the renewal, reiterating that its role as the .com registry provider is not ... read more ...