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.

Thu 19th April 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Germany’s .De crosses 15 million domain mark - Biggest county code domain name hits a milestone. .De registry DENIC has announced that Germany’s country code domain name has hit a major milestone: 15 million domains currently registered. The milestone was hit yesterday with the registration of floristennetzwerk.de, which translates to “florists’ network” in English. The domain was registered at German domain registrar 11 Internet. .De is the largest country code domain name in terms of registrations. DENIC ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Inventor of a WWW not a fan of new TLDs - Count Tim Berners-Lee among new TLD detractors. Tim Berners-Lee, known as the inventor of the world wide web, isn’t a fan of new top level domains, he told Wired in a press conference at the W3C conference. “My personal perspective is that what we need in the domain system is stability,” he said. “We don’t need new arbitrary new TLDs.” Berners-Lee also argued that there’s plenty of space — e.g. available domains — under current top level domains. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
1-800-PETMEDS says it owns “PetMeds” term - Company files complaint against rival store but loses. When you hear “Pet Meds”, what do you think about? The store 1-800-PetMeds.com or simply “pet medications”. Pet meds is a simple descriptive term, shorthand for pet medications. But online pet pharmacy PetMed Express, Inc., a.k.a. 1-800-PetMeds, says it owns the term “PetMeds” and is going after competitors that use the term in their domains. Amazingly, the company was granted a trademark to “PetMeds” ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Interesting: Oversee.net knew Network Solutions was withdrawal before it bought SnapNames - Company knew it would lose Network Solutions’ expired domain inventory when it bought SnapNames. Shortly after Oversee.net acquired expired domain platform SnapNames in 2007, Network Solutions pulled its inventory from the service in order to team up with Demand Media on competitor NameJet. A commonly held assumption is that Oversee.net had overlooked a change-in-control term (or underestimated the risk of it) when it did its due diligence on acquiring SnapNames. ... read more ...
Wed 18th April 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Dissecting Deloitte’s .deloitte press release - Deloitte’s benefits from .deloitte seem murky at best. Global consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited put out a press release today announcing its application for the .deloitte top level domain. (That the company was applying for .deloitte had been known for a long time already.) I’m still somewhat skeptical about .brand, so I want to go in and dissect the benefits that Deloitte claims it will get from owning .deloitte. I welcome differing opinions. One ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
18 finish user domain sales including IAC and McKinsey - Web giant and consulting firm buy aftermarket domains. Here are 18 notable domain sales over the past week involving end users. All sales are at Afternic unless otherwise noted. A DNW reader wrote it to to me they sold GetCube.com for $2,500 to point-of-sale-on-an-iPad startup Cube. Future Mobility Healthcare Inc, which owns Future-Mobility.com, dropped the hyphen for $1,500. Nautilus Marine Corp also shortened its URL, going from nautilusmarinecorp.com to NautilusCorp.com ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
WirelessPhone.com sole for $355k in 2006. WirelessPhones.com only sole for $70k. - A good deal or a reality check of the domain market? Afternic just brokered the sale of WirelessPhones.com for $70,000. The name rang a bell, so I started searching around. As it turns out, I wrote about an auction for WirelessPhone.com (singular) back in 2006. The domain sold for $355,000 to a domain investor back then. So let’s be honest, here. WirelessPhones.com is a better domain than the singular version. And it just sold for 1/5th of what the singular version ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Jackpot.com domain sells for $500,000 - Jackpot! Moniker sells Jackpot.com for a big payout. A British Virgin Islands company has purchased the domain name Jackpot.com for $500,000. The sale was brokered by Moniker. The domain name has been listed in multiple Moniker live auctions, but the sale occurred after the most recent live auction at DOMAINfest. The updated whois record for the domain shows Palek International Ltd as the new owner. The company appears to have been set up just for this web site. However, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Huffington Post Union of Bloggers loses domain name - The man sticks it to group that was trying to stick it to the man. A group that bills itself as a union for current an former Huffington Post bloggers has lost its main domain name. Huffington Post Union of Bloggers (HPUB) just lost a dispute brought by Huffington Post parent AOL under the uniform domain name dispute resolution policy (UDRP). Basically, AOL said HPUB was cybersquatting. While HPUB says it’s a union, it’s site is actually a news site very similar ... read more ...
Tue 17th April 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
25 aged (and good) domain names to backorder now on NameJet - These good domains are currently in pre-release. I was just looking through some “old” domains currently available for pre-release backordering at NameJet. Here are some worth backordering. I haven’t checked any of these domains for trademarks, though. You should carefully consider trademark issues before buying any domain. Squiggles.com – registered 14 years ago and every other major TLD is registered. A great brandable name. There are a few products with ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
A fascinating demeanour during Go Daddy’s information centers - How the company manages 52 million domains and hosts 5 million web sites. Data Center Knowledge has an interesting story today about Go Daddy’s data center operations. The most amusing part: when the company started it was running servers at founder Bob Parsons’ ranch. It quickly outgrew that. Here are some interesting stats from the story: 52 million domain names 10 billion DNS queries a day Hosts 5 million web sites on 35,000 servers in its data centers More ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
California Toyota play guilty of retreat domain name hijacking - Hooman Toyota of Long Beach chastised by National Arbitration Forum. A California Toyota dealer has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking by a National Arbitration Forum panel. Hooman Toyota of Long Beach, also known as HTL Automotive, Inc, filed a dispute against the owner of Hooman.com. Not only is the domain name registered to a guy named Hooman, but he also registered the domain four years prior to HTL using the name in commerce, according to the ... read more ...
