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 21st September 2011
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End User Domain Buys from Washington Post and Entrepreneur - Two large publishers buy domain names. The Washington Post Company and Entrepreneur Media both bought domain names this week. Here’s a look at these and a handful of other end user sales at Afternic over the past week. The Washington Post bought expressnow.com for $1,188. After buying FullBeauty.com for $4,290 two months ago, Redcats USA picked up FullBeauty.NET for $1,856.80. Online document signing solution RightSignature bought pleasesign.com for $1,000, signatureonline.com ... read more ...
 
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Overstock.com Continues O.tld Purchases with O.info - O.info latest domain name acquisition by online retailer. Overstock.com has acquired O.info from domain name registry Afilias, adding to its collection of o.tld names. The company has gone all in with O.co, and in fact its press release announcing O.info is titled “O.co (aka Overstock.com) Acquires O.info Domain for New Consumer Portal”. It’s clear that the company is moving forward with its rebranding efforts. It previously picked up O.biz for use as a b2b ... read more ...
 
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ad:tech London Kicks Off - Show heads to London for two day vent. The London edition of ad:tech got underway this morning with a discussion with Nike brand communications director, global football Ed Elworthy and EuroRSCG CEO Russ Lidstone. The event runs through Wednesday at the National Hall in Olympia in London. Compared to the U.S. ad:tech shows, exhibitors at the London show have a definite slant toward mobile advertising. There are about 170 exhibitors the show. If you’re at the conference ... read more ...
Tue 20th September 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Amazon.com Company Quidsi Launches YoYo.com - Quidsi follows up Wag.com with YoYo.com. Today Quidsi, which is owned by Amazon.com, launched its latest store: online toy store YoYo.com. The choice of domain name follows Quidsi’s pattern of launching vertical stores on great domain names. It all started with Diapers.com, then moved to Soap.com (toiletries) and Wag.com (pets). YoYo.com launches with over 20,000 toys, video games, books, and collectibles. Similar to its other stores, YoYo offers free 1-2 day delivery ... read more ...
 
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Vertive Buys CouponCodes.com Domain Name - Austin company buys another killer domain name. Austin, Texas online savings company Vertive has acquired the domain name CouponCodes.com for an undisclosed sum. Vertive is now stranger to the power of domain names. It operates Offers.com (it also owns Offer.com) and company founder Steve Schaffer sometimes attends domain name conferences. According to an article in The Austin American-Statesman, Schaffer has been pursuing the domain name for several years. The seller ... read more ...
 
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Justice Department: Full Tilt Poker Was Ponzi Scheme - U.S. government says Full Tilt Poker paid out money to investors that belonged to players. Earlier this year the U.S. government confiscated Full Tilt Poker’s domain name FullTiltPoker.com. The government later gave the domain name back, but now there’s more bad new for the company — or should I say its players? Now the U.S. government has basically called it a giant ponzi scheme. The company allegedly didn’t hold onto all of its players’ cash balances and ... read more ...
Mon 19th September 2011
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Oversee.net Discusses Layoffs and Its Future - Company co-president explains Oversee.net’s business shift. News of Oversee.net’s layoffs didn’t come as a huge surprise last week. This sort of shuffling the deck is common when there’s turnover at the top. I caught up with Scott Morrow, co-President of Oversee.net, to find out what’s going on at the company. Morrow told me that Oversee.net now has three strategic focus areas. First, it will leverage its core assets of DomainSponsor and DOMAINfest Global. ... read more ...
 
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Panelist Calls Clause in Name.com Registration Agreement “Extraordinary” - Panelist finds it odd that Name.com makes domain registrant responsible for its own “coming soon” pages. UDRP panelist Warwick A. Rothnie has called a clause in Name.com’s registration agreement related to parked pages an “extraordinary arrangement”. The clause basically says that Name.com will put up ads on your recently registered domain name but that the registrant is responsible for making sure the ads don’t violate third party intellectual property ... read more ...
 
