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 15th March 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Verizon Sues Above.com and Serves it During DOMAINfest - Company sued over trademark domain names; served during DOMAINfest. Verizon has filed a federal lawsuit against Above.com, parent company Trellian, and some of the company’s key employees (pdf). Trellian offers a number of keyword and SEO tools. Above.com is best known to the domain name industry for split testing parked domain traffic. It also has an ICANN-accredited domain registrar. The suit alleges that the defendants use a number of false identities to traffic ... read more ...
Mon 14th March 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
On Tap This Week: SWSW and ICANN San Francisco - For up-to-date coverage follow DNW on twitter. It’s going to be a busy week for me as I attempt to cover two events. I won’t be able to blog about everything, so to get the best updates please follow me on twitter @DomainNameWire. Monday I’m heading downtown here in Austin for SXSW Interactive. I plan to stop by the Mashable SXSWi House, sponsored in part by VeriSign. During the day I’ll try to track down all of the promotions .co is doing, which I understand ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DNCruise Heads to Grand Cayman in 2011 - Second domainer cruise stops off in Grand Cayman for a visit with Frank Schilling. “Chef” Patrick Ruddell just announced details for the second ever DNCruise. The domain conference on a boat will set sail September 5 from Tampa Bay for five days. First stop is Grand Cayman, where attendees will hang out for a day with domain investor Frank Schilling. The group will have a 2-3 hour snorkeling adventure and then enjoy lunch with Schilling. Interior cabins start ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Afternic Adds 12 European Domain Registrars to Premium Promotion - Domain sales listing network expands with European domain name registrars. Afternic has signed a deal with three European companies to join the Afternic’s Premium Listing program. The three companies collectively own 12 domain registrars. The domain name registrars will use Afternic’s instant transfer technology. This enables customers to purchase domain names through the typical domain registration process and get the domain names instantly. The three companies ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Fixed Income Domains Were Too Good to Be True - The old saying applies to domain names as well. There’s an interesting thread developing at DNForum right now about “Fixed Income Domains” that were offered in the Big Ticket Domains email newsletter. Big Ticket Domains is a domain brokerage with a frequent newsletter run by Kevin Leto. In December 2009 the newsletter started touting a new option — “Fixed Income Domains”. The idea was that you would buy a domain name for a fixed price and then Kevin would ... read more ...
Sun 13th March 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Ask Bill Clinton a Question during ICANN San Francisco - (Sort of) ask a question of President Bill Clinton at this week’s ICANN meeting. Heading to ICANN’s meeting in San Francisco this week? You can ask a question of former President Bill Clinton immediately following his keynote speech Wednesday night. …but it will be moderated. ICANN is accepting question submissions until Tuesday morning. It will then choose questions from the submissions that ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom will ask Clinton on stage after his keynote. ... read more ...
Fri 11th March 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
WordPress JetPack Chooses .Me Domain Name - Company behind WordPress choose .me domain for new power plugin. WordPress has released a new jack-of-all-trades plugin to bring popular WordPress.com features to those who host their own WordPress instance. Where will you find it? JetPack.me. WordPress founder Matthew Mullenweg picked the domain name up last year by hand registration. It was previously registered to a New York man who let it expire last July. I’m a .com purist. But in this case hosting on a ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Groupon Gets Irish Domain Name Groupon.ie - Groupon can move from CityDeal.ie to Groupon.ie. Group buying site Groupon has had some difficulty getting country code domains for “Groupon”, but it just picked up one through arbitration: Groupon.ie. .ie is the country code domain name for Ireland. The domain name should be transferred to Groupon within 21 days unless the domain’s current owner Digitalworx Limited files a lawsuit. Without the Groupon.ie domain name the company has been forced to use CityDeal.ie ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Did ICANN Shun .Mobi for San Francisco Meeting? - ICANN appears to go with rival sponsor and site for next week’s meeting. .Mobi frequently creates and sponsors mobile meeting web sites for domain conferences. ICANN.mobi was featured as the official mobile site of the last conference in Cartagena. But it looks like ICANN is dissing .mobi for its upcoming ICANN 40 meeting in San Francisco. This morning ICANN tweeted a link to me.icann.org, which is hosted on ICANN’s main .org web site. It’s billed as the ... read more ...