Mon 16th April 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
From $10 domain registration to $4,050 sale in dual weeks; a 400x return - There are still opportunities for hand registering domain names. Getting a 400x return on anything is pretty sweet. Especially when it’s within two weeks. So don’t tell domain investor Duane Higgins that “all the good domains are taken”. Because he just sold a domain he registered on March 31 for $4,050. Last Friday I wrote about the auction for DigitalArchery.com at Sedo. At that time it had one bidder for $1,000. It closed on Saturday for $4,050, thanks ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
ICANN’s new TLD focus snafu: best stories and tweets from around a web - What the web is saying about the ICANN TAS applicant security problem. ICANN has spent quite a bit on PR to get the word out about new top level domains. So it also got quite a bit of attention when it admitted last week that there was a serious security problem with its online application system. Here’s what the web was saying about the misstep: Best headline: “.Oops”: Glitch forces extension for new suffixes (Associated Press) Best tweets: Courtesy of @BerryhillJ. Best ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google files UDRP censure opposite domain purebred in 1991 - Google files complaint against two decade old domain. Google has filed a UDRP against a 21 year old domain name: Gmai.com. How could Google do such a thing? After all, the company was founded in 1998 and Gmail (of which this domain could be considered a typo) wasn’t created until 2004. Well, have a look at the page you’re forwarded to when you type gmai.com into your browser: This misuse of the domain wouldn’t be enough to make the case a slam dunk if it weren’t ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
ICANN delays new tip turn domain focus timeline again - TAS won’t open up tomorrow, and that means the application deadline may be extended again. Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping… ICANN announced this afternoon that it will not reopen the TLD application system (TAS) tomorrow as planned. It thinks it has “fixed the glitch”. But before it reopens TAS it wants to perform more testing and inform all applicants who may have been affected by the bug. [Any applicants or consultants who may be aware of effected ... read more ...
Sat 14th April 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Marchex sued for Skype click-to-call-jacking - Florida satellite company says Marchex is stealing phone calls from it. A Florida satellite TV company has sued Marchex (NASDAQ: MCHX), alleging that the company is hijacking Skype calls of people trying to reach the company (pdf). A-SAT Inc., d/b/a International Satellite Antenna Service, filed the suit in U.S. District Court in Orlando on Thursday. If you have Skype installed on your computer, then you’ve seen how phone numbers are automatically turned into links. ... read more ...
Fri 13th April 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
TAS glitch will call in to doubt digital archery for new TLDs - Will applicants trust results of digital archery? ICANN’s announcement that some sensitive new TLD applicant information could have been accessed is sure to cause more doubt about its planned “digital archery” scheme. The so-called digital archery plan will be used to help determine how top level domain applicants are slotted in queue. Applicants essentially pick a time, login to a special web page, and click a submit button as close to that time as possible. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
A monatin cancer scare? - Strange domain registrations related to natural sweetener. Someone is playing defense with a new sweetener call monatin. Monatin is a natural sweetener that contains no carbohydrate or sugar. And some company is getting ahead of the curve on defensive domain registrations related to Monatin. The following domains were registered through brand protection company Mark Monitor this week: monatincancer.com monatincausescancer.com monatinconspiracy.com monatinsideeffects.com I’m ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DigitalArchery.com to sell on Sedo, a 100x lapse in dual weeks - A smart domain registration — from $10 to at least $1,000 in two weeks. ICANN plans to use “digital archery” to determine in which batch new top level domain applications are included. One savvy domainer seized on the opportunity and registered DigitalArchery.com on March 31. Just another sucker hand registering a domain that will never sell? Hardly. DigitalArchery.com has a $1,000 bid at Sedo. The auction closes tomorrow. A 100x return in just two weeks sounds ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Domaining.com outage leaves domain bloggers in a lurch - Key source of traffic to many domain blogs has gone dark. People take good things for granted until that good thing goes away. Such is the case with Domaining.com, which has been down for over a day. First, my condolences to Francois (who runs the site). Having a site outage sucks. No other word for it. I get a relatively small percentage of my traffic from Domaining.com. But I still noticed a difference in traffic yesterday. I missed the traffic, and I missed Domaining.com. I ... read more ...
Thu 12th April 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
ICM Registry relates for .Sex, .Porn and .Adult - Company applies for three adult top level domains. ICM Registry, the same company that launched the .xxx top level domain last year, announced today that it has applied for three adult related top level domains with ICANN: .SEX, .PORN and .ADULT. Today is the last day companies can apply for new top level domains through ICANN’s program. This is an interesting but savvy move on ICM’s part. ICM Registry founder Stuart Lawley has previously said he didn’t think ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
MediaSet has no one to censure though itself for domain name woes - Italian broadcaster’s comedy of errors for MediaSet.com. Italy’s largest broadcaster, MediaSet, recently lost a UDRP case for the domain name MediaSet.com. But the company apparently got a court in Rome to overrule the UDRP decision. The court apparently ordered the domain transferred and that a fine be paid each day until it’s transferred. I don’t know how MediaSet expects the court to enforce this. The domain is registered to a Delaware man at a register ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
ICANN New TLD focus deadline extended to Apr 20 - Technical problems lead to deadline extension. ICANN has extended the deadline for apply for a new top level domain until April 20. The deadline was supposed to be today. The extension was made due to technical problems with the TLD Application System (TAS). Users started reporting problems last night, and ICANN identified “technical issue” with the software. It’s entirely possible that the technical issue was too many people trying to use the system at once. ... read more ...
Wed 11th April 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Facebook not holding on to all recovered typo domains - Company lets domain expire that was recovered in lawsuit. Facebook has been on the hunt over the past year to capture typos of its domain names. But it’s not holding on to all of them. For example, last year the company filed a massive cybersquatting lawsuit covering hundreds of domains. One of the domains was Facebbbook.com. According to historical whois records, the domain was once controlled by Kevin Ham’s Vertical Axis. After the suit was filed, the domain ... read more ...