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Lots of Bids With One Day to Go in Moniker Auction - Moniker auction attracting lots of bids with one more day left. 28 domain names in Moniker’s DOMAINfest Meet-Up NYC auction have received bids with still one day to go, although only 14 domain names have met their reserves. The auction is taking place on SnapNames. The top domain to meet its reserve so far is Teeb.com at $5,250 with 4 bidders. Hardcore.com has a bid of $125,000 but it has a reserve of up to $250,000. Some of the domains that have met their reserves ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Domain Name Drives 78% of FreeConferenceCall.com Signups - Descriptive domain name drives 78% of business for FreeConferenceCall.com. Most Domain Name Wire readers understand the power of a descriptive domain name. Here’s more proof: the founder of FreeConferenceCall.com says his domain name drives 78% of his signups. David Erickson explained this to the L.A. times: With not much cash to start his business, let alone buy publicity, Erickson knew the service’s name had to be perfect. At 3 a.m. Oct. 26, 2001, after hours ... read more ...
 
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Breaking: NBC Transfers Women.com to Done! Ventures in Lawsuit Settlement - Busted seven figure domain name deal comes to resolution. It looks like the end result of a legal battle over Women.com has ended with the transfer of the domain name to Done! Ventures. Done! Ventures thought it had a deal to purchase Women.com and Women.net from NBC Universal for $1 million last year. But then NBC allegedly backed out when its then President CEO Jeff Zucker apparently vetoed the deal. Done sued NBC to get it to go through with the sale. It later ... read more ...
 
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ICANN Releases New TLD Guidebook - ICANN releases yet another — but not necessarily final — applicant guidebook for new gTLDs. As I promised in a post yesterday, ICANN has released another version of the new top level domain name guidebook today. Although many will look at this is the final guidelines, there’s still room for changes. ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom writes: ICANN will provide further refinements to the Guidebook as warranted. In addition, information will be given on the process for providing ... read more ...
Sun 18th September 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
ICANN To Release New TLD Applicant Guidebook and Site on Monday - Monday is a big day for new top level domain names as latest applicant guidebook is released. ICANN will release the next (final?) applicant guidebook for new top level domain names as well as a new micro site dedicated to the new top level domain name program tomorrow. The site will be hosted at newgtlds.icann.org. At first the site will include information for people and entities interested in applying for new top level domain names, including links to the guidebook ... read more ...
Sat 17th September 2011
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Soci.al Domain Hack Sells for $50,000 - Soci.al sells to Mark Monitor client. The domain name hack Soci.al has sold for $50,000 according to host.al, which provided a screenshot of the Escrow.com transaction to Domain Name Wire as proof. The Albania country code domain name now sits on brand protection company Mark Monitor’s name servers, although it does not resolve. Moniker sold Social.com for $2.6 million in June to an undisclosed buyer. The domain name may now belong to Salesforce.com, although a ... read more ...
Fri 16th September 2011
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Domain Registrars and Web Hosts Sued Over Email Patent - Big registrars find themselves defendants in patent lawsuit. GoDaddy, Network Solutions, and Rackspace are among the defendants names in a new patent lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division. The suit (pdf) was filed by MXGO Technologies Inc, a company who’s only hits on Google involve patents and lawsuits. The Marshall court is a popular court for filing patent lawsuits. MXGO is the assignee of United States Patent ... read more ...
Thu 15th September 2011
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Verizon Gets CitiBank Trademark Domain? - Cut and past error shows Verizon Trademark Services winning CityCard.com UDRP. We’ve seen a number of UDRP decisions that fall victim to cut-and-paste mistakes. The latest comes courtesy of a National Arbitration Forum panelist who copied the header from his previous UDRP case into the new one. The new case is Citigroup Inc. v. Yongki over CityCard.com. Citigroup won the case, but you would know it from the header. The header says the case was Verizon Trademark ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
58 Tickets Remain for Next Month’s TRAFFIC Conference - Domainers to converge in Florida next month. Rick Schwartz sent out an email this morning announcing that only 58 tickets remain for the TRAFFIC conference in Fort Lauderdale next month. The conference takes place October 16-19 at the Ritz-Carlton. Single tickets are currently available for $1,795. The hotel is sold out on Tuesday night and limited rooms are available for the other nights of the conference. I’m not surprised by the demand for tickets given that ... read more ...
 