Thu 10th March 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DomainTools and Estibot are Domainer Favorites - Domain investors share their favorite tools. What are your go-to tools for domaining? I’m guessing DomainTools is one of your most frequented sites. 45% of people who took this year’s Domain Name Wire Survey said DomainTools was the “software or hosted application that is most valuable to their domain name business for research and management.” Nearly 14% said the same thing about domain pricing and sales system Estibot. After that usage drops off significantly. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
What Would Happen if Employ Media Loses .Jobs? - A non-amicable transfer of the .jobs registry contract would be challenging. Last month ICANN surprised many observers by sending a breach notice to .jobs registry Employ Media. This was a shock because ICANN’s board had approved recent changes to how .jobs operates. The breach notice seems to attack some of those very changes that were contemplated by the board. But what exactly would happen if Employ Media lost .jobs? In theory the contract would just be awarded ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
VeriSign Domain Tag Cloud Gives Insight Into Latest Domain Registrations - Tool gives quick insight into recent domain registrations. Here’s an interesting new beta tool from VeriSign: the Verisign Domain Tag Cloud. The tool gives some insight into current domain name registration trends. It’s like a tag cloud but the tags are words used in recent domain name registrations. The bigger the word, the more frequently it occurred in domains that were registered over a specific time period. You can choose to view the most recent registration ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Fabulous Inks Registrar Technology Deal with eNom - eNom to handle back end registrar technology for Fabulous. Fabulous has signed a deal with eNom in which the Australian domain name registrar will outsource back end technology operations to eNom. Communication about this will be going out to Fabulous customers this evening. This isn’t an acquisition; Fabulous will remain part of Dark Blue Sea. As a reseller registrar eNom has a number of similar arrangements with large domain name registrars. The front end ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN Changes Schedule for Next Week’s Meeting - Meeting changed due to ongoing talks between ICANN and governments. Citing the need to hash out its differences with Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), ICANN has changed the schedule for next week’s meeting in San Francisco: -ICANN will hold all day meetings with GAC on Tuesday and Thursday -There will be 5 1/2 hours of public comment sessions specifically devoted to new gTLDs. There will still be a two hour public comment period for other topics on Thursday. -The ... read more ...
Wed 9th March 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domainers (Still) Bullish on Domain Values - Domain investors predict rising values in 2011. Domainers are nothing if not an optimistic lot. 55% of people who took Domain Name Wire’s 2011 survey think domain values will increase in 2011 compared to 2010. Only 14% predict a drop. This should come as no surprise based on the answer to this question over the past six years. Take a look: In only one year since I started this survey have domainers shown any pessimism. Only 32% of survey takers predicted an ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Original CamRoulette.com Owner Tells His Story of Ups, Downs, and Up - Guy who originally registered CamRoulette.com tells his whole story. Craig Snyder (no affiliation with Oversee.net Craig Snyder) went through the wringer last year. He registered the domain name CamRoulette.com, which is similar to the (then) popular ChatRoulette.com. He sold it to Adam Strong for $1,200, only to see Strong flip the domain for $151,000. Snyder certainly had domain sales regret. But then it got worse. Someone else claimed to have agreed to buy the ... read more ...
