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.

Fri 6th January 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Righthaven.com sells for $3,300 - Domain name used by “copyright troll” auctioned off for $3,300. Righthaven.com, the domain name that once belonged to the scourge of the internet, has sold in a public auction at SnapNames for $3,300. The domain name was sold to help cover a court ordered settlement against Righthaven by one of its many victims. Righthaven purchased copyrights and then sued blogs and forums that had posted the copyrighted material, often demanding their domain name to be turned ... read more ...
Thu 5th January 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Google Chrome might have been demoted, though still has a initial ad - Chrome still a top ad and Google.com itself hasn’t been demoted. So Google demoted Google.com/chrome in its web rankings after the pay-to-post fiasco. Or did it? If you search for “browser” in Google right now you probably won’t find Google.com/chrome anywhere on the first page. Except for an ad. The first ad, as a matter of fact. Sure, Google’s Chrome unit probably has to pay out of its budget for the Adwords it buys, but isn’t that playing with house ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Social network buys Dudu.com domain name for $1 million - Dudu.com sells for an incredible $1 million. Wow. Social network DUDU has paid a whopping $1 million for the domain name Dudu.com, upgrading its domain name from GoDudu.com. The site “uses unique translation technology to allow its users from around the world to communicate with each other in their native languages”, according to a press release. The deal was brokered by domain name marketplace Sedo and took three months of negotiations. A press release from Sedo ... read more ...
 
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United Domains gets Punk’d - Members of ICANN community and competing domain registrars find themselves as new United Domains account holders. Someone is having a laugh at United Domains’ expense. Over the past few days an unknown perpetrator has set up roughly 500 empty accounts at domain name registrar United Domains using email addresses of people active in ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee and at various competing domain name registrars. Each of these people received a welcome email ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Go Daddy Sells 39k aftermarket domains final month including Honest.com - Honest.com highlights strong month for GoDaddy’s aftermarket platform. GoDaddy’s monthly “Domain Market Report” is out, and the company reports selling 38,659 domain names last month through its domain aftermarket platform. The top sale was for Honest.com at over $100,000. The seller was Anything.com. Other notable sales include: FirstAvenue.com $25,000 CoolTool.com $18,500 Spacesuits.com $18,000 IndianJewelry.com $16,005 Bizable.com $15,600 (this was on the ... read more ...
 
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Ray Ozzie is $33,000 Cocomo.com buyer - Mystery domain buyer is creator of Lotus Notes. I’ve been trying to figure out who bought Cocomo.com ever since Sedo brokered it back in October for $33,000. It appears we now have the answer. Lotus Notes creator and former Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie is working on a new startup called…Cocomo. And he’s finally put a little something up on Cocomo.com. It’s been hard to track down who was behind the domain name because of an originally false ... read more ...
 
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EA loses domain brawl for SSX.com for arriving SSX launch - Video game maker unsuccessful in challenge to SSX.com domain name. Electronic Arts releases a reinvention of the SSX snowboarding video game next month, but it has failed to convince an arbitration panel that it deserves the domain name SSX.com. The domain name was purchased by Abstract Holdings International LTD as part of a $200,000 domain name portfolio purchase last October. For a brief period of time the domain name was parked with ads related to video games. EA ... read more ...
Wed 4th January 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sedo ideally executes trade uncover marketing - Major props to Sedo for a cool promotion at AdTech. I’ve written several “Domain Dunce” posts over the past week. Perhaps a “domain accolades” in in order. In November Sedo attended AdTech in New York City and executed what I believe to be a perfect trade show promotion. At the same time it promoted the value of buying a good domain name to thousands of ad industry professionals. The basis of the promotion was a “guess the value” contest. People who ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
2011 Domain Dunce: Vatican’s domain name misunderstanding - The Vatican says someone else bought Vatican.xxx when it was actually reserved by the registry. Catholics + Porn = headlines. Even if the information is wrong. That’s the lesson from recent misinformation from the Vatican about Vatican.xxx and the ensuing news reports about it. Rev. Federico Lombardi commented on Vatican radio, “This domain is not available because it has been acquired by someone else, but not the Vatican,” according to Reuters. The domain ... read more ...
 
