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.

Mon 11th January 2016
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
How will a Right of a Dot auction go? - Big live domain name auction takes place this afternoon in Las Vegas. Right of the Dot’s live domain name auction is finally here. The auction will take place this afternoon at 2 PM PST at the Tropicana in Las Vegas. Online bidding is available but not on NameJet — you must register through a separate system. 130 lots will be auctioned today, many of them without reserve. Some of my favorites that don’t have reserves are: Multilevel.com NannyCams.com Katie.com ArtLessons.com Tuscany.com Stock.photo With ... read more ...
 
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Board shakeup during Minds + Machines - Major board changes and executive appointments at new TLD company. New top level domain name company Minds + Machines announced major changes to its Board of Directors today. Non-executive directors Keith Teare, Elliot Noss (CEO of Tucows) and David Weill are stepping down, as is executive director Caspar von Veltheim. Von Veltheim will now be Director of European Operations for the company. The company also announced that Guy Elliott, an existing non-executive director, will take over the role of ... read more ...
 
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Building Buzz with Bill Doshier – DNW Podcast #66 - How Bill Doshier built buzz around .buzz. How do you build buzz for a top level domain name .buzz? Bill Doshier has done a remarkable job as a mostly one-man show, building the domain name up and finding a loyal following of registrants. One user has given .buzz attention on Wheel of Fortune and in the L.A. Times, and Doshier found an interesting type of registrant he hadn’t thought about when he first applied for the domain. Also: An insincere $500k offer, .com in China, and NamesCon. Subscribe ... read more ...
 
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Test your skills with GoDaddy's Bought or Not - Fun game asks you to guess if a domain is registered or not. GoDaddy released a fun (and rather eye-opening) app at NamesCon today called Bought Or Not. Bought or Not is similar to hot or not, except players guess if a domain name has been registered or not. It’s available online at BoughtOrNot.com and as an iPhone app, with Android coming soon. GoDaddy is giving away prizes if you play the game at its booth during NamesCon. A group of GoDaddy interns came up with the idea over the summer. GoDaddy ... read more ...
Sun 10th January 2016
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Apple to launch dating service, Forex trading - Apple car domains mean nothing. Just like its registration of .dating and .forex domain names. Hey mainstream tech press: STFU about these Apple Car domain names, will you? Last week everyone from MacRumors to Business Insider was having an Apple fanboy freakout over Apple registering Apple.car, Apple.cars and Apple.auto. “This means the Apple Car is coming!” they yelled. You know what? The Apple Car might be coming. But these domain names don’t mean anything at all. Apple registers or blocks ... read more ...
Fri 8th January 2016
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Another unfortunate Whois information service - Internet marketer selling access to whois data. Many people are selling cheap access to whois information culled from recently registered domain names. Now an internet marketer is getting into the act. A new service called FreshDomainLeads.com promises members daily sales leads in the form of whois records of newly registered domain names. A video for the service says it provides ‘legal access’ to the bulk information and that ‘domain name registration info is public by law’. I think they’re ... read more ...
Thu 7th January 2016
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Uniregistry app hits a round out of a park - Uniregistry app is slick, simple, and comes with an Easter egg. Domain management screen on Uniregistry app.Uniregistry released an iPhone app for its registrar service today. Now, those that have read this blog for a long time know that I’m not a fanboy. I don’t fall in love with a particular company or its products, and I write about the good and the bad. But damn, this is a great app. So simple. So beautiful. It took just moments to get familiar with the app and how you can use it to manage ... read more ...
 
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.XXX releasing dual impression domain names - 2 letter domains have sold for up to $100,000 in other ICM Registry Extensions. ICM Registry, the company behind the .xxx top level domain name extension, is releasing two character second level domain names. The names are now available at select registrars for a higher recurring annual fee. Prices start at about $3,000 per year retail. Two character domain names have proven very popular in ICM Registry’s other domain names, .sex, .adult and .porn. About half of the 500 premium domain names the ... read more ...
 
