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.

Wed 9th June 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Court Greenlights Sex.com Order - Order paves way for sale of Sex.com. The Central California Bankruptcy Court has issued an order approving a settlement between the managers of Sex.com owner Escom, LLC. This means that Escom can go forward with entering into an agreement with domain broker Sedo to sell the domain name. There was a slight hitch in the process as investor Nothin’ But Net (run by Mike “Zappy” Zapolin), which had been quiet in the early stages of the case, filed an objection. ... read more ...
Tue 8th June 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DomainTools Shows Off New Office in Seattle - Whois company holds open house to show off new office. Seattle is one of my favorite cities. So when I heard that DomainTools was holding an open house Monday to show off its new office in Seattle, I knew I had to make the stopover en route to TRAFFIC in Vancouver. DomainTools didn’t need a moving truck to get to its new offices; they are directly upstairs from the old digs. But it’s a big improvement. The former radio studio downstairs in the two story building ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Demand Media Rebrands with New Web Site and Logo - Content and domain name behemoth Demand Media splashes more color. Demand Media’s business model has evolved over time, so it’s only natural that the company is refreshing its image. Today the company released a new web site and logo. The top image in this post is the company’s new logo; the bottom image is the old. The old image was much more reserved and corporate, while the new one is on the fringe. My first thought when I saw the new home page was similarity ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
CGM.com Domain Name Sells for $365,000 - Sedo sells three letter domain for big money, and the future is bright.com. After a few weeks of not reporting any major domain name sales (and one that go away), Sedo came through big time this week. Highlighting the list is CGM.com, which the company brokered for a whopping $365,000. The new whois record for the domain name is for Compugroup, a large European e-health company with nearly 300 million EUR in annual sales. The domain marketplace turned in another ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Gregory “Bong” Loses 8 Hyphen .Info Domain in UDRP - What are these guys smoking? I thought I’d seen it all, but I hadn’t until today: someone lost a .info domain name with eight hyphens in a UDRP. But it gets more entertaining. The domain name is: how-to-roll-a-blunt-with-a-swisher-sweet.info And the registered owner? One Gregory Bong. Yes, bong. Or at least according to the whois record. I can understand why Swisher would want to get this domain name off the web. But this strategy could be expensive. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Co Gets Big .Coup with Twitter - Twitter signs on to .co. .Co has pulled out all the stops in marketing its launch, and it got another big win today. Twitter announced that it will begin using t.co as its URL shortener, and eventually will wrap all URLs on the twitter service through t.co. That doesn’t mean that all links will show up with the .co domain, however. The company explained that URLs will show up as t.co in SMS, but on the web interface or through various applications it might actually ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DomainTools Takes Investment, Forms Advisory Board - Whois data service takes outside investment. File this in the category of “happened a while ago, but no one knew about it”. During yesterday’s DomainTools Open House, DomainTools CEO Tim Chen said that the company had taken on outside investment and formed an advisory board. Here’s an official statement from the company: As part of Thought Convergence’s goal to expand the DomainTools brand, products and services globally, we have taken on a group of strategic ... read more ...
Mon 7th June 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
The Week Ahead: Seattle, Then Vancouver - Stay tuned to DNW for reports from TRAFFIC. I’m headed up to the Pacific Northwest this week, and the timing couldn’t be better. It’s getting hot in Austin. It’s near 100 degrees, which is hot enough that I’m asking myself why I live here. My first stop will be Seattle on Monday (high temperature 71) to visit DomainTools’ new offices. I checked out their old digs a couple years ago, and they were nice. But word is the new offices are a nice improvement. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
e.co Domain Name Auction Starts during Sedo - Bidding for e.co underway. The charity auction of e.co, sponsored by .Co Internet and Sedo, has started and runs through June 10. A lot of people have been comparing this auction to that of e.Biz, but I don’t think the comparison makes sense. e.Biz sold for so much because it’s a very common term — eBiz. Just look at the buyer, which owns Ecommerce.com, to understand the value. So what is the value of e.co? I think most of the value lies in the “eco” ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Receiver Fail: Network Solutions Responds to Expired Domains Sold on NameJet - Company says it sent 54 reminders to receiver to renew domain names. New details have emerged in the case of a court-appointed receiver failing to renew domain names that were subject to a lengthy court case. OK, so it’s not the exciting. We all knew what happened: the receiver failed to renew the domain names, they expired, and then they were auctioned off at NameJet. But a letter from Network Solutions shows that the receiver at least knew how to renew a domain ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
If You Can’t Go to Brussels, You Can Still Participate Online - ICANN holds informational sessions on remote participation for June meeting. If something good came of many attendees pulling out of the last ICANN meeting in Kenya for security reasons, it was the tidal shift to remote participation in ICANN meetings. A number of people who chose not to attend the meeting went to the web and ICANN’s many remote participation features to stay involved and virtually raise their hand to speak. A group of domain companies even set ... read more ...
