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.

Sun 9th August 2015
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Paul Graham: Change your name. Get a .Com - Venture capitalist makes the argument for picking a good name and owning the matching .com. Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham has published an essay on his site about why it’s important to get a good company name and its matching .com. Is it still important in a world of apps? Graham writes: If you have a US startup called X and you don’t have x.com, you should probably change your name. The reason is not just that people can’t find you. For companies with mobile apps, especially, having ... read more ...
 
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Expired Domain Report: In-Depth on LLLL.com - Joseph Peterson’s weekly roundup of expired domain sales. During the past several months, LLLL.com domains (4 letters, for those just joining us) have multiplied in value among wholesale traders who expect to flip to China or resell to one another. For years, values had stagnated in the $15 – $50 range; but suddenly prices at auction and in the forums began to rise, climbing 10 – 20 times higher as word spread. Mailing-list domain brokers who wouldn’t have been caught dead featuring LLLL.com’s ... read more ...
Fri 7th August 2015
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.Club reveals registrar-sold reward domains - .Club registry releases unique sales data. In an unprecedented level of transparency, .Club has revealed which domain names it sold through registrars at premium prices last month. The registry began offering about 8,000 premium-priced domain names through the regular registrar purchase path last month. It sold 12 premium domain names through this channel last month, plus four through its existing sale partner Sedo. Here’s the list, including the registrar and Sedo sales: Domain Retail Price ... read more ...
 
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GoDaddy business have purebred 850k new TLDs - GoDaddy leads the way for new domain names. On GoDaddy’s investor conference call this week, the company disclosed that its customers have registered 850,000 names in new top level domains. That’s over the course of about 18 months of availability. GoDaddy customers have registered more new top level domain names with it than at any competing registrar, which shouldn’t come as a surprise for two reasons. First, GoDaddy registers the most domains overall. You’d expect it to be number one. Second, ... read more ...
 
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Minds + Machines co-founder dumps another 30 million shares - Krueger now owns about 5% of the company. Minds + Machines co-founder Frederick Krueger, who was pushed out of the company at the end of May, has sold another 30 million shares in the company. He now owns about 41 million ordinary shares of the new top level domain name company, or about 5%. When he left the company, he said he planned to keep the “vast majority” of his shares in the company. Since then he’s sold 87 million shares, or about 70% of his holdings of ordinary shares. This means ... read more ...
Thu 6th August 2015
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Domain Holdings sells $6.1 million in domains in Q2 - Domain Holdings recovers from first quarter but is still down compared to last year. Domain Holdings reported sales numbers for Q2 2015 including $6.15 million in domain name sales. This is up from $4.75 million sold in Q1, but is less than half of what it sold in Q2 2014. 64% of sales were in the United States and 34% were to China. 85% of domains were .com, 3% .net and .org, and 10.5% were various gTLDs. The company sold a .IO domain name for six figures. Although averages can be misleading, here ... read more ...
 
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50 End User Domain Name Sales adult to $500,000 - Here are recent domain name purchases by end users. During the past week, Sedo reported 550 public domain transactions, totaling around $1.6 million. At an even $500k, Give.com receives the laurels. Notably, a domain industry veteran was the buyer and will be the end user. Other high sales included KBeauty.com ($55k) and WolfSpeed.com ($70.2k). Below I’ve gathered 50+ domain purchases where an end user could be identified. A minority of these are domains that sold during the preceding week ... read more ...
 
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TLD Profile: .Beer - Anheuser-busch.beer Bostonbeer.beer Summerfest.beer (Sierra Nevada) New Belgium (29 domains) Lagunitas.beer Bells.beer Dogfish.beer Firestone.beer Alaskan.beer Ballastpoint.beer Stbc.beer (Southern Tier Brewing Company) Ninkasi.beer Bearrepublic.beer Allagash.beer With over 25% of top industry players in the domain space, there is certainly promise for .beer. However, the prevalence of redirects and unused domains creates a sense of uncertainty surrounding the permanency of these domains. Of the ... read more ...
Wed 5th August 2015
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GoDaddy reports 16.5% YoY income growth - GoDaddy’s topline growth continues. GoDaddy reported earnings after the bell today. The company posted 16.5% earnings growth in Q2 2015 compared to the same quarter a year ago. That’s a slight decline from the 17.5% year over year number it turned in last quarter. Revenue was up 5% in Q2 2015 compared to Q1. GoDaddy reported a heavier net loss of $(71.3) million, but $51.1 million of the loss was due to one time costs associated with the IPO and early termination of debt. GoDaddy, the largest ... read more ...
 
