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.

Fri 5th June 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Embrace.com during $18.9k and other lapsed domain name sales - A weekly roundup of expired domain name sales at NameJet. As a branding consultant, I love this week’s top seller: Embrace.com ($18.9k). It means so much more than a hug. When we “embrace change”, we’re not giving the future a cuddle. If we “embrace challenges”, we’re not being squeezed by Grandma; we’re Davids slaying Goliaths. The word “embrace” is positive, courageous, and social. … And I hate Elliot Silver for buying it instead of me! Oh, well. China and the rest of ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
33 of a best new .Porn websites - A look at some of the more interesting .porn web addresses that have been registered. The .Porn top level domain name came out yesterday, and already over 10,000 domain names have been registered. I sifted through the list of .porn domain name registrations to find the best ones. Here’s what I envision each website featuring in the near future. (Yes, all of these .porn domain names were actually registered.) ChicagoCubs.porn – this tantric love site features lowly Cubs fans who have waited over ... read more ...
Thu 4th June 2015
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Watch Stuart Lawley urge .Porn and .Adult - The man behind .porn, .adult and .xxx is asked to defend his business model. ICM Registry CEO Stuart Lawley was on Bloomberg yesterday. Bloomberg’s Emily Chang asked him to defend the business model of selling .porn and .adult domain names. Doesn’t this force celebrities and brands to pay up to protect themselves? Lawley talked about how new top level domain names in general provide more choice for businesses. He also noted that brands also have to protect themselves in bricks-and-mortar businesses. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
St. Louis bank sues to take over dispute domains - Bank and board member file cybersquatting claim over two domain names they call defamatory. Midwest BankCentre, a bank in St. Louis, has filed a lawsuit to get control of the domain names MidwestBankCheated.com and JerryScheideggerCheatedMe.com. Jerry Scheidegger is a board member of the bank. Both domain names lead to content making allegations about the bank and a foreclosure. The allegations are made in response to a foreclosure in which the person claims Scheidegger was enriched after buying ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
An engaging Google domain name parking obvious application - Idea sounds a lot like zero click monetization. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office just published a Google patent application related to domain name parking. Named Systems and Methods of Providing Parked Domain Content, application 13/631472 (embedded below) should give pause to providers of zero click domain monetization solutions. Essentially, the patent application describes a system in which a total advertising value is assigned to a parked page. An advertiser can then bid to be the exclusive ... read more ...
 
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Interview: Why Shaun Smith bought JiuJitsu.com - An interview with Shaun Smith, who just acquired JiuJitsu.com on a creative payment plan. Shaun Smith locked down the premium domain JiuJitsu.com for $75,000 about month ago…for much less than $75k. Here’s his story. First things first, what’s Jiu Jitsu? Martial arts pops into my head, but that’s all I know. Jiu Jitsu originated in Japan and migrated to Brazil in the early 19th century. Unlike, say, Karate, in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) there is no striking. It’s primarily focused on joint ... read more ...
 
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Tucows' batch in on fire - Shares up over 50% since May 1. If you bought shares of Tucows at the opening price on May 1, just a month ago, you’ve already realized a return of a whopping 57%. Shares in Tucows are on fire on the NASDAQ, where it trades under the ticker TCX. It’s not entirely clear what’s behind the surge. The company reported earnings on May 7, but the stock didn’t start to surge until a week later. Here are some possible reasons behind the price pop: 1. Share buybacks. Tucows is buying back up to $20 ... read more ...
Wed 3rd June 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Recent finish user domain name sales - A photographer, bicycle manufacturer and illustrator bought domain names last week. Sedo had 605 domain name transactions last week for a total of $1.1 million in sales. A number of the higher sales are still going through transfer, so some big end user sales might be missing from this list. .Club has a couple entries and there’s a good .me domain name, as well. Here’s a list of end user domain name sales from last week: (You can view previous lists like this here. If you’d like to learn how ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Com winners and losers - Here’s how registrars fared with .com in February. ICANN has published the latest Verisign .com monthly report, containing data from February. Let’s start by reviewing which registrars added the most new .com domain name registrations: 1. GoDaddy 912,763* 2. Rightside 203,096** 3. Tucows 106,910 4. PublicDomainRegistry 92,847 5. Network Solutions 62,104 When it comes to companies that won the transfer game, here are the top five registrars with retail operations for February. These numbers are ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sedo touts Direct Auction successes - Top Direct Auction sale so far is $26,500. Sedo launched a new feature called Direct Auctions at the end of April, allowing anyone to start an auction for a $59 fee. 150 orders for Direct Auctions were placed on the first day. So, how is it going? Sedo has released a few highlighted auction results that were started with the Direct Auctions option: 8255.com $26,500 USD mexico.tv $9,000 USD blumenversand.com (flower delivery) €4,200 p-k.com $3,900 USD 434.net €3,452 These are good results. Of ... read more ...
 
