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.

Tue 11th November 2014
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Moncler goes on (domain) invulnerability after geese allegations - Company registers boycott domain names after negative news report. Luxury Italian coat maker Moncler saw its shares drubbed after an Italian news report suggested that makers of down jackets were plucking geese inhumanely. The company has responded in the press to the allegations, while also quietly scooping up domain names its haters might want to register. Yesterday, Moncler registered: boycottmoncler.com /.net, plus boycot with one ‘t’ boycott-moncler.com /.net ihatemoncler.com While ... read more ...
 
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John Oliver’s 5 .NYC domain names creation fun of Michael Bloomberg - Comedian pokes fun at Michael Bloomberg’s domain names, which Domain Name Wire revealed last week. Last week I wrote a story about Michael Bloomberg’s 400 .nyc domain names. The over-the-top defensive registrations included everything from MichaelBloombergisaWeiner.nyc to MikeIsTooShort.nyc to MikeBloombergisaDweeb.nyc. The story got picked up broadly, making it to the Wall Street Journal and even CNBC’s Squawk Box. It also just got some hilarious play on John ... read more ...
Mon 10th November 2014
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Web.com sued for telemarketing calls - Plaintiff complains about multiple telemarketing calls. A California resident has sued Web.com, claiming the company called her cell phone multiple times in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. The lawsuit seeks class action status. Web.com disclosed the lawsuit in its most recent quarterly filing: On October 31, 2014, a putative class action was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California (Tammy Hussin, et al. v. Web.com Group, ... read more ...
 
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It’s a Amazon Echo, though Amazon bonds adult on Alexa domain names - Even though it’s called the Echo, Amazon also registered Alexa domain names related to new device. Amazon announced the Amazon Echo, a sort of home personal assistant similar to Ubi, last week. Although it’s called the Echo, owners can name their device whatever they want. And in a video promoting the Echo that has been seen over a million times, the family called it Alexa. (Alexa is also the name Amazon.com’s web analytics/ranking company.) Using this name ... read more ...
 
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Minds + Machines nets $8.4 million from auctions, .Cloud and .Book settled - Company wins by losing five auctions. New top level domain name company Minds + Machines has bolstered its bank account by $8.4 million as a result of losing five private auctions for new top level domain names. The losses included a handful of highly contested strings, such as .cloud and .book. That’s not bad for a company that originally said it wouldn’t even participate in private auctions. The company lost auctions for: .book – 9 applicants were in this ... read more ...
 
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What do Amazon and Google domain name waste meant for new TLDs? - Neither of them won .cloud, which begs a big question. .Cloud is a valuable top level domain name. I’m basing that on the seven applications it received, and that Amazon.com, Google and Symantec all applied for the domain name. So which one of these heavyweights won the rights to .cloud? This one: Wait – what? That cartoonish logo doesn’t match any of the heavyweights that applied for .cloud. Aruba S.p.A., an Italian webhosting company, won the battle for ... read more ...
 
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China’s Domain Name Market with Simon Cousins – DNW Podcast #6 - Capitalize on China’s strong domain name market. China’s appetite for domain names is booming. A quarter of Domain Holdings’ sales last quarter were to China, and Verisign credits the country with bolstering .com growth. How can you capitalize on this market opportunity? In this episode, TLD Registry CMO Simon Cousins gives a crash course on the Chinese domain name market. You’ll learn why certain combinations of numbers are worth a lot and others aren’t. ... read more ...
Sat 8th November 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Weekend domain name musings - Here are a few things I’m thinking about while enjoying a beautiful November weekend in Austin. It amuses me that many rival new top level domain name companies blast .XYZ for giving domain names away for free, but they still quote a three million top line for domain names registered across all TLDs. You can’t have it both ways! If you’re coming to Austin in March for SXSW, hurry up and book your hotel room. If you have a bunch of people coming, you might want ... read more ...
Fri 7th November 2014
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Sedo sells $1.4 million value of domains, here are some finish user sales - Here are some of the end user sales among Sedo’s $1.4 million in transactions last week. Domain name marketplace Sedo handled 542 transactions last week for a total of $1.4 million in domain name sales. End user buyers included two large pharmaceutical firms and one of the largest online travel sites. Notably, many of the end user purchases were by companies buying the .com that matches their existing ccTLD names. Here’s a list of 14 end user sales at the marketplace ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Endurance paid $44.9 million for BuyDomains - Company acquired domain name portfolio, online storefronts and intellectual property for $44.9 million. Endurance has filed its 10-Q quarterly filing with the SEC, and it details the purchase price paid for BuyDomains. The total amount paid was $44.9 million. That includes $41.1 million in cash, plus another $4.5 million due in two years. (It took the net present value of the $4.5 million to get to the $44.9 million.) Of the $44.9 million, Endurance has allocated ... read more ...
 
