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 17th June 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
CentralNic raises £2.3 Million - CentralNic pads bank account with institutional placement. Publicly traded domain name registry and registrar CentralNic (AIM: CNIC) has raised £2.3 Million by placing 5,750,000 new ordinary shares. The shares were sold at 40 pence each, above yesterday’s closing mid-market price of 34.5 pence. Shares are trading between 37.50 pence and 39.00 pence today. The shares will represent 8.58% of the company’s ordinary share capital. CentralNic can boast being the #2 backend registry for new top level ... read more ...
Tue 16th June 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
10 new domain names we can register for $1.50 or less - Register these domain names without burning a hole in your wallet. Want some inexpensive domain names? You’re in luck. At least 10 new TLDs can be registered today for just $1.50 or less, and only two of them have any sort of limits on registrations. While some registrars, notably 11, offer .com and other TLDs at a big discount, the offer is typically limited to one registration per customer. Except for the first two on the list below, I believe there are no limits in place at the registrars. I ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Commercial Connect fails miserably in Community Priority bid - Proving a community for “shop” proves very difficult. .Shop top level domain name applicant Commercial Connect has been denied (pdf) in its bid for Community Priority, scoring just five points out the necessary 14 required to prevail. Like GMO, which also applied for community status, Commercial Connect didn’t score any points for “community establishment” and nexus. GMO got six points in its evaluation. Commercial Connect has been a harebrained mission to eliminate competition for .shop. ... read more ...
Mon 15th June 2015
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GoDaddy vs. Uniregistry – a Great Debate - Uniregistry is increasingly competing with GoDaddy, and stronger competition is good for everybody. Increasingly competing with each other for domain investors’ business.Last week Doron Vermaat, a domain investor who writes the blog DNGeek, wrote a post explaining why he was moving his 600 domain names from GoDaddy to Uniregistry. His post sparked a lot of comments, including from representatives of the two registrars. That many of the “which registrar is best?” conversations now mention the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Neustar's Sean Kaine on .US, .Co, new TLDs and ICANN – DNW Podcast #37 - What’s the future of .US? What effect are new TLDs having on legacy domains? Find out in this podcast. Neustar has lots of experience with non-.com domains. It operates the registry for .co, .us and .biz, and is also the back end registry provider for a lot of new TLDs. On this episode, Neustar VP of Registry Sean Kaine talks about these top level domains and how he sees the internet naming landscape changing in the coming years. What’s the future of .US? Why is .Co still growing in the face ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
This week's new TLDs: .Sucks and .Markets - .Sucks hits general availability and the company that spent $4.7 million for a .com launches a new top level domain name. It will be a controversial week for new top level domain names, assuming Vox Populi doesn’t delay the start of .sucks general availability a second time. .Sucks domain names become available to the general public on Saturday at a suggested retail price of $249. Companies can also block their domains at participating registrars for about $199. The much-maligned “consumer advocate” ... read more ...
Sun 14th June 2015
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GoDaddy: Alleged discriminatory email not authentic - GoDaddy says it didn’t send email calling job applicant an obese Christian. GoDaddy has formally denied allegations that it sent an email to a job applicant explaining that it wouldn’t hire him because he was an obese Christian. The denial included detailed steps the company took to determine the email wasn’t authentic. Keith Connolly applied for a job with GoDaddy. He later received a rejection email. In addition to the form rejection email he received, he said the bottom included a forwarded ... read more ...
Fri 12th June 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
These keywords saw a spike in registrations final month - Options, Limos among popular keywords in new .com domains. Verisign has published its monthly “trending” keywords report, which finds keywords that have suddenly become more popular in .com domain name registrations. Based on the results, it would seem a lot of people got rich off stock options, used the money to buy a Tesla and became used to the keyless entry, causing them to forget their house keys and have to call a locksmith. Here are the top ten for May: 1. Options 2. Holo 3. Locksmith 4. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Kevin Ham and Mike Mann let these prize-winning domain names expire - Domains that won $5,000 in Verisign contest used to be owned by well-known domain name investors. Verisign found some great domains for the final five $5,000 winners in its Internet Official contest. All five were previously registered. Interestingly, a couple well-known domainers used to own two of the domain names: Kevin Ham and Mike Mann. Based on DomainTools’ whois history, it seems they let the domain names expire. Here is the history behind the five winning domains: Delectablegarden.com ... read more ...
Thu 11th June 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Canada responds to ICANN about .Sucks - Move along, now… John Knubley, Deputy Minister of Industry Canada, has responded (pdf) to the letter ICANN sent to both the U.S. FTC and Canada regarding the .sucks domain name. Knubley basically states that this is not a matter for the government, and that if intellectual property rights holders think a .sucks domain infringes their mark, they already know what to do about it: Canada’s laws provide comprehensive protections for all Canadians. Canada has intellectual property, competition, criminal ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Baotou.com sells for $62,000 and other lapsed domain name sales - A whopper of a sale at NameJet, as Joseph Peterson reports. This week it’s no contest. Between the top expired auction at NameJet and its runner up there yawns a chasm – a 7:1 ratio. At $9k, GameStars.com would be an impressive sale … but for the fact that China claimed its own Baotou.com for a staggering $61.8k. If you’re like me, then you’ve probably never heard of this industrial city in inner Mongolia. But it makes our smart phones and tablets possible. You see, China holds 95% of ... read more ...
 