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.Com Winners & Losers: Uniregistry posts a large gain - Here’s how registrars fared with .com in April. ICANN has published the latest Verisign .com monthly report, containing data from April. Let’s start by reviewing which registrars added the most new .com domain name registrations: 1. GoDaddy* 939,282 2. eNom** 213,549 3. HiChina 173,730 4. PublicDomainRegistry 110,705 5. Tucows 109,715 When it comes to companies that won the transfer game, here are the top five registrars for April with retail operations. These numbers are the net gains after ... read more ...
 
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Rightside: 2 $100k .Video Sales, $1M from .News and new TLD renovation rates - Rightside reveals three interesting numbers about its new top level domain names. Rightside held its quarterly analyst call yesterday after releasing second quarter results. Here are three interesting notes about new top level domain names that Rightside mentioned on the call: 1. The company has sold two more domains for at least $100,000. The names were not disclosed, but both were under the .Video top level domain. 2. The company has received $1 million cash from .news so far. It recognizes the ... read more ...
 
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Two domain owners win UDRPs notwithstanding not responding - Panelists don’t blindly assume respondents are cybersquatting in two recent cases. Although it’s rare, domain name owners sometimes win UDRP filings despite not responding to the allegations. In these cases, the UDRP panelists actually use critical thinking on the merits of the case to make sure the complainant has met its burden. They don’t assume that a lack of response proves that the domain owner is a cybersquatter. Domain owners won two recent cases despite not responding to the complaints: The ... read more ...
Tue 4th August 2015
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Rightside has record income in Q2 - Rightside continues upward trajectory. Domain name company Rightside posted record revenue of $52.2 million in Q2, the company announced today. That compares to $46.7 million in Q2 2014 and $50.5 million in the first quarter of this year. The company posted revenue gains in all three segments compared to Q2 2014. Registrar services revenue, which includes eNom and Name.com, increased 10% to $43.3 million compared to $39.4 million. Registry services revenue, which includes both Rightside’s own TLDs ... read more ...
 
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July's Hottest Domain Name Stories - Sex.com, a $50,000 cybersquatting settlement and more. Legal stuff continued to make headlines in July in the domain biz. ParkingCrew also made things interesting with its acquisition of NameDrive. Here’s a look back at the top stories on Domain Name Wire last month. 1. Sex.Com lawsuit – company demands domain name over copyright and trademark claims. 2. Work Better Updates – I wrote several posts about the WorkBetter.com cybersquatting lawsuit last month that made the top charts. The owner ... read more ...
 
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Famous Four launches 5 domain names this week - Five domains on tap this week. Famous Four Media launches another five top level domain names on Wednesday of this week. Registrars will begin selling .racing, .accountant, .download, .win and .loan. 101Domain is offering all of the names for about $30. I’m somewhat surprised that Famous Four has priced all of the names the same, as some very similar domains from Donuts have premiums. For example, .accountants and .loans, plural versions offered by Donuts, cost about $75-$100 per year. .Accountants ... read more ...
 
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Rightside and NameCheap ink longer tenure deal - Deal adds some certainty to Rightside’s future revenue. After frequent short-term extensions, Rightside’s eNom and reseller NameCheap have signed a longer term reseller deal. Many people are surprised to learn that NameCheap, which manages millions of domain names, is actually a reseller. It’s an important one to Rightside; NameCheap represents 26% of its domains under management. The new deal is through December 31, 2018 and will automatically renew for an additional three year term unless ... read more ...
Mon 3rd August 2015
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Hitting a Slopes with Rob Rozicki – DNW Podcast #44 - A first-hand perspective of launching new top level domain names. What better time to think about snow skiing than during the heat of the summer? On this episode, Starting Dot SVP Rob Rozicki joins us to discuss top level domain names, including his company’s forthcoming .Ski. Rob is candid about the success of new TLDs so far, including Starting Dot’s .Bio and .Archi. Hear the unique perspective of a TLD operator that has three domains to offer, putting it in a chasm between the single domain ... read more ...
 