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University of Florida gets FloridaGators.com…18 years later - Site owner changed use to one about alligators after receiving cease desist letter. The University of Florida will soon own the domain name FloridaGators.com after winning a cybersquatting dispute. The domain name was registered by a Florida man as far back as 1997, 18 years ago. For years, it was a site about the University of Florida’s sports teams. Here’s a screenshot from Screenshots.com from a couple years ago: In March, the university sent a cease and desist to the site’s owner. According ... read more ...
Tue 2nd June 2015
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One year in: .XYZ and new tip turn domain names - Controversial…but successful? Daniel NegariThe .xyz domain name hit its one year anniversary today with about 950,000 domain names. That’s just 50,000 names shy of .xyz CEO Daniel Negari’s first year goal for the domain name, an estimate many snickered at when he made it. Now, many people are probably still snickering about these numbers. After all, weren’t they all given away for free? No. One registrar gave away about 350,000 domains. Many of the others were registered at bargain basement ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Why do people try sell domain names on eBay? - Or do they have another purpose for listing domains for sale on eBay? Believe it or not, there are currently over 14,000 listings in the Domain Names section on eBay. That’s a lot of active listings for a site that most domain name investors never visit. Why is this? Are people actually making money selling domains on eBay, or do they use it for some other purpose (such as driving clicks to domain names)? Looking more closely, there are only about 1,000 active auction. The rest of the listings ... read more ...
Mon 1st June 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
VIP Programs Court Domainers - Discounts and priority service are added perks for domain name investors. Last week, domain name registrar DirectNic unveiled its new VIP program, and domainers could be forgiven for having flashbacks to last decade at registrar Fabulous. That’s because Mike Robertson, who made a name for himself in the domain name business by playing point man for many large domainers with portfolios at Fabulous, is now at DirectNic and is spearheading its VIP program. The program includes discounted pricing, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN survey: .Com still king, though new TLDs have a possibility (especially outward U.S.) - ICANN survey shows that acceptance of domain name extension options is higher outside of the U.S. and Europe. ICANN has released results of the first phase of a multi-year consumer study on the domain name landscape. The survey of over 6,000 people who use the internet 5+ hours a week was conducted in February. Here are some of the notable findings around awareness and trust of top level domain names. Awareness Unsurprisingly, awareness in legacy domain names such as .com is much higher than new ... read more ...
 
