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 10th October 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Could VeriSign Topple Web Traffic Ranking Companies? - VeriSign files two patents related to counting the web’s traffic. Web traffic ranking companies such as comScore, Alexa, and Compete.com all have limiting factors. They use various methods to figure out traffic, such as panels (people that let them track their site visits), search data, and ISPs. But this gets them only so far. Who has better traffic data? VeriSign, which is the registry for .com and .net. The company has filed two patent applications related ... read more ...
Sat 9th October 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Microsoft Time Change Adds Headache to Yahoo Switchover - Reporting timezone changes with search alliance. Anyone who has a parking company using a Yahoo feed and all stats services have an added headache to deal with thanks to the switchover from Yahoo to Microsoft. Until now both Yahoo and Google reported stats based on Pacific time. With the switchover Yahoo/Microsoft stats will now be reported at UTC/GMT. This is only a one time headache for some companies, such as parking providers, that need to adjust their stats ... read more ...
Fri 8th October 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
No Language Barriers in Prague - Plenty of translators on hand, but few have a need. Holding an international conference means many languages. In some ways all domain conferences are international, but it was even more the case with DOMAINfest Prague. The official language of the conference was English, but DomainSponsor wanted to make sure everyone could understand. So it had real-time translators for several languages. Attendees could wear a headset and tune into their language “U.N.-style”: Headphones ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Elephant Orchestra Breaks Out during DOMAINfest - Web startup opens up its doors during conference in Prague. Elephant Orchestra has been a relatively quiet company in the domain name space. Sure, it released Elephant Traffic and presented at DOMAINfest in January. But it used DOMAINfest Prague, where the company is located, to really unveil itself. I checked out the company’s offices this week. The company started in a small apartment, moved into a small office, and then started breaking down the walls to expand ... read more ...
Thu 7th October 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
You Can’t Buy Beer with CTR - by Craig Rowe There are a variety of opinions in the domain industry about the effectiveness of non-traditional domain monetization platforms, such as WhyPark, Epik, and SmartName content portals. There are just as many terms for it, whether it’s mass development, mini site development, enhanced parking, etc. We typically call WhyPark a domain monetization or domain development platform. We make tools to help you make money from your domain names, regardless ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Domainer Shooting Contest Results: Keep an Eye on These Two! - Two domainer industry execs you don’t want to challenge to a duel. Attention domainers: watch out for these two sharp-shooting domainers. DOMAINfest held two shooting contests this today. eNom’s Chris Sheridan took home the accuracy prize in the morning session. Who won the afternoon session? Read on to see… Shortly after a traditional Czech lunch, about 50 domainers borded a bus for the Czech Republic countryside. We arrived at the shooting range at about ... read more ...
Wed 6th October 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DOMAINfest Announces Shows in Barcelona, Las Vegas - DOMAINfest plans four shows for 2011. This morning at the DOMAINfest show in Prague, Oversee.net General Manager Peter Celeste announced locations for the franchise’s shows in 2010. Next year will kick off with the previously-announced main event in Santa Monica in February. Celeste said the party at the Playboy Mansion will return for the third year. In June 2011 DOMAINfest will return to Europe with an event in Barcelona. Barcelona was the site of the first ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Live Current Sells Canadian.com for $60,000 - Company sells another gem from its portfolio. Live Current Media has sold another domain name to improve its cash position. The company just sold Canadian.com through Sedo for $60,000. The company has been selling off its portfolio of premium domain names over the past few years to raise much needed cash. It’s also dealing with a proxy battle between the former president and current CEO. The Canadian.com sale didn’t top Sedo’s list for the week. Those honors ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Libya Shuts Down .ly Link Shortener - A .ly link shortening service is seized. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: building a web business on a country code domain name carries big risks. Not all country codes, but some. Consider country code domains for countries that like to censor the web. Here’s a prime example: a link shortening service for adult sites has been shut down by Libya. Yep, the same Libya ccTLD that bit.ly runs on. The .ly domain in particular has lots or risk. Could Libya ... read more ...
Tue 5th October 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
High Margin Products Critical to Registrar Success - Forget domains — it’s the add-ons that separate winning registrars from losers. Over five years ago I started an intellectual property licensing company (I long ago left the company.) We would help companies license technologies they developed for internal use. In the grand scheme of things most of our Fortune 500 clients didn’t make much from technology licensing relative to their billions in core product revenue each year. But it was high margin. I recall ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DOMAINfest Kicks Off in Prague with New Faces - Conference starts with local beer and appetizers. I get a lot of bang for my buck at domain name conference through the connections I make. But often times I have to search out new faces at the conferences — it’s the same people each time. That’s not the case at DOMAINfest in Prague. The event kicked off with a happy hour about 2 hours ago. About half the people haven’t been to a DOMAINfest before, but I’d say 75% of the faces I’ve seen tonight are ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Experian Picks Up CreditReport.com, CreditScore.com, and MyCreditScore.com in 9 Figure Deal - Experian picks up prized domains in acquisition. Credit information company Experian picked up a few killer domains a couple weeks ago, but I haven’t seen anyone in the domain industry write about it yet. Experian bought Mighty Net Inc, which owned the domains CreditReport.com, CreditScore.com, and MyCreditScore.com, in a deal worth $207.5 million. This is certainly more than just a domain name deal. Mighty Net has 680,000 U.S. subscribers to its credit monitoring ... read more ...
