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.

Mon 23rd May 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google Adsense for Domains Now Allows Template Selection - Domain owners can pick template for domains on self-serve system. Google Adsense for Domains’ self-service system now allows users to select a template for their domain names. The service has been auto testing alternative templates with various pictures for many months, but users didn’t have control over which templates were selected. There are generic templates (such as “Daisy”) and category templates such as banking, legal, education, and business. A text-only ... read more ...
 
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Hey Michael, There Are a Number of Variables during Play in Domain Parking Revenue - There’s a reason each parking company performs differently. Alright, it’s time for me to jump in. Yesterday Elliot Silver wrote about parking companies and what they bring to the industry. Then today Michael Berkens wrote a post (rebuttal?) as well. The discussion is stoked by Frank Schilling’s new parking company. A few things up front: 1. I think it’s great that Frank is opening up his platform to others. 2. This article isn’t meant as disrespect to ... read more ...
Sun 22nd May 2011
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ICANN: We Might Still Be Able To Approve New TLDs in June - Organization says it still might be able to move ahead with program next month. ICANN’s Board thinks it might still be able to approve the new top level domain name program at the beginning of next month’s meeting in Singapore. The approval was put into doubt after comments from government officials. But ICANN and the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) just released a joint statement about another “productive meeting” between the two of them. The statement ... read more ...
Fri 20th May 2011
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DomainAdvisors Completes Record Breaking Domain Sale With 33.com - Domain broker reports record two digit domain name. DomainAdvisors, a division of PPX International, just announced a record sales price for a two digit domain name. The group brokered the sale of 33.com for $358,000. I searched a couple databases and cannot find any two digit domains that have sold for more, although there are some two letter domains that have eclipsed this amount. Tessa Holcomb, Group General Manager for PPX International, says that the company ... read more ...
Thu 19th May 2011
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CitizenHawk Gets Into Corporate Domain Management - Company expands beyond recovering typosquatted domain names. CitizenHawk is expanding from its roots as a typosquatting domain name recovery service. Today the company announced two new services: corporate domain management and online brand monitoring. The corporate domain management product puts it in competition with companies such as MarkMonitor and CSC. It includes an online domain management system, registration, and private registrations. The online monitoring ... read more ...
 
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LinkedIn IPO Domain Gets Its Day in a Spotlight - LinkedIn stock pops on open and related domain is surely getting a lot of traffic. The number one trending search on Google right now? “LinkedIn IPO”. And it’s no wonder, with the LNKD stock price doubling on its first day. The sign of a new tech bubble? Pent up demand for tech IPOs? I don’t know, but I’m not buying it. Curious about this hot search term, I noticed that LinkedInIPO.com is registered. It’s currently a parked page that seems to be forwarding ... read more ...
 
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Go Daddy Has Donated $4.2 Million To Charity Already This Year - Domain registrar tops last year’s donations, and it’s only May. Through just five months of 2011, domain name registrar Go Daddy has already donated more to charity than it did all of last year. Go Daddy’s philanthropic organization Go Daddy Cares has donated $4.2 million to charity so far this year, compared to $3.4 million all of last year, the company announced today. One of the biggest beneficiaries is Hope for Haiti, recipient of $1 million in donations ... read more ...
Wed 18th May 2011
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DancePartner.com Fails to Find Dance Partner in UDRP - Company asks panel for domain registered in 1999 based on a generic mark it first used in commerce in 2003. The owner of DancePartner.com has failed to find a dancing mate in DancePartners.com through a UDRP. DancePartner.com owner Dancesoft filed the complaint on the basis of a trademark it filed in 2003, many years after the respondent’s 1999 registration of the DancePartners.com domain name. Beyond the fact that DancePartners.com is perfectly generic and can ... read more ...
 
