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.

Thu 9th September 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
JustBallGloves.com Covers Bases With JustGloves.com - Sports company buys necessary but costly domain name for its business. JustBallGloves.com is an online store that sells, well, just ball gloves. The site features baseball and softball gloves from all the major manufacturers. Compete.com suggests the site gets about 10,000 uniques a month. But let’s face it, JustBallGloves.com is probably often remembered as JustGloves.com. Compete.com shows the latter gets about 1,000 uniques a month. The solution? JustBallGloves.com ... read more ...
Wed 8th September 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
OnlineCollegeDegrees.com and Net Selling for Big Bucks during Sedo - Online education domain name auction ending shortly. Separate auctions at Sedo for OnlineCollegeDegrees.com and OnlineCollegeDegrees.net will conclude overnight tonight and sell for at least $28,000 combined. The auction for the .com is currently at $18,000 and the auction for .net is $10,000. The .net domain name is an active web site with page rank. Compete.com shows it getting just over 1,000 uniques a month. There are a number of uncertainties in the online ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Arbitrator Refuses to Hand Over Generic .Org Domain to .Com Owner - Owning a generic .com doesn’t give you a monopoly on other top level domains. The owner of the descriptive and generic domain name IntlMovers.COM has failed to win the domain name IntlMovers.ORG from its owner in a UDRP case. Although IntlMovers.com existed before IntlMovers.org, and they offer similar services, panelist Tony Willoughby pointed out that owning a generic .com doesn’t give you an automatic monopoly on other top level domains: The Policy was designed ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Trademark Application Filed for .Bank Top Level Domain Name - Application filed for .bank domain name. The same company that filed a service mark application for .Secure is at it again, this time filing an application for .Bank. Wisconsin-based Asif LLC filed application 85,120,345 on August 31 to cover “Domain name registration services”. In the U.S. you cannot trademark a top level domain name, although that hasn’t stopped people from trying. At least one applicant has said it will use its non-U.S. trademarks in an ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Org Prices to Increase in April - Wholesale cost for .org domain registrations increases next year. The wholesale price for registering a .org domain name will increase in April 2011. In a short letter to ICANN dated yesterday, .org registry Public Interest Registry said it will increase the annual price to $7.21 beginning April 1. This does not include ICANN fees. As a point of reference, GoDaddy’s retail price for .org is $14.99 plus the 18 cent ICANN fee each year. So a registrar with a healthy ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Poster.com, Maid.com, and Downline.com To Be Auctioned Next Week - Epik releases list of domains for next week’s auction. Epik has released the list of domains and developed web sites to be auctioned at its Developer Conference next week in Seattle. The list is impressive, including: Downline.com – fantastic MLM domain, which is a big business Poster.com – like the plural better, but still good Maid.com – great lead gen possibilities Slideshow.com – currently a service that let’s you publish and share PowerPoint presentations ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
With Google Instant Search, GoDaddy is More Popular than God - Google changes could be important. And I really mean it this time. There have been plenty of times where pundits have said changes at Google would turn the web on its head. They (and I) have been wrong. But this time may be different. When you start thinking about the implications of Instant Search your head starts to spin. Just think about it from the advertising perspective. Efficient Frontier did, and my head is spinning. Think about how many untargeted impressions ... read more ...
Tue 7th September 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DNW Certified Stats Now Compatible with SmartName - Another domain name parking service added to stats sharing system. This past year has been a big one for domain name parking service SmartName. It has combined all of its parking brands into one as well as rolled out (or enhanced) both SmartName Shops and a content parking solution. Apparently a lot of people are using SmartName these days, as I’ve received lots of requests to add the service to DNW Certified Stats. The day has arrived — now you can use DNW ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
UDRP Panelists Still Can’t Agree on Decisions - Drug company loses dispute, but panelists disagree over key point. A recent UDRP brought by drug giant Sanofi-aventis is interesting on a couple counts. First, the company lost the case over the domain name ferrlecit.com. The respondent is a former licensee of Sanofi-aventis. It registered the domain name while it was a licensee. So it was registered in good faith. But when the drug company and licensee terminated their relationship through arbitration, there ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Epik Takes Innovative Approach to Domain Trading - Epik pushes the envelop at next week’s Domain Swap. Domain lifecycle platform Epik likes to try new and innovative things. Next week’s Domain Swap event at Epik DevCon in Seattle is another example. The Domain Swap brings in much needed liquidity and a common currency to domain trading, something that has been absent from similar ideas in the past. Here’s how it works: 1. Send a list of domains you wish to sell to Epik 2. Epik will buy some of the domains ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Save a Date: Austin Domainer Weekend Nov 12-13 - Are you cool? Then plan to visit Austin this November. I’ve long talked about holding a domainer dinner in Austin. As I talked to others in the industry about it one common request kept coming up: hold it in conjunction with a University of Texas football game. So that’s what we’re doing November 12-13. Details are tentative, but plan on a dinner Friday, November 12 followed by a night out on Sixth Street. The game on November 13 is against conference rival ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
TRAFFIC Voting Ends Wednesday Night - Cast your ballots now for TRAFFIC awards. Every year the organizers of the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. domain name conference ask for nominations (and then a vote) to pick the best companies and people in the domain name industry. This year’s voting is due by Wednesday at 8 pm EDT. To participate, just make your selections from below and email to nominations@targetedtraffic.com. Winners will be announced at next month’s TRAFFIC conference in South Beach. Here are the nominees. ... read more ...