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Donuts starts releasing name collision domains - First batch of domains is now available for registration. Donuts has begun releasing domain names that were originally held back due to name collision concerns. The first set of domain names, all related to photography, became available yesterday. They are currently running through Early Access, which means they are going through a sort of Dutch auction for seven days. Next Wednesday the domains will become available at regular prices. (About 2% of domains have premium prices attached to them.) Domains ... read more ...
 
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Salesforce registers over 100 subdomain typos - Salesforce registers .com domains corresponding to each of its instances. When you log in to Salesforce.com, you land on an instance, which is a subdomain of salesforce.com. As explained here, if you arrive from North America, your browser might load na1.salesforce.com. Other subdomains include AP# for Asia Pacific, EU# for Europe and CS# for the sandbox environment. You can see a full list of the instances and corresponding subdomain identifiers here. Yesterday, Salesforce registered over a hundred ... read more ...
Wed 10th June 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
(Some of) May's tip NameJet sales - Joseph Peterson takes a look back at the past month on NameJet. Each month, NameJet disseminates its list of domain auctions that closed above $2,000, and various domain blogs publish that list basically as is. Personally, I’ve tried to dig a bit deeper, grouping sold domains by type and providing month-to-month statistics on overall market-place performance. Unfortunately, that approach is too time consuming; so I’m reverting to a simpler list format. That said, I like to chew data before swallowing. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Strong greenback provides domain name shopping opportunity - Currency fluctuations have a big impact on domain name negotiations. The U.S. dollar goes a lot further these days.If you keep your cash in the U.S. dollar, now might be a good time to by domain names from people outside of the U.S. It might also be worth revisiting failed purchases from the past year or two as your previous offer might now be more appealing.. The U.S. dollar has been very strong in the past year, rising 10%-22% against many major currencies. It’s up about 20% against the euro, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
16 finish user domain name sales adult to $50,000 - An end user (instead of a Chinese domain name investor) bought a three letter domain name last week. Sedo handled 560 transactions last week for total domain name sales of about $1 million. The biggest public sale was NBT.com, which was purchased by South Korean app maker NBT Partners. The company currently uses the ccTLD NBTPartners.co.uk. Some new top level domain names made the end user sales list as well. Here’s a list of end user domain name sales from last week: (You can view previous lists ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
The hurdles of detailed trademarks - Two lawsuits show that descriptive brands have a downside. I came across a couple recently filed trademark lawsuits that emphasize the challenge of building a brand around a descriptive term. The first was filed by Texas company Peanut Labs, Inc., which operates the site SurveyTool.com. The company is upset with Instantly, Inc for using the term “Survey Tool”. (Lawsuit PDF) Survey tool is very descriptive. It’s a tool for surveys. If you Google “Survey Tool”, you’ll find a bunch of services ... read more ...
Tue 9th June 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
How genuine estate agents use domain names - A look at domain names in home listings. Earlier this year I wrote about domain names used to market homes for sale. This week I received a glossy magazine advertising homes for sale in Austin, and I decided to see how many of the homes had a domain name in their description or title. Of the 95 homes featured in the magazine, 51 had a domain name specifically for the home. That’s 54%. (It’s possible other homes have a unique domain name but their agents did not include them in the magazine.) I ... read more ...
 