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A New VeriSign Slogan? - Company files two trademark applications. It looks like VeriSign might be working on a new slogan for its business. The company just filed two “intent to use” trademark applications for its domain name business: Connecting the World Between the Dots and The World Is Connecting Between the Dots. They’re both clever slogans and I’m guessing they haven’t chosen which one to go with. Of course as a domain person I wonder which dots are being connected. When ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
The Onion Jokes About John Edwards and Domain Names - Gotta remember to register that domain name for future presidential run. Satirical news outlet The Onion recently published a joke tying politicians and domain names. The News in Brief article is titled “John Edwards Pays $30 To Register Edwards2016.com Just In Case“. It pokes fun at the disgraced politician, suggesting he registered a domain for the 2016 presidential race “just in case”. The blurb quotes Edwards as saying “It’s only 30 bucks, so I figured, ... read more ...
 
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How ICANN Will Spend $67 Million of Your Money - ICANN expects to spend $67 million in the year starting July 1. That’s if the new gTLD program doesn’t kick off. Since you, the readers of this blog, ultimately provide ICANN’s funding, it’s important to know how your money is being spent. So you should take some time to look through and comment on the FY12 Operating Plan and Budget (pdf). FY 2012 starts July 1, 2011. ICANN plans to spend $69.7 million in FY 2012 (including depreciation and bad debt expenses), ... read more ...
 
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Letting Your Domain Name Expire Could Lead to Identity Theft - …or other shenanigans. OK, the headline is a bit sensational. But the truth is if you let a domain name expire that is tied to any sort of online accounts, you’re putting yourself at extreme risk. Why the soapbox? I just finished reading this post from Ben Reyes about how he used an expired domain to get access to someone’s entire history of Gmail, Google calendar, contacts, etc., and this gave him a key to unlock the person’s other online accounts like ... read more ...
 
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New York Real Estate Agents Squabble Over Domain Names - Real estate agent explains his domain name strategy including six figure domain purchase. Here’s an interesting domain name story out of New York. Two competing real estate firms are fighting each other over domain names after one bought the name of the others’ principle. This story in Curbed Hamptons is quite insightful for a non-tech publication. It points out that Susan Breitenbach could have avoided having Saunders Real Estate register her name SusanBreitenbach.com ... read more ...
Tue 17th May 2011
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Sedo Sued for $10 Million for Failing to Enforce Women.com Transaction with NBC Universal - Domain broker added to suit over failed Women.com transaction. DONE! Ventures has added domain name broker Sedo to its lawsuit over a failed transaction for Women.com. DONE! sued NBC Universal last year after it alleged the media giant failed to follow through with a transaction to sell Women.com and Women.net for $1 million. According to the suit, NBC Universal’s CEO at the time Jeff Zucker vetoed the deal after it had been agreed to. Sedo broker Jeff Gabriel ... read more ...
 
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VeriSign and 25 Others Ask ICANN for “Packaged” IDN TLD Applications - Request asks for bundling of multiple transliterations and translations of new gTLDs in applications. VeriSign is amongst 26 signatories on a letter (pdf) to ICANN requesting “packaged” top level domain name applications. The group writes that “there is no mechanism in the Guidebook that will support applicants that wish to offer multiple script versions of their community or product, whether ASCII or IDN, to serve the diverse needs of non-English and non-Latin ... read more ...
 
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Oversee.net Gets Updated Domain Parking Patent - Company granted continuation patent for parked domain optimization. Today Oversee.net, parent company of domain parking company DomainSponsor, was granted U.S. patent #7,945,662 for “Internet domain keyword optimization” (pdf). This patent was a continuation of previously granted patent #7,281,042 filed in 2004. The patent covers a number of parked domain name optimization techniques. Here’s the abstract: A computerized system and method for optimizing contents ... read more ...
 
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Are Investors or Inviduals Driving .Co Registrations? - Data shows that bulk of domain registrations are not from domainers. Are domain investors or individual site owners and end users driving most of the .co domain registrations? I just got some data from the .co registry that suggests it’s the latter. Registrants with 50 or more .co domain names comprise only 1% of the total registrant base. What’s more, these people only account for about 10% of all domain names registered. That means people with fewer than 50 ... read more ...
 