Mon 6th September 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy’s X.co URL Shortener Launches - X.co officially launches. A couple months ago I wrote about how GoDaddy had snagged x.co with plans to use it as a URL shortener. Late last week I noticed that @Godaddy was using x.co in its tweets; and now the service is officially open to all. x.co has a lot of the features you’ll find in most URL shorteners, such as robust analytics. You can easily create an x.co link by pasting a longer URL in at x.co. GoDaddy has been pushing .co domains and x.co will help ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Priority Inbox? How About Secure Inbox? - Let’s increase the security on webmail. Last week Google launched its new Gmail Priority Inbox feature to great fanfare. It’s a fantastic feature for people suffering from email overload. I have another suggestion for Gmail. Usage of web-based email services has exploded to the point that many people and companies keep critical information in their hosted inboxes. This has led to some high profile security breaches. I propose “secure inbox”, an added ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
George Soros’ Open Society Institute Loses Domain Dispute - Foundation backed by George Soros loses arbitration for domain name. Open Society Institute, a think tank and foundation founded by billionaire George Soros, has lost a domain name dispute over the domain OpenSociety.org. The majority of the three person National Arbitration Forum found that the domain name wasn’t registered and used in bad faith. Two of the panelists found that the domain was confusingly similar to the Open Society Institute mark and that the ... read more ...
Fri 3rd September 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Bingo.com Ltd Buys Out Bingo.com Payments for $900,000 - Nearly a century of royalty payments bought out. Bingo.com, Ltd has bought out its remaining royalty payments on the domain name Bingo.com for $900,000 in equity. The company had a deal with the prevous owner of the domain (Bingo, Inc) to pay it 4% of gross revenue through 2098. An independent valuation pegged the present value of those payments at $1.4 million to $1.6 million. If you’re thinking that Bingo, Inc needed cash and that’s why it took a discount, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sedo Revenue Down But Earnings Up - Revenue slides but bottom line improves in first half of year. Revenue at domain name brokerage and parking company Sedo for the first half of 2010 was down compared to the same period last year, but earnings were up. Sedo Holding reported (pdf) revenue of 21.9M EUR for its Sedo division in H1 2010, compared to 22.6M EUR for H1 2009. However, profit increased from 3.0M EUR to 3.3M EUR. The company’s employee base dropped from 172 to 157 between periods. At the ... read more ...
Thu 2nd September 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Want to Bid on Sex.com? Deposit $1 Million. - If an auction occurs, expect to put your money where your mouth is. We might never see an auction for Sex.com. But if we do, expect to put up a significant deposit if you wish to bid. Court documents show that the bankruptcy sales procedure for Sex.com will include three phases. In the first phase domain broker Sedo will do a worldwide outreach and prequalification of interested parties. The second phase is a negotiation period with qualified parties. The third ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
The Truth About NameMedia, Afternic, and BuyDomains - Here’s why NameMedia sells more of its own domains than clients’ domains. Every once in a while I feel like going on a rant. So here goes. There’s been a lot of talk on both my blog and others about NameMedia, which operates BuyDomains and AfternicDLS. NameMedia owns its own portfolio of domains which it sells through its platform. It also allows other domain owners (i.e., you) to sell domains via its AfternicDLS system, which then syndicates through its ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Juniper Networks Loses Case for Juniper.tv - $15B company loses UDRP case. Juniper Networks has lost a domain name arbitration case to get the domain juniper.tv. Despite having a market cap of nearly $15 billion, the arbitrator noted that it’s entirely plausible that the registrant of the domain name hadn’t heard of the company because it’s a business-to-business company. Also working against Juniper Networks is that juniper is a generic term. The registrant had registered other seemingly generic .tv ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Jason Davis Strikes Again with Recruiter.com - Jobs domain pro merges one of his companies with Recruiter.com. Jason Davis has struck another large domain name deal by merging his RecruitingBlogs.com with Recruiter.com. Although technically a merger, Recruiter.com’s domain name was its main contribution to the puzzle. Recruiter.com owner Ashley Saddul will join the merged entity as CTO and founder. I first talked to Davis after he sold CEOjobs.com to Harry Joiner last year. I ran a profile about him the ... read more ...
Wed 1st September 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Cost-Per-Action Search Engine Patent Headed to Auction Block - Patent could potentially target Google and Microsoft. A U.S. patent directed at cost-per-action advertising on search engines as well as cash-back search is headed to the auction block. Sunnyvale, California based AnchorFree Inc. has enlisted ICAP Ocean Tomo to auction off U.S. patent number 7,647,305 (pdf) at its November 11 intellectual property auction in Napa, California. The patent covers two main things. First, it covers charging search ad customers based on ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DreamHost.co and AOLmail.co Among First .Co Domains Hit with UDRP - Trademark owners go after their names on .co. A dozen companies have filed 13 .co domain name arbitration disputes since the relaunch of .co as a a generic domain name. The most recent UDRP filing was for Dreamhost.co by the owner of the large web host DreamHost.com. This is a somewhat surprising case given that surely a web host was aware of the release of .co domains. Other companies have also filed cases. AOL wants aolmail.co and L.A. Fitness is going after lafitness.co. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
World Trademark Review Conducting Survey About New TLDs - Survey seeks opinions on new top level domain names. World Trademark Review is currently running a survey to understand attitudes and plans around the launch of new top level domain names. The survey is targeted to three groups: In-house trademark lawyers, private practice trademark lawyers, and marketing, web, and communications professionals. Each group receives slightly different questions on the survey. For example, in-house trademark lawyers are asked about ... read more ...
Tue 31st August 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
A Look during Go Daddy’s Growth (in Numbers) - An official look at Go Daddy’s revenue numbers. I still remember a conversation just before the Super Bowl in 2005. I was eating lunch with a bunch of techies and the topic of Super Bowl commercials came up. Someone asked “who is this Go Daddy company, anyway?” Flash forward to 2010. If you ask someone on the street where they would go to register a domain name, they’ll likely say “Go Daddy”. About half of all newly-registered domains are registered ... read more ...