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 19th July 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Sedo Releases Dates for SedoPro World Tour - Company gives more details about its world tour program. Following up to our story a couple weeks ago, Sedo has launched its SedoPro World Tour web site. It includes specific dates for the first three events: Boston, USA (Kick Off Event) When: August 31st to September 1st Seoul, Korea When: 10th September to 11th September Tuscany, Italy When: October 7th to 8th An event will be held in London in November and Cologne, Germany in February. Additional locations ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Overstock.com Buys O.co For $350,000 - Internet retailer snaps up one character .co domains for big bucks. On the eve of the .co general availability launch comes news that Overstock.com purchased the o.co domain name for a whopping $350,000. This must be the sale that Michael Berkens alluded to. From the press release: Many visionary companies see the new .CO domains as an opportunity to extend their brand or expand their online offerings in a way that was not previously possible due to limited availability ... read more ...
Sun 18th July 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
265 .Co Domains That Weren’t Registered in Landrush - Good keyword domains still available in .co. Now that the .co landrush has ended, I have compiled a list of 265 .co domain names that weren’t picked up in the period. That means they will be available on July 20. But many of these keyword domains will be in demand, meaning you need to pre-register them. For a list of registrars and pricing for pre-registering domains, see this guide. Please note that I haven’t checked any of these domains against trademarks, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN Ombudsman Fails to Hide Story About Air Canada Argument - ICANN Ombudsman tries to get name taken out of public record in air travel dispute. Earlier this year DNW wrote about ICANN Ombudsman Frank Fowlie and a complaint he filed against Air Canada. A Canadian Transportation Panel found that Fowlie “engaged in abusive and offensive behaviour” on the flight. Needless to say, the complaint made Fowlie look bad. After granting an interview to the Ottawa Citizen and the media attention that ensued, Fowlie tried to get ... read more ...
Sat 17th July 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Some Advice to Education Site Taking on Marijuana Site - Education site worried about effect of corresponding .org domain name. This morning I came across a story about an education web site at NewsBowl.com that is worried that a marijuana site is at NewsBowl.org. The owner is worried that students will type .org after NewsBowl instead of .com and find themselves at a site about drugs. First, it’s kind of ironic that the owner of a .com would worry about what’s on the .org equivalent, since mostly it’s the other ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Registrar Lets You Reserve a Spot during a Top of a .Co Queue - .Co registrar creates innovative way to increase odds of getting your .co domain on July 20. I’ve written about how various registrars are handling pre-registrations for .co domain names, which will become generally available July 20. None of the registrars has been explicit about how they’ll decide which domains to send to the registry first when registration becomes available. But one registrar has come up with a nifty idea to guarantee you a spot near the ... read more ...
Fri 16th July 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Sarah Palin’s Lost Video About Domain Bloggers and Conferences - Domain Name Wire locates a long lost video of Sarah Palin talking about domainers. Well folks, the domain industry doesn’t get media attention like this every day. Check out this video of Sarah Palin talking with Larry King about the domain name industry. Hear about her love of Bob Parsons, what she thinks about Domain Name News, and more in this exclusive video. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Co Receives Nearly 28,000 Landrush Applications - .Co landrush proves significant interest in securing .co domains. The .Co landrush application period has closed, and the domain name registry has received 27,905 applications during the period. That brings the total applications received to date (including sunrise) to 39,000. 2,523 domain names received more than one landrush application, which means they’ll be auctioned off on Pool. 70 domain names had 10 or more applicants. 451 applicants submitted more than ... read more ...
Thu 15th July 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Soap.com Web Store Launches from Creator of Diapers.com - First diapers.com, now soap.com. It’s been a couple months since I first became aware that the company that owns Diapers.com was getting ready to launch a new store at Soap.com. Today the store went live. Soap.com is an online store for toiletries and other household products. Think of it as the section of Target that has the vitamins, detergent, and razors. The idea is to make it easier, cheaper, and more convenient for people to get all of these products. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
VeriSign Releases Information About Anti-Trust Lawsuit - Company files information with SEC regarding legal setback. Shortly after receiving an adverse decision in appeals court last week regarding an anti-trust lawsuit, VeriSign filed an 8-K with the SEC explaining the opinion. The disclosure summarizes changes to the court’s original order, and says the allegations are without merit: On July 9, 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (the “Court”) issued an order (the “Amended Order”) ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
dotBerlin Wants Special Status with New gTLDs Because of Its Early Involvement - First .music, now .berlin wants extra credit for being early to the new TLD game. I wrote previously about how one applicant for the .music top level domain name requested favored status since he had been working on the concept for so long. Now another group is asking for similar status. dotBERLIN GmbH Co., which hopes to release a .berlin top level domain name, has submitted a comment to ICANN asking that companies that have been involved in the new top level domain ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Warning: Your Yahoo Search Traffic is Going Away Next Month - Yahoo to transition to Bing search results very soon. It’s time to stop talking about Yahoo search rankings and the traffic the search engine delivers to your site. Starting as early as next month, no one will care how well you’ve tricked Yahoo into ranking your site well. Today Yahoo! sent out a communication to its advertisers telling them about the transition of organic search results to those of Bing. According to the email: Assuming our testing continues ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Tucker Carlson Buys Keith Olbermann Domain Name - Tucker Carlson’s publication The Daily Caller buys domain name KeithOlbermann.com. From one political pundit to another: I own you! Tucker Carlson has acquired the domain name KeithOlbermann.com. Actually, it’s Carlson’s The Daily Caller that acquired the domain name, and now shows this: Apparently Olbermann has been blasting The Daily Caller of late. So the publication bought the domain name from the current owner, a Virginia man who was parking the domain ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ChatRoulette Launches New Services Without Domain Names - More domain name issues for ChatRoulette. ChatRoulette.com has become somewhat of a hot button topic in domainer circles thanks to the CamRoulette.com saga. So it’s interesting to see a new set of features from ChatRoulette with domain implications. First, the company launched ChannelRoulette and LocalRoulette. The site doesn’t own the corresponding domain names. ChannelRoulette.com was registered by a Florida man in March; LocalRoulette.com was registered ... read more ...