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Zooz uses 1% of the appropriation to buy Zooz.com - A start-up spends 1% of its recent funding round on a domain name and other interesting domain name purchases. It’s time for the weekly roundup of end user domain name purchases. Let’s start with in-app mobile payments startup Zooz. The company snagged $1.5 million in funding in November. How better to use the money than to buy Zooz.com? Actually, it only had to use 1% of the money to buy the domain for $15,000 at Sedo. The company’s domain name to date has ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DomainTools gets dual trademarks - Domain and web hosting data company gets trademarks for “DomainTools”. Remember when DomainTools was called (the much less desirable) whois.sc? It was shorter, but running a domain name business on a Seychelles ccTLD is no bueno. It changed its name in 2006 to DomainTools and today was awarded two trademarks on its brand. Trademark registration number 4,079,040 covers “DomainTools” for several uses, including “Downloadable computer software for providing ... read more ...
 
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CAX “blogger” domain sales newsletter deadline is tomorrow - Lots of extra publicity for your domain name in next week’s newsletter. Francois Carrillo, the guy behind Domaining.com, has a cool promotion going on for his next domain sales newsletter — and it’s a win-win for you. The idea is that he’s going to share the commission from sales in his January 9 newsletter with domain bloggers. So why should this be interesting to you, the non-blogger? Well, if you have a name to sell then this next newsletter is the one ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Simon & Schuster buys rights to Marc Ostrofsky’s Get Rich Click book - Famous domain investor sells his book to major publishing house. Simon Schuster has purchased the rights to Marc Ostrofsky’s Get Rich Click book, sending him on new PR rounds. This means more evangelizing about the domain name industry. Yesterday Ostrofsky was interviewed by Fox Business in a segment called “How to Make Money From Domain Names” (see below). Ostrofsky is perhaps most famous for selling Business.com for $7.5 million (some in equity) and helping ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Braden Pollock joins ScienceFiction.com as trade explodes - ScienceFiction.com tops 1 million monthly pageviews and reshuffles its ownership. Domain name investor Braden Pollock is now part owner of ScienceFiction.com, LLC, joining Patrick Ruddell in the online site that wants to be the “TechCrunch of science fiction”. I caught up with Ruddell today to understand what this means for his business and how the site is doing. Ruddell said that he and Pollock bought out the previous partners, so now both own and equal share ... read more ...
Tue 3rd January 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain profession Ari Goldberger featured in NBC Miami story about lapsed MiamiPolice.com domain - Goldberger featured in TV news story about MiamiPolice.com. Domain name attorney Ari Goldberger of ESQwire.com was featured in an NBC Miami story last week about MiamiPolice.com. The Miami Police let the domain name expire a couple years ago and it was picked up by someone who now parks the domain with DomainSponsor. While I’m not sure why NBC Miami just did this story now (slow news week for the holidays?), it’s good to see Goldberger was interviewed for the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Top Domain Name Wire stories of December - From .xxx to Google to expired domains. Last week I did my obligatory “top stories of 2011” post. But let’s not forget that there was a month of December, too. Here are the top stories on Domain Name Wire last month, ranked by page views. 1. It’s go-time for .xxx as www.Buy.xxx commercials make a buzz – it should come as no surprise that .xxx is the top story (and more) of December as the registry opened up for general registration. 2. Where to find the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan can keep the domain - Local hotel can keep its domain name — which may seem trivial given the day-to-day challenges of operating a business in Kabul. Looking for a weekend getaway to Kabul, Afghanistan? Perhaps you’d like to stay at the Intercontinental Kabul, given Intercontinental’s international reputation. But the hotel in Kabul hasn’t been licensed by Intercontinental since Russia invaded Afghanistan in 1979. That made for a rather interesting domain name dispute brought ... read more ...
Mon 2nd January 2012
