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 19th November 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Dish DBS beats Google in .Dot auction, pays $700,000 for domain - Dish won a two way race to operate the top level domain name .dot. Dish DBS, the satellite TV company and owner of Blockbuster, has beaten Google in a public auction for the top level domain .Dot. It paid $700,000 for the rights to the domain name. You’re not misreading this – the domain name is .dot. So soon, you might be able to visit Blockbuster at Blockbuster-dot-dot. In its application for the domain name, Dish said it plans to use the domain name for its ... read more ...
Tue 18th November 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
UDRP order changes entrance subsequent year to frustrate “Cyberflight” - Registrars will be required to lock domain names prior to registrant finding out about UDRP case. ICANN has announced a July 31, 2015 implementation date for amended rules under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). The new rules were designed to thwart a practice of “cyberflight”, in which the owner of a domain name subject to a UDRP transfers the domain to another registrar to evade the policy. Under the amended rules, registrars will have ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Guy tries to heading one of Rick Schwartz’s domain names - This one will be interesting. This morning I was perusing recently filed trademark applications when I came across an application for Trademarking.com. When I checked the whois on the domain name, I saw that the domain was registered to domain name investor Rick Schwartz. But the company that filed the trademark was Trademark King in Indiana. TrademarkKing.com (with two k’s) is registered under whois privacy, so I thought perhaps the trademark applicant owns this ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google upgrades mobile-friendly sites in hunt results - Sites will get label, and might get a search benefit in the future. Google announced today that it is adding a “mobile-friendly” label to sites in search results, and is experimenting with using mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. Over the next few weeks, Google will start adding the “mobile-friendly” identifier next to qualified sites for mobile searches (see picture). In a blog post about the move, Google suggested that how mobile-friendly a site is ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
How .Realtor fast became one of a many used new TLDs - Easy-to-create starter sites fuel early usage of domain names for Realtors. About four weeks ago, the National Association of Realtors released the .realtor domain name. Ahead of the launch, I called it one of the most important launches in the nascent new top level domain name program. .Realtor has quickly shot up to the #4 spot of new top level domain names with about 85,000 domain names in the zone file. Much like #1 (.xyz) and #2 (.berlin), its success has a ... read more ...
Mon 17th November 2014
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NamesCon 2015 with Jothan Frakes – Domain Name Wire Podcast - NamesCon is just two months away. Learn about the upcoming show on this week’s podcast. NamesCon returns for its second edition this January. Its inaugural show brought together 600 people from the domain name industry, making it the largest non-ICANN domain related event. On this week’s podcast, co-producer Jothan Frakes explains what’s in store for January’s conference. If you haven’t bought your ticket yet, Jothan shares a $200 discount code during the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New TLDs this week: .Quebec, .Top and .Engineer - A few new TLDs hit registrars’ shelves this week, including a large geo domain. A few top level domain names coming out in a week is the new normal, so I’m going to stop calling these “slow” weeks. Here’s a look at this week’s new top level domain name rollouts. .Quebec – Quebec gets its own TLD this Tuesday, but its government is going to sit on the sidelines thanks to the price tag of transitioning. The domain does not carry geographic restrictions, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Mobile.co owners pays dearly for Mobile.co.com - Company pays $32,000 for mobil.co.com and movil.co.com. The company that owns Mobile.co has spent $32,000 to acquire the third level domain names Mobile.co.com and Movil.co.com, the .co.com registry reported this morning. Freelancing site Mobile Inc bought the domain names in a deal brokered by Igloo.com. Although it might seem like a lot of money, the company may have spent a proportionally staggering amount when it acquired Mobile.co. .co.com is a common typo ... read more ...