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.Online could be best general new domain yet - Three reasons .online should be successful. Michael Berkens spotted this morning that the last of the losing applicants for .online had withdrawn its application, meaning a partnership between Radix, NameCheap and Tucows has won the rights for the .online domain name. I think .online will be one of the most successful new generic top level domain names, for a few reasons. 1. A combination of three top-10 registrars will be pushing it. I’m assuming that Radix will ... read more ...
 
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.XXX modifies domain relating module for new adult TLDs - ICM Registry shortens window for claiming matching domain names due to ICANN requirements. ICM Registry, the company behind .xxx and the soon-to-be-released .porn and .adult domain names, announced today a modified domain name matching program for .xxx domain name owners. Previously, the company planned to reserve any domain names registered in .xxx in its new top level domain names so they could be registered by the .xxx owner. However, ICANN would not allow ICM ... read more ...
Thu 6th November 2014
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EDR: GoDaddy’s 4 letter, $42,500 domain name auction - This week’s Expired Domain Report from Joseph Peterson. The gap between last week’s most expensive expired domain auction and the rest of the “stragglers” was roughly a factor of 10 – a full digit difference. Now, in a retail context, $42.5k is a respectable but hardly record-shattering sum to pay for a domain. As we all know, enough domain names sell for 6 and 7 figures each year that $42.5k is quickly overshadowed by the market overall. Even at ... read more ...
 
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Web.com says new TLDs spiteful .com resales - Company lowers guidance on weaker demand from its domain portfolio. Web.com (NASDAQ: WWWW) reported earnings yesterday and lowered its guidance for the fourth quarter. One of the reasons for lowering the guidance is that the new supply of TLDs is causing domain investors to dial back large purchases of existing domain names. In prepared remarks, Web.com CEO David Brown said: First, in the domain business, while we continue to expect the recently expanded top-level ... read more ...
 
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BuyDomains and a economics of vast domain portfolios - Should very large domain name portfolios be valued per domain or on sales and profitability metrics? The sale of BuyDomains.com this week, including a portfolio of close to a million domains for something less than $80 per domain, has raised eyebrows. On Tuesday, I wrote a bit about the BuyDomains’ business and how the valuation might make sense when viewed from a different perspective. This post will go into a bit more depth, and compare BuyDomains to other domain ... read more ...
 
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Rightside earnings: 15 TLDs beget $2.5 million, clever eNom performance - Rightside grows its eNom business, new TLDs generate $2.5 million in revenue as of end of Q3. Rightside released third quarter earnings after the bell today. Revenue for the third quarter came in at $48.8 million, up from $45.5 million in the same quarter last year and $46.7 million in the second quarter of 2014. The company swung to a profit with a $4.1 million bottom line. However, its adjusted EBITDA — which presumably is a key metric it wants to be valued on ... read more ...
Wed 5th November 2014
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Cool site lets we see what new TLD domains were purebred yesterday - DomainPunch’s latest tool is eye-opening. There are a lot of new top level domain names out there. Most of them grow by a dozen or so registrations every day. Now that the brand protection and investor rush is over, who is registering these domains? Here’s a quick and simple tool from DomainPunch to see domain names that were added to the zone files the previous day. It’s pretty interesting. I used the tool this week to investigate what types of domains people ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Should new TLDs be judged as startups or only tip turn domains? - How you view TLD companies frames how you view their success so far. This week I received a note along with a press release from a new top level domain name company. The note read: In less than 11 months, Internet users worldwide have registered more than 3 million addresses in new Internet domains (gTLDs), exceeding even aggressive early estimates. Cough. More like “coming in lower than even pessimistic early estimates”. Especially when you consider that about ... read more ...
 