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PIR Survey Says .Org Trusted, But Let’s Look during a Numbers - .Org is more trusted by the public. Public Interest Registry released the results of a 1,000 person survey today about trust and top level domain names. Not surprisingly, .org was named the “most “trusted” site for information” more often than other top level domain names. If a company or organization were to publish identical information across .org, .com, .info, and .net, 41% named .org as most trusted and 22% .com. 25% said they trust all domains equally. That ... read more ...
 
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Oversee.net Lays Off 13% of Staff - Company lays off staff after executive transitions Los Angeles, CA domain name company Oversee.net has fired 13% of its workforce. The company just announced the layoffs with the following statement: As part of its plan to address new growth opportunities, Oversee.net has realigned its work force resulting in a staff reduction of 13 percent. These moves, along with pending new hires, will allow the company to leverage core assets to innovate more effectively, improve ... read more ...
 
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Go Daddy Responds Over Compromised Hosting Accounts - Redirects inserted into .htaccess files of 445 hosting accounts. Internet security company Securi wrote a blog post yesterday noting that a number of web sites hosted with Go Daddy’s had been compromised. According to Securi, the .htaccess file on these sites had compromised and a conditional redirect was inserted. Site visitors coming from a set of pre-determined search engines were automatically forwarded to a malware site. I reached out to Go Daddy to find out ... read more ...
 
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Did Michael Arrington Register UnpaidBlogger.com 2 Days Before Wearing His Infamous Shirt? - Domain name registered on September 10, just two days before Arrington’s TechCrunch Disrupt appearance. When TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt on Monday he sported a now much-talked about t-shirt. Arrington, who just left TechCrunch because of potential conflicts of interest with his CrunchFund, wore a shirt that read “unpaid blogger”. These days anything that grabs news attention like Arrington’s shirt will be registered ... read more ...
Wed 14th September 2011
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Owner of Screams.com Sues to Halt Transfer - Haunted house files suit to stop transfer and asks that trademark be canceled. The owner of the domain name Screams.com has filed a lawsuit (pdf) to halt the imminent transfer of his domain name following an adverse UDRP ruling. Last week I wrote about how Screams.com owner Cutting Edge Haunted House in Fort Worth, Texas, lost a UDRP to another haunted house in the area. Cutting Edge registered the domain name 14 years before the UDRP case was filed. In addition to ... read more ...
 
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Spotlight on 13 End User Domain Name Sales This Past Week - From Rediff to a company in Santa Claus, Indiana, end users bought a number of domain names this week. As I report every week, here’s a look at end users who recently bought domain names through Afternic. Ho Ho Holdings, which owns a number of properties and entertainment destinations in Santa Claus, Indiana, bought GiftfromSanta.com for $1,288. Rediff.com bought KnowledgeCentre.com for $4,388. Last week it bought GoodKnowledge.com for $1,488. GovDelivery, which ... read more ...
 
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“Book” + Social Networking = Trademark Delay - Facebook asks trademark office for more time to oppose trademarks. If you want the U.S. Patent and Trademark office to approve a trademark for your social networking site that includes the word “book”, you can expect a challenge. That’s because Facebook is repeatedly filing requests with the trademark office to extend the time it has to oppose for good cause these trademark registrations. For example, there’s dart player social network Dartbook. Facebook filed ... read more ...
 
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Demand Media is Down 55% from Its IPO, But It’s Not Alone - Majority of 2011 U.S. IPOs are under water. If you managed to buy Demand Media’s stock at the $17 offering price in January, you’ve taken a 55% hit. The stock closed today at $7.62. More likely if you bought on the first day you paid north of $20 for the stock. But is this fall because the company is weak or is it just a case of bad timing? (or good for those that got to sell there shares in January?) Data tracker Dealogic says 63% of U.S. initial public offerings ... read more ...