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Peruvian Broadcaster Loses Case for RPP.com - Broadcast company can’t have three letter domain name, panel rules. Peru broadcast company GRUPORPP S.A., which has an online news portal at rpp.com.pe, has lost an arbitration case in which it fought for the domain name RPP.com. According to the panel decision the company managed to get a trademark for RPP.com in Peru back in 2001, which is quite scary given that it didn’t own the domain name. Although the company has been around since 1963, it didn’t say whether ... read more ...
 
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“Cooking Games” in Spanish Sells for $90,000 on Sedo - Spanish domain name is top sale for the week at domain broker. Domain broker Sedo didn’t turn in any six figure sales this week, but they still have some good ones worth mentioning. First, they sold juegosdecocina.com — which means “cooking games” in Spanish — for a nice $90,000. Last year CookingGames.com sold for $350,000. Just behind that was the three letter domain ese.com for $85,000. Solar Power company Cleanergy.com paid a hefty $50,000 to upgrade ... read more ...
 
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.Co Scores Another Big Win With Amazon.com - Registry sells four premium domains to giant etailer. Amazon.com has purchased a.com, z.co, k.co, and cloud.co from the .co registry, TechCrunch reported this evening. .Co Internet has previously sold other one letter domain names, including o.co (sold to Overstock for $350,000) and e.co (auctioned off for $81,000 in a charity auction). Other allocated one letter domains include t.co for twitter and x.co for Go Daddy. I wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon uses a.co ... read more ...
Mon 16th May 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.XXX Domain Pricing From $75 - One year registrations will likely start at about $75; DomainMonster releases pricing. When .xxx domain names get past the sunrise and landrush period, you can expect general availability pricing to run from about $75 a year, just above the wholesale pricing from ICM Registry. Today DomainMonster announced its pricing. For general availability a .xxx domain will cost you $99.99, but bulk customers who register 25 or more “years” at once (e.g. 13 domains for 2 ... read more ...
 
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Google Acquires ChromeBook.com and ChromeBooks.com Domain Names - When company acquired domains is unknown; neither domain resolves yet. It appears that Google has purchased the domain names ChromeBook.com and ChromeBooks.comm but for some reason they aren’t using the domains yet for their recently-announced product. On May 15 both domain names’ whois records switched to DNStination, Inc., an affiliate of brand protection company MarkMonitor. Google has used DNStination in the past for domain name registrations it wanted to ... read more ...
 
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Oversee.net and ICA Blast ICANN on Domain Parking Mention in New TLD Guidebook - Equating domain parking with “social costs” should be struck from guidebook, organizations say. Both Oversee.net and Internet Commerce Association have sent strongly worded comments to ICANN regarding a new provision inserted in the latest new top level domain guidebook. As I wrote about in April, the latest guidebook asks applicants to answer: What operating rules will you adopt to eliminate or minimize social costs (e.g., time or financial resource costs, as ... read more ...
 
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Mrs Jello Gets a Win for Geo Domain Owners - Domainer wins case over geographic domain name brought by petroleum company. What do you do when the name of a place has also been incorporated into a business name? This was the issue in a recent UDRP case involving a Brazilian petroleum company and the domainer commonly known as “Mrs Jello”. Ipiranga Produtos de Petróleo S.A. filed the case in an effort to get the domain name ipiranga.com. Ipiranga happens to be the name of a famous river in Brazil as well ... read more ...
 
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Unlike Its Competitors, Absolute Poker Doesn’t Get Its Domain Name Back - Online poker site strikes deal with government but doesn’t get access to domain name. Last week the office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced a deal with Absolute Poker to help U.S. players get their money back. But the deal differed from the one struck with Full Tilt Poker and Poker Stars last month in one critical way — Absolute Poker isn’t getting back control of its domain name. The deal with Absolute Poker’s ... read more ...