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John Berryhill on domain name law and cybersquatting – DNW Podcast #35 - Protect yourself from cybersquatting claims. What happens when a company thinks you’re cybersquatting on one of its trademarks? Domain name attorney John Berryhill has helped people defend many such accusations. On this episode he explains what a company has to prove in the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). He also discusses some common misconceptions about the factors that will sway a UDRP panel one way or the other. Did you know that parking your domain name can actually help ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
This week: .Porn and .Adult - This was supposed to be a big week with .sucks going into general availability, but that launch has been delayed by 3 weeks. It’s still going to be a big for new top level domain names, though: the entry of .adult and .porn will surely generate mainstream press. Here’s a run down of new TLDs hitting the market this week: .Tirol, a domain name for the Austrian state of Tyrol, goes live today. On Wednesday, the heavily restricted .pharmacy domain name goes into general availability. Qualified ... read more ...
Fri 29th May 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Lawsuit filed to redeem stolen X3.com domain name - Domain name was transferred to eName, a popular home for stolen domain names. The person who registered X3.com in 1995 has filed a lawsuit to recover the domain name, which he says was stolen from his DreamHost account. Anthony Alfieri-Crispin alleges (pdf) that the defendant managed to steal the domain name from his account and quickly transfer it to…where else…eName. According to a comment on Domain Name Wire, this transfer happened in the matter of less than 25 minutes. This isn’t the first ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
This week's Expired Domain Report - A weekly wrap of expired domain name sales. Roughly half a dozen auctions at NameJet outperformed LoveDay.com ($3.6k) during the past week – by as much as a factor of 10 in the case of DogCare.com ($37k). These included the usual crop of LLL.com’s; an LL.tv; and another 5-figure NNNN.com, which was the category that topped our chart last time. In these weekly articles, however, I do my best to exclude seller-managed auctions for domains that don’t go through the automatic expiration ... read more ...
Thu 28th May 2015
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Harvard sues visit UDRP crook to have the domains disabled - Company that lost four UDRP complaints if filed against others might be at risk of losing its own domain name. Harvard has sued a handful of companies it says have copied its trademarked exam questions. Among these companies is one that lost four UDRP cases in a single week — Certplex, Ltd. Certplex lost four UDRPs for domain names including the term “Braindumps”. One of Certplex’s sites offering test prep is Braindumps.com. According to the complaint filed by Harvard, Certplex publishes ... read more ...
 
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FTC to ICANN on .Sucks: Yeah, we told we this would happen - FTC wants ICANN to address overarching issues with new TLDs rather than one-off cases. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has responded to ICANN’s request that it investigate the practices of top level domain name registry Vox Populi over its rollout of the .sucks domain name. I’d summarize its response as: “yeah, we told you this would happen with your rollout of new TLDs”. FTC’s Chairwoman Edith Ramirez wrote (pdf) that the FTC cannot comment on the existence of any pending investigations, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
NAF row orders send of FatTuesday.com to owners of Fat-Tuesday.com - Panel really screwed this one up. A three person National Arbitration Forum panel has ordered the transfer of the domain name FatTuesday.com to David Briggs Enterprises, Inc. The complainant operates bars under the name Fat Tuesday and uses the inferior domain name Fat-Tuesday.com. Of course, Fat Tuesday is also the name for what many of us think of as Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras is French for “Fat Tuesday”. Type “Fat Tuesday” into Google, and it duly pops up the date of this holiday. Amazingly, ... read more ...
Wed 27th May 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Domain definitions: Registrar and Registry - The definition of registry is becoming fuzzy. Two of the most commonly misused words in mainstream articles about domain names are registrar and registry. Many publications use one when it should be the other. A registrar is the company where you register a domain name, such as GoDaddy or Name.com. A registry is the company that manages the top level domain name. So if you register a .com domain name at GoDaddy, GoDaddy is the registrar and Verisign is the registry for the domain name. Now, most ... read more ...
 
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What Fadi Chehadé should do in his final year as ICANN's CEO - Here’s what companies and people want to see ICANN’s outgoing CEO accomplish before he leaves the post. ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé made the surprise announcement last week that he would step down from his role as CEO of the organization next March. I reached out to a number of companies and people in the ICANN community to ask what they would most like to see Chehadé accomplish in this last ten months at the head of the internet group. Elliot Noss, CEO of Tucows: If Fadi were to take practical ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
15 finish user domain name purchases - An accessories company, law firm and trade publisher bought domain names last week. Sedo had 598 domain name transactions last week for a total of $1.1 million. Two likely end user sales aren’t on this list because they have whois privacy or are still in transfer: MyFood.com at $33,500 and FBet.com at €50,000. Neither domain name resolves to an active website yet, but we’ll probably find out who the buyers in the coming months. Below are 15 end user domain name sales at Sedo from the past week (You ... read more ...