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2011 Domain Dunce award: elephant sport and domain names - Elephant hunting and viral internet causes. Let’s keep our Domain Dunce awards going with Bob Parsons’ elephant shooting video and the aftermath. In March, GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons posted a video of him shooting a “problem elephant” in Zimbabwe. The video went viral after someone posted it to Change.org and asked people to boycott GoDaddy. PETA joined the party, too, transferring its domains away from GoDaddy and admonishing Parsons. There are a few things ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Gold.biz attracts 16,000 EUR bid during Sedo - .Biz domain glistens at Sedo. The prices of gold is sky high right now, and a golden domain is about to sell at Sedo. Gold.biz has a 16,000 euro bid and is scheduled to close on January 6. That’s a heck of a price for a .biz domain, regardless of the keyword. At 16,000 EUR gold.biz would be the highest .biz domain name sale since g.biz sold for $30,000 in August. To participate in the auction you’ll need to complete Sedo’s Premium Certification. The top auction ... read more ...
Sun 1st January 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Monte Cahn gets a justice feat as decider denies outline judgment - Oversee.net’s motion for summary judgment is denied. The court presiding over Monte Cahn vs. Oversee.net has given a victory to the former Moniker CEO in its final act of 2011. The court denied (pdf) Oversee.net’s motion for summary judgment, in which Oversee.net asked the judge to toss out Cahn’s claim of breach of contract over an incentive plan. A defendant’s burden for a motion for summary judgment is very high, but some of the judge’s rationale in his ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
First dual .xxx UDRP disputes filed - First of many .xxx UDRP cases filed. The first two uniform domain name dispute resolution (UDRP) cases for .xxx domain names have been filed. As with any new TLD launch, you can expect many more in the months to come. The honors for the first case go to VIPINDIRIM for the domain name markafoni.xxx. The case was filed December 29 with the World Intellectual Property forum. Runner up is a dispute at National Arbitration Forum filed December 30 for HEB.xxx. Although ... read more ...
Thu 29th December 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google bats .740 opposite YouTube typosquatter - Google wins 37 of 50 typo domain names. Google has won rights to 37 typo domain names of its YouTube brand, but it won’t be happy with the results. That’s because the National Arbitration Forum panelist who decided the case also determined that the typosquatter could keep 13 infringing domain names, including youtubr.com and youtbue.com. Google filed the case against the owner of 50 domain names that all forwarded to “survey” sites that mimicked YouTube. These ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
USDA, NHRA and EverBank put domain names underneath a Christmas tree - Which end users put domain names under the Christmas tree this week? Here’s Domain Name Wire’s weekly list. Before getting to this week’s end user domain sales report, I wanted to report an observation about Afternic. For those that argue that Afternic only sells its own domains, it appears 40% of the reported .com sales this week were sold on behalf of clients. That’s pretty darn high. OK, on to the sales (all sales at Afternic unless otherwise noted)… U.S. ... read more ...
 
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Apple “wins”, though plays whac-a-mole with counterfeiters - Company wins domain name dispute, but it won’t do the company much good. Apple has won a domain name dispute against what it alleges to be an outfit selling counterfeit Apple products. But it might have to continue chasing the perpetrators. In May the company won a domain name dispute for apple-downloads.com and apple-oem.com. The company alleged at the time that both domain names were used to sell what were likely pirated our counterfeit copies of its software. Fast ... read more ...
 
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GoDaddy releases matter about “spike” in domain transfers due to SOPA - Company says outbound transfers are up due to prior support of controversial bill. Responding to inquiries from Domain Name Wire and other news outlets, domain name registrar GoDaddy.com has issued a statement about an increase in domain transfer activity due to the company’s prior support of Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA): “We have observed a spike in domain name transfers, which are running above normal rates and which we attribute to Go Daddy’s prior support ... read more ...