Tue 8th March 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
iPhone Jailbreak App Store Loses Domain Dispute For Cydia.com - Alternative iPhone app store loses dispute for domain name. The company behind an app store for jailbroken iPhones has lost a dispute to get the domain name Cydia.com. Saurikit, LLC launched its alternative to Apple’s app store in 2008 at cydia.saurik.com. But Cydia.com was registered back in 2002. In its dispute Saurikit made the argument that UDRP does not require a domain to be registered in bad faith — only used in bad faith. Like the panel in SimplyBusiness.com, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Adult Industry Plans Rally Against .XXX during ICANN Meeting - Group calls for rally outside ICANN meeting. Adult industry lobbying group Free Speech Coalition is calling for a rally outside the ICANN meeting at the Westin in San Francisco next week. Citing “a time when rallies are changing the world around us”, evoking images I suppose of unions in Wisconsin and (say it ain’t so) uprisings in Northern Africa, Free Speech Coalition is calling for “all industry professionals to rally in San Francisco against .XXX!!” The ... read more ...
Mon 7th March 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
1986 Domain Name Octopus.com Could Be Lost in UDRP - Ads on Octopus.com will shift burden to domain name owner. A travel company has filed a UDRP against Octopus.com, which was originally registered in 1986. OctopusTravel.com operator Octopustravel Group Limited filed the complaint against a Singapore man. Octopus.com was originally registered in 1986 but transferred to the current registrant no earlier than 2009. Octopustravel Group filed for a U.S. trademark for “OctopusTravel” in 2000 that was granted in 2002. In ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
iPad2.com Is Registered. So Is iPad25.com. - Just about every future iPad#.com domain is taken. The year is 2036. The media is buzzing as Apple’s latest CEO introduces the iPad 25. The wafer thin, flexible screen holographic device wows the crowd. Somewhere, an interested consumer types iPad25.com into his browser bar. But Apple doesn’t own it. (Although it owns iPad25.apple). I was looking for Ipad 2 information today only to find that, just like iPad.com, Apple doesn’t own iPad2.com. Many people ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Advice for New Bloggers - Some tips for starting your own blog. I received an email from an Austin resident who came across my blog the other day. He said “I’m looking for a way to make a modest, full-time living as a blogger” and he wanted to know if I’d ever written any advice on doing this. I don’t think I have. I don’t pretend to be TechCrunch, HuffPo, or anything like that. But this blog does generate six figures in ad revenue a year, which is a nice goal. I’ll also preface ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sedo Adds Three ccTLDs to Instant-Transfer Program - Instant transfer and listing syndication service adds three more TLDs. Sedo has added three additional top level domain names to its instant-transfer MLS program: .co, .it, and .nl. SedoMLS is similar to Afternic Premium and GoDaddy Premium Listings. They allow you to sell your domain names in the registration path at domain registrars. Buyers can add the domain to their shopping cart and purchase it immediately, getting the domain in their control within minutes. Sedo ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Judge Sets Trial Date In Women.com Case - Judge plans on December trial over failed domain name transaction. U.S. District Judge James Otero has set a December 13 jury trial date in Done! Ventures, LLC v. General Electric Company, et al. The case pits a small California company run by Ben Padnos against NBC Universal over a failed transaction involving Women.com. Padnos says that NBC agreed to sell him Women.com and Women.net for $1 million and has documentation from broker Sedo to prove it. But the documentation ... read more ...
Sun 6th March 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN Tells Governments Where it Stands - Chairman of ICANN Board sends email to GAC explaining where differences remain. Yesterday afternoon ICANN Chairman of the Board Peter Dengate Thrush sent an email to ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) summarizing where ICANN stands on GAC’s “scorecard” of issues. Dengate Thrush suggests that the consultation process can be resolved at the San Francisco meeting later this month: The Board looks forward to continuing to collaborate with the GAC in ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Tech World Comes to Austin This Week - Techies head to Austin for conferences. SXSW Interactive kicks off in Austin this Friday. Last year’s South By Southwest conference drew 14,251 “official” attendees interested in web technology, social media, and internet marketing. But probably just as many people attended events without getting a full conference pass. SXSW organizers estimate 33,200 attended the interactive/film trade show last year. A number of domain name companies also attended. SXSW ... read more ...