Sun 6th June 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Is This a Worst UDRP Domain Dispute Analogy Ever? - Now this is just stupid. I just finished reviewing the details of Tata Communications’ case against Portmedia Inc. for the domain name TrueRoots.com. The facts of the case are fairly clear: the domain name was registered well before Tata Communications started using the term TrueRoots. Later, once Tata started using the mark, the parked page at TrueRoots.com started to display links related to Tata’s use. As is sometimes the case, the panelists disagreed over ... read more ...
Fri 4th June 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DONE! Ventures Sues NBC Universal Over Failed Women.com Deal during Sedo - Company sues NBC Universal for allegedly backing out of deal to sell Women.com. Robin Wauters at TechCrunch is reporting about a domain deal that didn’t quite get “done”, and a lawsuit filed by the buyer. DONE! Ventures (which participated in the Toys.com auction) is suing NBC Universal for allegedly not following through with an agreement to sell Women.com and women.net. According to the complaint, NBC Universal agreed to an exclusive brokerage agreement ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Rosenblatt: We Love eNom for a Data - eNom brings in revenue — but also important data — for Demand Media. Yesterday Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt discussed his business at the All Things D conference. When describing the business, he noted that there are essentially two sides: domains and content. But what was particularly interesting about the domains side is the value it brings to the company. Sure, eNom brings in recurring revenue. But beyond the money is the data: The third reason we ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Woops! Court Appointed Receiver Lets Zuccarini Domains Expire, Auctioned Off on NameJet - Domains that were part of legal judgment are accidentally auctioned off. Congratulations Michael Berkens, you’ve just uncovered a big mess by accident. On May 25, Berkens wrote about the auctioning off of GovermentGrants.com on NameJet for $53,022. The story also mentions other expired domains that sold on NameJet at the same time, such as USGoverment.com for $4,950, GovermentGrant.com for $3,950, GovermentAuction.com for $2,750, and GovermentAuctions.com $2,500. But ... read more ...
Thu 3rd June 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Help Pick a Date for a Austin Domainer Weekend - A deductible trip to Austin is in your future. This fall I’ll be hosting a domainer dinner in Austin, TX. The original idea was to have just a simple dinner for locals, but I’ve had a number of requests from out-of-towners to have the event in conjunction with a University of Texas football weekend. So the theme will be “Come for dinner. Stay for the weekend.” We’ll probably have dinner and a night out on 6th Street on the Friday before the game. Because ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Skype Founders Launching Rdio.com, Which They Bought during Sedo - Rdio.com didn’t cost much, but good luck pronouncing it. Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis are launching a streaming music service at Rdio.com. First thought: bad domain name. My first assumption was that this is supposed to be like “Radio” but with out the “a”, like a typical web 2.0 spelling. But this Businessweek story explains otherwise: Rdio is pronounced “AR-dee-oh”, a play on the words “radio” and “audio.” Ouch. Anytime ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Panel Rules Used Steinway Seller Can Keep His Domain Name - Steinway hits the wrong note in domain name dispute. Piano manufacturer Steinway, Inc. has lost a case for the domain name American-Steinway.com against a company that deals in used Steinway pianos. The case pitted the company against Carey Simon and his business partner Robert Friedman, who has been in the business of buying, restoring and reselling Steinway pianos for more than 35 years, according to the response. The decision by a three member National Arbitration ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Dutch Boyd Hits a Poker Tables, But Already a Winner during Sedo - Boyd playing a winning hand with domain name. Domaining is much easier. The World Series of Poker has begun, and that means World Series of Poker bracelet winner Russ “Dutch” Boyd is hitting the poker tables. But regardless of how well he does this year, he’s already looking like a winner thanks to a domain he has on auction at Sedo right now: cured.com. Boyd dabbles in domain names when he’s not bluffing his poker opponents. He also made it out to the TRAFFIC ... read more ...