Wed 14th July 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
FreeMarket.com Proves It’s a Free Market during $93,000 - FreeMarket.com leads domain name sales for the week. Hey, it’s a free market out there. That means the price of a domain name is dictated by how much someone is willing to sell it for and how much someone is willing to pay. A prime example: FreeMarket.com, which Sedo just brokered for $93,000. Another example of the free market at work: HighInterestSavingsAccount.com, a four word, 26 letter domain that sold for $18,000. Now if only I could find a savings account ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
12 Things to do in Austin During HostingCon - Your guide to enjoying Austin during HostingCon. Visiting Austin next week for HostingCon? Want to get away and experience Austin? Here are some things to do while you’re in town. 1. Bats – no visit to Austin is complete without watching North America’s largest urban bat population ascend for its nightly feeding. Just before dusk, over 1 million Mexican free-tailed bats depart from the Congress Avenue bridge to consume 10,000-30,000 pounds of insects each ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Official WordPress Backup Now Available with VaultPress - VaultPress secures WordPress in a vault. Backing up a WordPress blog has never been particularly easy or efficient. Earlier this year I wrote about the first truly “easy” backup tool. It works fine and costs me only 10 cents a month in hosting. But now Automattic, the company behind WordPress, has launched an official backup tool called VaultPress. Although it costs money, it’s worth it for anyone who makes a business out of their WordPress site. VaultPress ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Battle Over .Jobs is Growing - .Jobs debate “ends” Thursday. I wrote last month about a move to open up the .jobs domain name. Currently only companies can register .jobs domains, and only with their company name (e.g. ATT.jobs). The group behind this sponsored TLD wants to open it up, with the idea of creating a ton of (million?) job boards using the domains. From Policy.jobs: Previously, Employ Media [which runs .jobs under contract] began the process of creating a self-managed class of ... read more ...
Tue 13th July 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Microsoft Gets Patent for “Cybersquatter Patrol” - Company granted patent for typosquatting and cybersquatting tools. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office today granted Microsoft U.S. patent number 7,756,987 (pdf) for “Cybersquatter Patrol”. The patent is for a system of generating lists of typo and cybersquatted domains and peeling back the onion to determine their ownership and revenue source. It also refers to methods to block these cybersquatted domain names. An exemplary method includes providing a typographically ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Tea Party Patriots Fighting and Failing Over Domain Names - Political group trying to retroactively create and protect brand. One of the many “Tea Party” political groups, Tea Party Patriots, is running into some problems doing retroactive brand management. Tea Party Patriots, Inc. has filed three UDRP domain dispute cases, and only won one of them. The first case was for six domain names including teapartypatriotspac.org. Tea Party Patriots won the case, despite some good arguments from the respondent. The second case ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Owner of Casino.com Busts on Caisinos.com - A generic, a typo, or neither. The owner of Casino.com has failed to convince a World Intellectual Property Forum panel that it should get the domain name Caisinos.com. The case was filed by Mansion (Gibraltar) Limited of Gibraltar, which claimed that Caisinos.com is merely a typo of its Casino.com domain name. There are a few problems with this argument: 1. Casino is a generic term, although this is the weakest defense 2. If anything, it’s a typo of Casinos.com, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DevHub’s Social Web Site Building Off to Strong Start - Web site builder gaining new users — and new developed sites — every minute. Last month I wrote about DevHub’s latest web site builder release and noted that the company was adding a social element to building web sites. The social functionality just went live this week, and so far user engagement is up significantly. Most importantly, new users are spending more time developing their web sites. Over 1,500 sites have been created in the past 12 hours and ... read more ...
Mon 12th July 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Local.com Gives Octane360 More Octane - [Editor’s note: Last Friday I interviewed Local.com CEO Heath Clarke and Senior VP of Corporate Development Peter Hutto about their company’s acquisition of Octane360. In doing research, I realized the first article I ever wrote on DNW — March 9, 2005 — was about their company’s purchase of the Local.com domain name for $700,000. That was 3,575 posts ago.] I’ve long thought Octane360’s business model was one of the most innovative monetization strategies ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Is a .Net Worth 10% of .Com? - Answer: rarely. There’s an old adage in the domain name industry that a .net domain name is worth 10% of the same .com. Some also like to say that other extensions (.biz, .info, etc.) are worth 1% of the .com’s value. The problem is it’s simply not true. Or rather it’s impossible to determine. The main problem is that the sample size is too small. Believe me, I’ve tried too look through the data and figure out what these ratios are. Here are the problems ... read more ...
Sun 11th July 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
About 1,500 .Co Sunrise Applications Denied; Now Available in Landrush - Denied sunrise applications and additional releases from .co registry now available. [Update: the full list has been published by some registrars this morning.] About 1,500 applications for .co domain names through the trademark sunrise process have been denied, and the domain names are now available for registration through Landrush. If any of them are not claimed during the Landrush period, they will be available for pre-registration before July 20 and general ... read more ...