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Moniker mislaid only 18,057 .com domains to transfers in July - Customer losses still fairly low after switch to new system. Last month I reported that Moniker only lost 17,506 .com domain names to transfers in June after its disastrous switch to a new registrar platform. I predicted that the number would shoot up in July, since it was easier to transfer domains out at that point. (Official .com registry reports are published three months after the end of the month). The July report is out, and Moniker’s losses in July were ... read more ...
 
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CyclingTips.com.au owners guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking - Company went after CyclingTips.com. Law firm ESQwire.com has scored yet another Reverse Domain Name Hijacking victory on behalf of a client. Wallace Media Pty Ltd, which operates the cycling website CyclingTips.com.au, filed the case against the owner of CyclingTips.com. Wallace Media complained that people looking for its site often leave off the .au, leading them to the respondent’s domain name. There were a lot of issues at play in this case, including when ... read more ...
 
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Yoyo.email, owners of 4,000 .email domain names, gets a “win” in court - Company reaches agreement with company that won URS case against it. Yoyo.email, the controversial company that registered over 4,000 .email domain names, got a win in court today after settling with one of the companies that filed a Uniform Rapid Suspension case against it. Yoyo registered thousands of .email domain names matching the monikers of big brands, such as 7eleven.email, Geico.email and Budlight.email. It plans to use the domain names for a certified email ... read more ...
Tue 4th November 2014
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Endurance continues to hurl up, acquires BuyDomains - NameMedia sells off domain name portfolio. Publicly traded Endurance International Group continued its roll up of the webhosting and domain name business last quarter with the acquisition of BuyDomains, the company announced today. In his prepared statements for its quarterly earnings call, Endurance CEO Hari Ravichandran said: Second, we closed the acquisition of BuyDomains, a Waltham, MA based provider of premium domain products and services, in the second half ... read more ...
 
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Minds + Machines tighten to $4 million in domain registration revenue - Company says it has sold the equivalent of nearly a half million .com domain names. New top level domain name portfolio company Minds + Machines issued a press release this morning touting its results to date after launching 10 new TLDs. According to the release: The Directors are highly satisfied with the overall progress of these launches, particularly from a revenue perspective. When measured on a .com equivalent cost basis, registrations within Minds + Machines ... read more ...
 
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Ebola army ICANN to pierce assembly from Morocco to Singapore - Without specifically citing Ebola, ICANN moves meeting due to Ebola-inflicted attendance concerns. That “confidential agenda item” at last week’s ICANN Board meeting? A decision to move the next ICANN meeting, which was scheduled for Morocco in February. It will be held in Singapore instead. Without specifically citing Ebola, the board resolved to move the meeting due to attendance concerns. In addition to people being scared of traveling to the region and catching ... read more ...
 
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John Berryhill fills Noah’s Ark, gets another retreat domain name hijacking win - Domain attorney defends owner of Squirrels.com in his latest animal-related UDRP. Domain name attorney John Berryhill is either Noah, busily filling up his ark, or he has a fetish with animals. He’s successfully defended UDRP filings against Pig.com, Elephant.com, Ant.com and Elk.com. Now you can add Squirrels.com to the list. World Intellectual Property Organization has just handed down a decision in Squirrels LLC vs. Giorgio Uzonian for the domain name Squirrels.com. As ... read more ...