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 24th October 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Analyst ups foresee for new TLDs, $900MM bookings by 2016 - Analyst becomes more bullish on new top level domain name potential. B. Riley analyst Sameet Sinha has increased his forecast for new top level domain name registrations after attending last week’s ICANN conference in Los Angeles. Previously, he was calling for about 20 million new TLD registrations from 2014-2016, now he’s pegging it at 29 million and says that might be conservative. He estimates top line potential of $900 million during this period. ICANN recently ... read more ...
Thu 23rd October 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
17 some-more finish user domain name sales - Here’s a list of some of the end users that bought domain names last week. Sedo handled a total of 484 transactions last week, representing $1.4 million in total sales. Yes the most expensive sale they reported was just $16,200, suggesting there was at least one big sale that is not public. Before I run through some of the end user sales, here’s a quick thing I noticed. Remember when .berlin had a free domain giveaway? They canceled it after a couple groups registered ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Yesterday’s 5 new TLD launches sum about 2,500 registrations - A slow start, but some of these domains have long term potential. Five new top level domain names launched yesterday, and they combined for a total registration base of just 2,500 after the end of the “zone day”. This includes sunrise and landrush, plus the initial hours of general availability. Donuts’ .healthcare ended the day with about 1,400 registrations (all stats from nTLDstats). I’m a bit curious about .healthcare. There’s a growing chorus of concern ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
How we can (and can’t) clear new Top Level Domain auction prices - In this post, DOT TBA founder Christa Taylor considers the payback period for new TLDs based on recent auction prices and current registration volumes. The October 22nd ICANN new top level domain name auction resulted in the resolution of several TLDs selling for substantial amounts of money: .Realty $5.6 million .Salon $5.1 million .Spot $2.2 million. These results, along with the September 17th auction results of .buy at $4.6 million, .tech at $6.8 million and ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Lawsuit filed to redeem stolen 3 minute domain names - Suit alleges 35 domain names were stolen from a GoDaddy account. Acme Billing Company filed a federal lawsuit (pdf) in U.S. District Court this week to recover 14 stolen domain names, including 9 three letter domain names. The suit alleges that an unknown person stole 35 domain names from Acme Billing Company’s GoDaddy account. The company became aware of the theft in early August and worked with GoDaddy to recover 21 of the domain names. It filed the suit in an ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Com rebound: Verisign adds 1.15 million domain names to strike 130.0 million - After slow second quarter, Verisign returns to health growth in net-adds in third quarter. Verisign just reported third quarter earnings, and it appears to have been a pretty good quarter in terms of .com and .net registrations compared to the previous quarter. The registration base for .com and .net increased by 1.15 million domain names to reach 130.0 million. That’s a nice rebound from the second quarter, when Verisign added just 0.42 million registrations to ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Bad news for IDN.com investors - Verisign still negotiating with ICANN over .com transliteration domain names. Owners of IDN.com domain names that are patiently waiting for .com transliterations are going to have to keep waiting. In an SEC filing today, and on its investor conference call, Verisign said it has received an extension to the deadline for negotiating its contracts for these domains with ICANN. The new deadline is December 31. The company would not disclose the specific terms of the contract ... read more ...
Wed 22nd October 2014
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Loose Lips Sink Ships: are new troops domain names dangerous? - In this post, Joseph Peterson questions if new .navy, .army and .airforce domain names could be a security issue for the U.S. military. This little article of mine may make me some enemies at Rightside, the registry behind the recently released TLDs .ARMY, .AIRFORCE, and .NAVY. However, I have no ax to grind. Far from being opposed to the new TLD initiative per se, I personally invest in nTLD domains on occasion; and I see strong commercial potential in some of Rightside’s ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
First Rakuten forsaken Buy.com, now it skeleton to stop Play.com - They are not selling off Buy.Com, they still point to Rakuten. I know this sounds strange, but if I had to put a number on it, I’d say at least 75% of the public still doesn’t know how to enter a domain name into a browser. I do a lot of technical support over the phone. Many of those calls start with me asking people to type something like http://www.TeamViewer.Com into the browser. 1. About 20% of the time, they would ask me what a browser is… Some are brave enough to say “Is ... read more ...
 