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Lance Wolak takes CMO purpose with .Buzz registry - Wolak will help drive .Buzz. Lance Wolak, founder of consulting firm ExcelStrategy and former vice president at Public Interest Registry, is taking a role with .Buzz registry dotStrategy. As Chief Marketing Officer, Wolak will help build new markets for .buzz as well as new products and services. dotStrategy founder Bill Doshier explained: Lance’s extensive marketing and strategy experience will be a valuable added asset to dotStrategy and the .buzz brand moving forward. Lance is an innovator ... read more ...
Wed 6th January 2016
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What domain names Time Inc. and others bought during a finish of a year - Time Inc. bought a sports domain name and Sears might start a site at Wash.in. Sedo turned in $2 million worth of domain name sales during the last two weeks of the year, a fairly high number of the holiday period. I think it was helped by a couple big sales, because $2 million is high for a transaction volume of just 648 domains. Some large companies bought domains, including Time and (I believe) Sears. Here’s a look at these end user domain name sales from the past week: (You can view previous ... read more ...
 
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.Com Winners & Losers: China Shuffles a Deck - Chinese surge starts to show up in monthy .com reports. ICANN has published Verisign’s registrar data for .com from September, and it’s starting to show the surge of .Com registrations in China. As I do every month, I ran the numbers to see which registrars performed best in terms of new registrations and transfers. This month is notable because HiChina and eName, both based in China, had stellar months. HiChina registered nearly three times as many .com domains in September as it did in August. ... read more ...
Tue 5th January 2016
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
December's Top 5 Domain Name Stories - Here’s how 2016 concluded in the domain name world. It’s 2016 and NamesCon is just around the corner. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves–what big news stories broke last month? From a poor UDRP decision to the acquisition of Michael Berkens’ domain name portfolio, here are the top 5 stories on Domain Name Wire last month. 1. The late Igal Lichtman, aka Mrs Jello, loses a horrible UDRP decision – fortunately, his heirs are fighting back. 2. GoDaddy acquires Mike Berkens’ WorldWide ... read more ...
 
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NamesCon registrations tip 1,100 - NamesCon will top its own record for attendance at a domain business conference. Next week’s NamesCon conference in Las Vegas will be the biggest yet, by far. As of last Saturday morning, registrations crossed the 1,100 mark. I bet a lot more people registered Saturday before prices increased. If you procrastinated, you can still register for $799 before January 10. Walk-up registrations are $999. NamesCon will be a great way to kick off the New Year in the domain name business. If you’d like ... read more ...
 
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Kabei.com, JunGong.com lead lapsed domain report - [Editor’s note: this Expired Domain Report normally would have been published at the end of last week. It was delayed due to the New Year holiday.] After a pair of 5-figure Chinese Pinyin domains topped the previous chart, my first reaction this time around was to assume the same thing had happened. The second highest item, JunGong.com ($8.1k), is Chinese: jùn gōng (竣工) means “project completion”. However, I can find no Chinese match for Kabei.com ($10.1k); and at this stage the buyer’s ... read more ...
 
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I'll compensate $500k for your domain name. Psych! Here's a UDRP. - French company files UDRP after offering to buy a domain name for $500,000. Plug “buy followers” into Google and you’ll get 624,000 results. In a rush to look important online, companies spend lots of money buying low-quality social media followers. A French firm that uses the domain name BuyFollowers.fr to sell followers has failed in its attempt to steal the generic domain name BuyFollowers.com through a UDRP, and it appears it may have been a bit dirty in its tactics. By my reading of the ... read more ...
Mon 4th January 2016
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
It's 2016 – Let's do this! - It’s a new year. Make it a great one! I love the winter holidays…getting together with family, sipping hot chocolate and reading a few good books. But as a blogger, I feel a bit disconnected, too. A lot of people take time off over the holidays, and many of them unplug. I’m writing for a smaller audience for a couple weeks over the holidays. Now it’s January, and we’re ready to go! Welcome back to the “office”. Let’s make 2016 the best year yet in the domain business! Get started ... read more ...
 
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PIR CEO Brian Cute – DNW Podcast #65 - CEO of non-profit that runs .org discusses the past, present and future of domain names. Public Interest Registry is a not-for-profit that operates the popular .Org domain name. CEO Brian Cute explains the unique nature of his registry, as well as its rollout of .Ngo, .Ong and IDN domain names. Cute explains what needs to happen for these new domain names to be successful, and why he believes validation will be key for domain names in the future. Subscribe via iTunes to listen to the Domain Name ... read more ...
 