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Lawsuit filed to redeem stolen preparation domain names - Suit alleges a dozen domain names were stolen using compromised email address. Texas company CMN.com LLC has filed a lawsuit to recover 12 domain names it alleges were stolen from it. According to the suit, the thief gained access to one of its email addresses and was able to use this to transfer the domain names to another registrar. The domains have various whois records, but the lawsuit claims that all of the domains were transferred by someone using one IP address. The company says it lost these ... read more ...
Sun 2nd August 2015
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Google Domains screw-up divulges 1,664 customers’ email addresses - Google support sent an email to over 1,600 customers using the To: field instead of Bcc:. It’s been a long weekend for someone working on Google’s new domain name registrar. It began when the company sent out domain name renewal reminder emails to customers that already had their domains set to auto renew. This email surely generated a number of support inquiries from confused customers. But that mix up was small potatoes compared to what happened next. On Friday, the company sent an apology ... read more ...
Fri 31st July 2015
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Over 100 Expired Domain Sales in this week's report - Joseph Peterson’s weekly roundup of expire domain name sales. Last time, I looked at whether a sharp downturn in the Chinese stock market has inhibited Chinese domain sales. So far, all evidence I’ve evaluated suggests that it’s business as usual for the wholesale Chinese domain market: high peak prices and churning liquidity. Expired auctions at NameJet from the past week bolster that impression. Aggressive bidding placed Chinese-style domains in the #1, #3, #8, and #12 slots. Those ... read more ...
Thu 30th July 2015
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Neustar acquires Bombora and ARI - Neustar continues to grow its top level domain name services business with acquisition. Neustar has acquired Australia-based Bombora Technologies Pty Ltd, the registry services provider of the .au top-level domain and numerous other top-level domains, for approximately AUD $118.5 million, or approximately USD $86.9 million in cash. This includes its subsidiary ARI Registry Services, which provides registry services to a number of new top level domain names. Bombora had revenue of USD $20.6 million ... read more ...
 
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Sedo adds programmed tenure verification - Feature lets you add domains for sale without delay. There’s a delay between the time you submit a domain name for sale on Sedo and when it shows up on the site. This delay is due to Sedo verifying that the person who submitted the domain name is actually the owner. Now Sedo has released a feature that lets you instantly add domain names for sale. It’s probably a tool more suited to power users than the typical client, and it has the added bonus of making life easier for Sedo. Essentially, you ... read more ...
 
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Minds + Machines: layoffs, devise for money and more - Big updates from one of the biggest new top level domain name companies. Publicly traded Minds + Machines (London AIM: MMX) released a corporate update today, and it’s big. The company has close to $50 million in cash in the bank, which gives it plenty of time to wait out the hoped-for surge in acceptance of new top level domain names. But it’s not going to sit back and watch its cash position dwindle each quarter. Instead, it’s taking action to become profitable soon and find a way to return ... read more ...
 
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60 End User Domain Name Sales - Here are 60+ domain names that sold on Sedo this past week. Sedo sales from the past week totaled more than $1 million with some 495 reported transactions, the highest of which was Float.com at $50k. Of these, I’ve tracked down about 60 end-user buyers. Acquiro.com (€3900) – Sold to Selling Simplified, a lead-gen / marketing firm that already owns its exact-match .COM. We can’t see yet who acquired Acquired.com, which Sedo sold during the same week. Act-On.co.uk ($9800) – This marketing ... read more ...
Wed 29th July 2015
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GoDaddy loses initial UDRP from Marchex portfolio acquisition - No one responded to the dispute. GoDaddy has lost its first UDRP from the portfolio it acquired from Marchex in April. The company didn’t respond to a UDRP filed by Dairyland Midwest, Inc. d/b/a AgVision for the domain name AgVision.com. When the UDRP was filed last month, World Intellectual Property Organization sent a notice of the dispute to all contacts on the domain name. That included an @archeo.com email address as well as sales@nnamefind.com. Although the latter email address appears to ... read more ...