 
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Mike Mann and (more) economics of domain name portfolios - Washington Post article provides more data on about domain name portfolios. The Washington Post wrote about domain name investor Mike Mann yesterday, and the article sheds more light on the economics or large domain name portfolios. Really, it applies to all domain portfolios, even if you have a small one. I wrote about this topic before after BuyDomains sold for $44.9 million, or just $47 per domain name. According to the Washington Post article, Mann’s company ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Switching to a .brand is some-more costly than we think - Make a wholesale switch from Brand.com to .Brand will be expensive, and won’t give you many benefits. News over the weekend of the Government of Quebec deciding to not change its domains over to .Quebec heightens the discussion on if it makes sense for brands to switch their web presence to a .brand. If they want to do it, it’s going to be really expensive. The Government of Quebec pegged the cost at over $10 million. Ultimately, I think it might be much more. Keeping ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy reports Q3 gain in SEC filing - Revenue up nearly 25% compared to same quarter last year. GoDaddy filed an amended S-1 with the SEC today, in which it discloses its results from the third quarter. Here are some financial highlights: Q3 2014 revenue was $356.9 million, up 5.4% from Q2 and 24.7% from Q3 2013. Domain revenue kept growing, but its percentage of GoDaddy’s overall business continues to shrink. In Q3 2012, the domain business accounted for 65.7% of GoDaddy’s business. This past quarter ... read more ...
Fri 14th November 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Why my North Dakota Trucking domain name pays for itself - Registering NorthDakotaTrucking.com probably didn’t make sense, but now I understand why it pays for itself each year. I registered the domain name NorthDakotaTrucking.com in 2007. I was on a bit of a geo domain kick at the time. But let’s face it, on the surface, this is a pretty crappy domain registration. We’re talking about a state with fewer than 1 million people. That is not where you want to focus your geo domain name money. Yet every year, this domain ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Reviewing final month’s NameJet sales - Joseph Peterson takes a look at some of last month’s notable domain name sales at NameJet. If I were to tell you that, by selling 66 domains at or above the $2,000 mark during October, NameJet recorded one of its lowest monthly domain counts ever, that would be quite misleading. True, only 5 out of the past 41 months have fared worse in terms of the quantity of domains clearing $2k. But during all the previous months in which NameJet sold 66 or fewer domains ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Bespoke.com saved in UDRP, though no RDNH and unimaginable dissent - Domain bought for $18,805 earlier this year saved in UDRP, but it was closer than it should have been. In September, I wrote about the domain name Bespoke.com being hit with a UDRP after the buyer paid $18,805 to buy it in an expired domain name auction. A three person WIPO panel has denied the UDRP, but one panelist dissented and the panel did not find reverse domain name hijacking. I find the dissent appalling. Originally, it appeared that the complainant may have ... read more ...
Thu 13th November 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Last week’s 200+ lapsed domain name sales adult to $27.1k - In this report, Joseph Peterson discusses over 200 expired domain name sales from last week. A picture is worth a thousand words, and these – depicting KPF’s architectural plan for the Meixi district of Changsha, a capital city in China – go a long way to explaining the $27.1k high bid in NameJet’s auction of Meixi.com last week. Half Dubai, half Venice. I’d love to see the place if they ever build it. Buyers of acronym domains like SIGI.com ($8.8k) are ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Melbourne hits 2,775 registrations, .restaurant has plain initial day - .Melbourne wins the day, but not by much. The .Melbourne domain name launched Wednesday in Australia — Tuesday night in the United States — and had 2,775 domain names registered at the close of business on day one of general availability. That does not include landrush domain names that are still in contention. The zone file for .melbourne is a bit tricky, given that the domain launched close to midnight UTC. So these numbers are straight from the registry. Donuts ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
IDN.com owners will remove large if Verisign doesn’t get the way - They could be forced to buy transliterations within a limited time period. Verisign has been negotiating its contracts for transliterations of .com for a long time, and last week we got an idea about what the hold up is. ICM Registry, the domain registry for .xxx and the forthcoming .adult, .porn and .sex top level domains, announced that it finally inked contracts with ICANN for new TLDs. The catch is that ICM had to change how it handled its Domain Matching program. ICM ... read more ...