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GoDaddy paid adult to $45 million for Mad Mimi, justification S-1 - GoDaddy’s amended s-1 filing shows that it paid $42 million plus up to $3 million in bonuses for email marketing firm. GoDaddy filed an amended S-1 with the SEC yesterday. Most of the changes from the previous S-1, filed in August, are subtle. The latest filing does not include third quarter results. The most notable change in the new filing is the disclosure of its purchase price for email marketing firm Mad Mimi. The filing discloses that it paid $42 million ... read more ...
 
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Verisign’s new videos: Make your Idea Official [watch] - Clever video series promotes registering a domain name as the first step in a business idea. Verisign released a couple videos today as part of its “Make your Idea Official” campaign. The videos remind me a bit of more recent humorous ads from GoDaddy. Although the videos promote .com and .net, they’re good overall for promoting domain name registration. In the first video, a guy see’s some other dude moving in on his “idea” at a club: The second one ... read more ...
 
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A million domain names have been suspended, and law coercion is AWOL - Domain registrars plead for data as websites go dark thanks to whois verification requirements. “We won’t provide you with data to show that what you’re doing is pointless.”It has been almost a year since most large domain name registrars have been required to verify certain elements of domain name whois information. For now, it’s pretty simple. Your registrar sends an email to the whois contact on your domain and asks you to click a button to verify. It’s ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Amazon.com buys .spot domain name for $2.2 million, .Realty sells for $5.6 million - Amazon wins another new top level domain, but it was out shadowed by more expensive auctions. The latest round of new top level domain name “auctions of last resort” at ICANN took place today. Three auctions for the rights to run top level domain names closed for prices ranging from $2.2 million to $5.6 million: Amazon.com won .spot for $2,200,000, beating applicants Google and Dotspot, LLC. Fegistry won .realty for $5,588,888, beating Donuts. Fegistry is Jay ... read more ...
Tue 21st October 2014
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Afilias skeleton to lift $100 million, warchest will assistance in new tip turn domain auctions - Afilias will float its shares on the AIM next month, and use proceeds in part to fund upcoming new TLD auctions. Domain name registry Afilias announced today that it intends to trade on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM, raising $100 million. In doing so, Afilias will join fellow registries Minds + Machines and CentralNic on AIM. Afilias says its registry operations are second only to Verisign in size. It supports more than 20 million domain names; 6.6 million directly ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
AnnualCreditReport.com goes after a large typosquatter - Company behind government-mandated free annual credit report site demands control of 227 typos. Central Source, a company created by the three major U.S. consumer credit bureaus, has filed an in rem lawsuit against 227 typos of its AnnualCreditReport.com domain name. This is the sixth cybersquatting lawsuit the company has filed this year to crack down on people typosquatting its domain name. A test of the domain names shows that most use Moniker forwarding to land ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Paradise.com, Holiday.com and Iraq.com strike auction retard subsequent month - Valuable domain names go up for sale next month. For a company I hadn’t heard of before it announced it was auctioning Holiday.com a couple months ago, Breathe Luxury has assembled an impressive list of domain names for its auction next month. The company will auction off dozens of domain names in conjunction with the World Travel Market conference in London November 5. Among the domain names for sale: Holiday.com Paradise.com Journey.com Iraq.com Kuwait.com Doha.com Arab.com GolfCourses.com NAS.com Most ... read more ...
 
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ICANN struggles to kick relate cover after .Gay decision - Many responses to .gay community application decision are oversimplifying what happened…and getting it wrong. In headlines and tweets, it’s pretty easy to knock ICANN for a recent decision not granting .gay applicant dotgay llc community status for the domain name. The reality, for anyone who takes the time to understand it, is that ICANN didn’t determine anything about whether there’s a gay community. Nor did it (or anyone) block dotgay llc from using ... read more ...
 