Mon 4th October 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Think About This Before You Help a Friend with Domains - Don’t offer to help a friend with domain names unless you qualify it first. I’m often asked by friends for my assistance with buying a domain name. After providing advice or making an initial contact over a dozen times, I’ve learned a few lessons: 1. Make sure your friend is willing to pay up for the domain. Often times I’ve reach out on behalf of a friend and the other party asked for something reasonable, such as $5,000. My friend would ask me to counter ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Greetings from a Land of .CZ - I’m in Prague for the DOMAINfest conference. Greetings from the land of .cz – The Czech Republic, that is. I arrived in Prague Sunday afternoon after about 20 hours of travel, a couple days in advance of this week’s DOMAINfest conference. After a long day of travel it’s never fun to hail a cab to the hotel, so many thanks to the good folks at Elephant Traffic for picking my wife and I up at the airport. (In style, I might add.) Today I walked many miles ... read more ...
Fri 1st October 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Miss Universe Goes After Sex Tape Domain Names - Miss Universe turns to arbitration to take down web sites. Miss Universe L.P. has filed complaints with World Intellectual Property Forum in an effort to gain control of two web site promoting sex videos. One complaint was filed against missuniversesexvideo.com (warning: explicit), a web site that indicates it has video from a sex tape scandal that broke last year. (Did I really just link to TMZ?) The other complaint was filed against missusasex.com, which seems ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Pamela Anderson Gets Another Domain from Alberta Hot Rods - Pamela Anderson beats an old foe to get domain name. Pamela Anderson has won a case for the domain name PamAnderson.com in an arbitration case at World Intellectual Property Forum. The case was brought against Alberta Hot Rods, a group that had a run in with Anderson back in 2002. In the 2002 WIPO case Anderson won the domain names PamelaAnderson.com, PamelaAnderson.net, and PamelaLee.com. What’s somewhat strange is how Anderson didn’t go after the PamAnderson.com ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Wesabe Founder: “A domain name doesn’t win we a market” - Wesabe co-founder talks about why — and why not — his company failed. Via TechCrunch today I came across this postmortem by Wesabe co-founder Marc Hedlund. Wesabe was a personal finance web site that competed with Mint.com. Despite coming to market earlier, Wesabe eventually shut down while Intuit acquired Mint.com for $170 million. Hedlund makes convincing arguments for why Mint.com won, but also disagrees with other often cited reasons. One reason he disagrees ... read more ...
Thu 30th September 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy.com’s Size Comes Back to Haunt it in uBid Court Case - Court rules that world’s largest domain name registrar can face a lawsuit in Illinois. The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has dealt a blow to domain name registrar Go Daddy, deciding that Go Daddy should face a cybersquatting lawsuit filed by uBid in Illionis. uBid, which is based in Illinois, sued Go Daddy because some of the registrar’s customers registered typos of uBid.com and these domains were parked with advertisements by Go Daddy. Go ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
[UPDATED] FB.com Domain Name Sells…to Facebook? - FB.com domain name sells. Likely buyer: Facebook. American Farm Bureau has sold the domain name FB.com, as George Kirikos noted this morning on Twitter. The domain names whois record now points to a division of Mark Monitor, which manages domain names for Facebook. So did Facebook buy the domain name? I’ve contacted both American Farm Bureau and Facebook for details. A PR representative for American Farm Bureau told me he’s not sure how much the organization ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Biz Prices to Increase Along with .Org - Another domain name price increase announced. .Biz domain name registry NeuStar has informed ICANN (pdf) that it intends to raise wholesale prices for .biz domain names effective April 1, 2011. That’s the same time that Public Interest Registry will raise its rates on .org domain names to $7.21. The wholesale cost of a .biz domain name will increase from $6.85 to $7.30. That does not include an ICANN fee of $.18 cents that registrars must pay, so the wholesale ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
dotMobi to Auction Off Remaining 1 and 2 Character Domain Names - Company asks ICANN to let it auction off short domain names. dotMobi is asking ICANN (pdf) for permission to auction off remaining one and two character .mobi domain names. Back in 2008 dotMobi requested permission to release one and two character domain names through an RFP process. Now the group wants to auction off any remaining ones, and then open up unclaimed short domains to general registration. Many other registries have released (or are in the process of ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
VeriSign Abandons Plans for 1 and 2 Character .Net Domains - Short .net domain name idea off the table. VeriSign has withdrawn its request to ICANN to allow it to release one and two character .net domain names. The company asked ICANN back in August to let it auction off any one or two letter .net domain name that wasn’t already registered. Some one and two letter domains were registered prior to a restriction on the practice that was introduced for technical reasons. A number of other registries have either already distributed ... read more ...
Wed 29th September 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
The Gap Sues GapNote.com Social Network - Clothing company says you can’t use the term “gap” in your social media web site. Clothing company The Gap has sued GapNote.com and its founder for trademark infringement. GapNote.com is a new site that helps people chronicle their past, present, and future, and the gaps in between. The lawsuit claims that the site should not be able to use the term “gap” anywhere in its name because the clothing company owns rights to the domain name. The Gap claims: Defendant ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Gold or White, Live Current Shareholders Get a Raw Deal - Proxy battle doesn’t give shareholders a great choice. Live Current Media shareholders are being asked to make a choice ahead of next month’s shareholder meeting: gold or white. The current CEO Geoffrey Hampson and his board want shareholders to vote with their gold proxy card, which would mean they get to stay at the helm of the company. Former company president David Jeffs is asking shareholders to fill out the white proxy card, which would replace Hampson and ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Expert Discusses How to Sell Developed Web Sites - Thought I would stop by and read Andrew’s article and comments, and I am impressed by the insightful comments this has instigated. I would like to address the comments from Jeff and others relating to valuations below. But first, I want to establish that while I do have expertise and years of practical experience buying, selling and brokering website businesses and premium domain names, I am by no means admitting to be a stellar public speaker! I appreciated the opportunity to connect ... read more ...