Wed 2nd June 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Geo Web Sites Show News Doesn’t Pay - Recent examples show that making local news profitable is still a challenge. The newspapers are dying. The model of paying lots of reporters to write news stories and then delivering it via paper to readers just won’t work anymore. It’s true, and it has been the driving force behind a lot of geo domain activity over the past few years — the building out of city and local domain names. But in the process, it seems that perhaps geo domain owners tried to emulate ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
MyBizHomepage is Confusingly Similar to MyBizOffice? Really? - This really shouldn’t be that confusing of an issue. The bar has just been lowered for showing confusing similarity in UDRP decisions, courtesy of a decision at National Arbitration Forum. At issue are the domain names MyBizHomepage.com and MyBizDashboard.com. The complainant in the case, MBO Partners, Inc, operates MyBizOffice.com and has a trademark for “MyBizOffice”. Note that MBO Partners does not have a trademark for “MyBiz”, which is a very common ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy Launches YouTube Competitor during Video.me - Domain registrar launches a video sharing service on .me domain name. GoDaddy has launched a video sharing service at Video.me, just the latest .me domain name that the company (which has a stake in the .me registry) has created a product around. After relaunching .me, GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons dumped his BobParsons.tv personal brand in favor of BobParsons.me. The company also uses VerySocial.me for its Social Visibility offering. GoDaddy plans to launch a web ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Political Attack Video Associates Candidate with Bob Parsons - Time for Bob to whip out the checkbook… PARSONS, ROBERT SCOTTSDALE,AZ 85262 GODADDY.COM/PRESIDENT 10/26/06 $10,000 Democratic Congressional Campaign Cmte (D) PARSONS, ROBERT SCOTTSDALE,AZ 85262 GODADDY.COM/CEO 12/15/09 $2,400 Boucher, Rick (D) PARSONS, ROBERT SCOTTSDALE,AZ 85262 GODADDY.COM/CEO 9/25/07 $2,300 Stevens, Ted (R) PARSONS, ROBERT SCOTTSDALE,AZ 85262 GODADDY.COM/CEO 9/25/07 $2,300 Stevens, Ted (R) PARSONS, ROBERT SCOTTSDALE,AZ 85262 GODADDY.COM/FOUNDER AND CEO 9/13/07 $2,300 McConnell, ... read more ...
Tue 1st June 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
BodogBrand Announces it is Slots.com Buyer - Popular online poker brand is buyer of Slots.com. Bodog Brand, owner and licensor of the Bodog gambling brand, has announced that it was the mystery buyer of Slots.com last month, and that it paid a bit more than previously reported. In a press release, the company announced that it paid GBP 4,000,000 for the domain, which equates to about $5.8 million USD a today’s exchange rates. Calvin Ayre, founder of the Bodog brand, stated: “The internet really has changed ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN Opens Floodgates Over Holiday Weekend - Information overload hits over Memorial Day weekend. Maybe it was because this weekend was the end of the month. Or perhaps it was to meet deadlines for the upcoming ICANN conference. Regardless, ICANN chose a U.S. holiday weekend to release a number of very important documents. The big kahuna is the fourth draft applicant guidebook for new TLDs. This may be the last “draft” of the guidebook. It will take a while for me to go through it and I’ll report back ... read more ...