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Stanley Pace sues for purported Reverse Domain Name Hijacking - Pace sues after losing UDRP to dancewear company. Stanley Pace, a Texas resident who has faced his fair share of UDRP complaints, lost another one last month. A three member UDRP panel ordered the domain name Yumiko.com transferred to dancewear company Yumiko, LLC. He’s fighting back to halt the transfer and is asking for damages under the Anti-cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act for reverse domain name hijacking. Pace filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas on December ... read more ...
 
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Another UDRP that should have never been filed - iCloak.com was registered many years before the complainant had rights to iCloak. A World Intellectual Property Organization panel has rejected a UDRP for the domain name iCloak.com. It’s another example of a case that was dead on arrival, and one that future UDRP rules should prevent from being filed. Simply put, the complainant tried to get a domain name that was registered well before it was in existence. The complainant operates an internet privacy service called iCloak, promoted at the website ... read more ...
Thu 31st December 2015
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Zhuang Jia: Chinese Pump and Dump - Joseph Peterson draws parallels between market manipulators in Chinese stock markets and the domain name market. An article just published by Bloomberg gives us an x-ray glimpse into a Chinese investment culture reliant on pump-and-dump schemes. The parallels with domain market activity during 2015 are so obvious that even this sentence feels a bit redundant. A Shanghai accountant sums it all up: If you want to make a quick buck from the stock market, you’d better look for stocks with manipulators ... read more ...
 
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Are we promulgation 1099 Tax Forms? Here's how to make it easy. - Online services make it easier to remain compliant with 1099s. If you’re a U.S. domainer that pays freelancers, contractors or a law firm, then you’re likely required to send out 1099s each year. Fortunately, there’s an easy and cheap way to do it online. First, here are examples of whom you need to send a 1099 to: Your web guy you paid to fix up or work on a website The landlord you pay rent to for your office The law firm you paid during the year to respond to a UDRP or handle a cease desist A ... read more ...
Wed 30th December 2015
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Take-Two Interactive registers Genesis domain names - Company registers 10 “Genesis” domain names. Take-Two Interactive Software, maker of the popular Grand Theft Auto and Bioshock games, registered a number of domain names related to “Genesis” yesterday: genesis-dedication.com genesis-home.com genesis-honor.com genesis-medic.com genesis-remote.com genesis-rise.com genesis-slab.com genesis-soul.com genesis-spring.com genesis-zmen.com Oddly, the company didn’t register any of the unhyphenated versions of these domain names. My days of hardcore ... read more ...
 
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StinkySocks.com UDRP was a stinker - Domain registered at least 6 years before hockey league was created. No surprise here: a National Arbitration Forum panel has determined that a case against StinkySocks.com was a stinker. Complainant The Trimount Company, Inc DBA StinkySocks Hockey, runs an adult hockey league in Boston. It started using the StinkySocks name as early as 2006. The problem is that the owner of the domain name registered it in 2000. Thus, there was no way it registered the domain name in bad faith so it could charge ... read more ...
Tue 29th December 2015
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2015 in Review: New TLDs - How new top level domain names progressed this year. New top level domain names came out with a whimper in 2014, with plenty of birth pangs. What about 2015? It wasn’t a break-through year Hundreds more top level domain names hit the market during 2015. But adoption of new domains didn’t take off, proving what many in the industry have been saying: this is going to be a long, gradual process. Most top level domain names have fewer than 10,000 registrations. Only 15 have 100,000 or more registrations, ... read more ...
 
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TGW.com saved in uncanny UDRP - No reverse domain name hijacking, but TGW.com to remain with owner. A three-person National Arbitration Forum panel has denied a case seeking transfer of TGW.com and thegolfwarehouse.com. The complainant, RG Golf, Inc. (“Complainant”) filed the case against The Golf Warehouse, Inc. The Golf Warehouse has owned the domain names since 1997. But there’s a bit of history between then and now. In 2000, The Golf Warehouse filed a UDRP against the complainant in this case for GolfWarehouse.com. The ... read more ...