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Court earnings stolen 224.com, 605.com and 452.com domain names - Three number domain names returned to rightful owner after lawsuit. A U.S. Federal Court has ordered the domain names 224.com, 605.com and 452.com be returned to Traffic Names, Ltd. Ian Andrew of Traffic Names filed suit last year alleging the domain names were stolen from his eNom account. He found out about the theft after the domain names were listed for sale on domain name marketplace 4.cn. 4.cn noticed the recent ownership change and contacted Andrew to make sure he was aware. ESQWire.com and ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
DNW Rewind: 10 years ago this month - Take a trip back in time in the domain name business. Domain Name Wire is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, and I thought it would be fun to take a look back at what I was writing about ten years ago this month. In looking back at the June 2005 archives, I realize I wrote some pretty crappy stories back then. But there was a lot of interesting stuff going on, and it’s amusing to take a trip back in time… .Com and .Net domain names totaled 76.9 million names as of the end of Q1 2005, ... read more ...
 
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Fred Krueger sells about 1/5th of his interest in Minds + Machines - Former chairman sells 24.5 million shares in three transactions. Former Minds + Machines chairman Fred Krueger has sold about a fifth of his stake in the new top level domain name company since leaving at the end of last month. Krueger has sold 24.5 million shares in three transactions, netting him close to £2 million, assuming he sold for just over 8 pence per share. [Update: Minds + Machines announced on 6/10 that Krueger sold another 4 million shares, on 6/11 that he sold 10,750,000 shares and ... read more ...
Mon 8th June 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Last month's Top 5 Stories on Domain Name Wire - A look back at the past month in the domain name business. A big sale in a new top level domain name, a Chinese domain name auction, and a new top level domain name partnership were among the most-read stories on Domain Name Wire last month. Here’s a list of the top 5: 1. 3D.Software domain name sells for $100,000+ – Rightside sold this two letter new TLD for a bundle. 2. Scenes from a domain name auction in China – This domain name auction in China looks a lot likes ones in the West. 3. New ... read more ...
 
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Parking association monetizes typos – with a TM holder's permission - Brand-approved typosquatting? Sort of. A new domain name parking service promises to help people monetize brand related domain names, such as typos, in a way that brand owners support. Protected Parking “enables domain owners to monetize brand related domains with the full knowledge and explicit agreement from the brand owner,” according to the company. If you have typos or traffic domain names that include trademarks, the company will monetize them through the respective company’s affiliate ... read more ...
 
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Rightside CEO Taryn Naidu – DNW Podcast #36 - A discussion with the CEO of Rightside, the company behind eNom and Name.com, a whole bunch of top level domain names, and part-owner of NameJet. My guest this week is Taryn Naidu, CEO of publicly traded domain name company Rightside. Rightside owns domain name registrars eNom and Name.com and is a part-owner of expired domain name marketplace NameJet. The company also owns a portfolio of 300,000 domains. Rightside is the biggest backend registry for new top level domain names and has launched its ... read more ...
 
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Company regulating .Today domain name raises $8 million - Jeff Dachis’ latest company, currently using a .today domain name, raises $8 million. One Drop, a diabetes management platform that uses the domain name OneDrop.today, has raised $8 million in a round led by RRE Ventures. One Drop is the latest startup from Jeff Dachis, who was the founder and CEO of .com darling (and ultimately bust) Razorfish. He later was an entrepreneur-in-residence at Austin Ventures, where he then created social media company Dachis Group. He ran that company until early ... read more ...