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ICANN slashes new TLD forecast, though is it enough? - ICANN is forecasting 15 million new TLD registrations during the current fiscal year. ICANN has slashed the number of new top level domain name registrations it expects during this fiscal year for budgeting purposes, but is its picture still too rosy? That’s a question that members of the Registrar Stakeholders group asked ICANN’s board last week in Los Angeles. In May, ICANN set a draft proposed budget for the 2015 fiscal year, which runs from this July to June ... read more ...
Mon 20th October 2014
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This week’s new tlds: Military, .Realtor and sooome other domain - Rightside launches three military-themed domains, NAR launches .realtor, and a strange generic goes live. Here’s a run down of this week’s new top level domain name launches. On Wednesday, Rightside releases three military-themed domain names: .navy, .army and .airforce. Pricing runs from about $25-$35. UPDATE: .vet also launches. Also on Wednesday, Donuts’ releases .healthcare at regular price general availability. Following the .healthcare launch, Donuts ... read more ...
 
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Domain Name Wire Podcast #3: Tessa Holcomb on Igloo’s large domain name sales - Listen to Domain Name Wire Podcast #3. Every week, you read about domain name sales here on Domain Name Wire and on sites like DNJournal. These public sales just scratch the surface of total transactions taking place each week. Most sales, including most sales by domain broker Igloo.com, remain private. On this week’s podcast, Igloo founder and CEO Tessa Holcomb reveals — for the first time — some of the domain names her company has helped broker. She also ... read more ...
 
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2 impression domains get immature light underneath new TLDs - ICANN Board approves resolution paving way for two character second level domains. Last week’s ICANN meeting started with good news for new top level domain name applicants: governments said they weren’t concerned about two letter second level domain names under new top level domain names. It got better as the week went on, with the Governmental Advisory Committee formalizing its position on two character domain names and then ICANN’s board approving a resolution ... read more ...
 
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YourNeighborhood.co owners tries to “pull a quick one” in UDRP - Trademark disclaims rights to “YourNeighborhood”. Eric Levy, who runs the neighborhood information site YourNeighborhood.co, has lost a UDRP against the domain name YourNeighborhood.com. He’s lucky the panelist didn’t bother to find him guilty of reverse domain name hijacking, too. The panelist determined that he was “trying to pull a fast one”, though. Levy’s filing claimed that the YourNeighborhood mark was “well-known” and that Complainant has ... read more ...
 
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GetFixed.me upgrades to Fixed.com for $40k and other finish user domain name sales - Fixed app fixes its domain name problem. I’m behind on last week’s end user domain name sales list since I was at the ICANN conference last week. This list is for sales taking place the week before last. The top reported sale was GoldPay.com at $50,000. It’s still in escrow, but I suspect the buyer is the person who registered the trademark “GoldPay” for “Providing monetary exchange services, namely, exchanging gold and precious metals of others for ... read more ...
Fri 17th October 2014
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This week’s TLDs: a Google launch and .Okinawa - A couple domains hit general availability, but hardly anyone notices. I was so busy at ICANN this week that I neglected to do my weekly preview of top level domain name launches… …but I didn’t miss much. Only two domain names hit general availability this week. On Tuesday, BusinessRalliart Inc. launched the Japan geo domain name .Okinawa. It’s off to a rather slow start, with about 750 names in the zone thus far. Also this week, Google launched the .soy ... read more ...
Thu 16th October 2014
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Expired Domain Report: A Chinese Takeover! - Joseph Peterson reviews the past week’s expired domain sales. Pretty soon, not speaking Chinese will disqualify me from reporting on the domain market altogether!  So many of the big-ticket domain sales look eastward — numerical domains, LL through LLLL, and Chinese Pinyin.  China dominated NameJet charts in September, and China tops the list of last week’s GoDaddy expired auctions as well with ChaoZhi.com ($26k). One possible meaning of “Chāo Zhī”, ... read more ...