Wed 12th November 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
This week’s new TLDs: .Melbourne, .Restaurant and more - A big geo among this week’s new TLD releases. I’ve been a bit remiss about my weekly new TLD posts, perhaps because the past couple Mondays have been busy news days. That, and new TLD rollouts have slowed down to a trickle. But I’m not late this week, as all the TLD launches I can find are Wednesday releases. The biggest is .Melbourne (see picture of ribbon cutting below), which launched Wednesday local time in Australia (technically 23:00UTC on November 11). ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New TLDs should obey a Startup.club indication for reward domains - Program promotes .Club while also generating premium domain sales revenue. .Club’s new Startup.club program is ingenious, and something that other new top level domains should consider emulating. Here’s startup.club in a nutshell: get a premium .club domain name but pay it off over 10 years, and .Club will also give you PR and marketing support. None of the features of Startup.club are new. TLDs have offered payment plans on premium domains for a while (e.g. sex.xxx), ... read more ...
 
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Major Chinese transport sites Ctrip.com and eLong.com go down due to domain change [updated] - Domains stop resolving after placed in clienthold status. The websites for two major publicly traded Chinese travel sites went down today as a result of their domain names being place in “ClientHold” status at the registrar. Sites for $8 billion (market cap) Ctrip.com (NASDAQ: CTRP) and $0.6 billion eLong.com both were unavailable this morning United States time. Both domain names were placed on “clienthold”, a status that tells the registry to not activate ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Disney buys a .club domain & 21 other finish user domain name sales - Disney, AMC and other big names bought domain names last week. Sedo had a busy sales week when it came to selling domain names to big name end users. From Disney, to $10 billion clothing company Next, to AMC, a number of household brands bought domain names at the marketplace last week. Interestingly, these three companies bought non-.com domains. .Club was the beneficiary of two of these big buyers, while AMC bought a .tv (although it has the matching .com domain ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Phone use continues to accelerate Tucows’ tip line - Ting product shows continued growth, OpenSRS takes a dip. Domain name and mobile phone service provider Tucows continues to see growth in its Ting offering, offsetting stagnating revenues in its domain name business. Net revenue for the third quarter of 2014 increased 9% to $38.9 million from $35.6 million for the third quarter of 2013. Revenue from Ting increased $5.03 million, offsetting a drop of $1.79 million in its domain name business. OpenSRS — Tucows’ ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Internet wins as justice denies suit to seize ccTLDs - Court rules .ir, .sy, .kp and related IDNs cannot be “attached” as compensation. ICANN and the internet community at large got a victory this week as a U.S. court denied a request (pdf) to seize country code top level domains (ccTLDs) as compensation in a lawsuit. A number of claimants that had won a judgement against Iran, Syria and North Korea over terrorism charges had demanded control of the country’s ccTLDs (.IR, .SY and .KP plus IDN versions) as payment. The ... read more ...
Tue 11th November 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Amazon.com wins .Book tip turn domain name battle - Amazon wins 9-way battle for .book domain name. Amazon.com has won an auction for rights to run the .book top level domain name. The company went head-to-head with 8 other applicants for the domain name, including Google, but ultimately agreed to pay the most to run the domain name. Although my money was on Amazon.com to win this domain name, its victory was by no means assured. Yes, Amazon.com got its start with books. But it just lost an auction for .cloud, despite ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Judging by a unite list, NamesCon 2015 is going to be huge - Already 40 sponsors lined up for January’s NamesCon event. It may be hard to believe, but NamesCon 2015 is just two months away. And, judging by an updated sponsorship list for 2015, it’s going to be a very big conference. Uniregistry is taking top billing for the event, and there are six Gold sponsors: Afilias, Endurance, GoDaddy, Verisign, Right of the Dot and TLD Registry. I count 40 sponsors in all, not including media sponsors. That’s a lot, and indicative ... read more ...