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 16th September 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
$25,000 new TLD sale among this week’s finish user domain name sales - Travel company is among at least four end users who bought new TLDs at Sedo this past week. There is an aftermarket for new top level domain names. It’s not huge, and few people are getting rich from it. But there is a market. Take this week’s $25,000 sale of Baltic.cruises by Viking River Cruises. I’ve seen magazine ads for Viking, which promotes small ship cruises in European rivers for those that don’t want to venture far from shore. This domain was among ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DotGreen Community is back! - Group that promoted .green domain name for years is back at the table, and Kathy Nielson has joined the team. Remember DotGreen Community, the company that wanted to run the .green top level domain name but gave up in the face of competition? The company never really went away, but it famously gave up its bid to run .green after determining it wouldn’t be able to win an auction with three other applicants. It was very early to the table and spent lavishly to market ... read more ...
Mon 15th September 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
A Step-By-Step Guide to Moving your GoDaddy Premium Listings to Afternic - Here’s how to move your domain names to Afternic Premium to take advantage of GoDaddy’s new integration with the service. Last week I shared the good news that GoDaddy is now fully integrated with the Afternic Premium network with fast transfer. This means that you can list domain names registered with GoDaddy on Afternic Premium, which gives you much greater reach than listing domains on GoDaddy alone. If you currently list domain names for sale on GoDaddy Premium ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
This is a biggest week nonetheless for new TLDs (16 domains!) - 16 domains hit the market this week. At the end of last month, I wrote about how the next 50 days would be important for new TLDs. Within that 50 days, this week is perhaps the biggest: 16 domain names will enter general availability. Call it Launch Week, and it’s really big for two of the portfolio applicants who launch their first owned-and-operated batches. Let’s get to it. Monday It’s a big day for publicly traded Minds + Machines (LSE: MMX). Last week ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Owner of CountryGirlStore.com guilty of retreat domain name hijacking - Company abused policy to try to deprive rightful owner of CountryGirl.com domain name. LML Investments, owner of Country Girl branded clothing sold at CountryGirlStore.com, has been admonished by a panel for abusing the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). The company filed a cybersquatting complaint against PA Gordon, owner of CountryGirl.com. The case was filed despite Gordon having owned the domain name since well before LML Investments claims ... read more ...
Fri 12th September 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
NameJet’s past month: Ingles.com, LEA.com and more - Joseph Peterson reviews some of the notable expired domain name sales on NameJet last month. Too many domains to choose from this past month! This time I’m considering 18 instead of my usual 10. August saw 95 domain sales at NameJet close at or above $2,000. That’s up from 82 during July and 69 during June.  Although I have reported on some of the expired domains before in my weekly articles, with this monthly recap I include NameJet’s many sales of privately ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Watch .Luxury Founder Monica Kirchner on Bloomberg - .CEO co-founder talks .luxury and new domain names on Bloomberg TV. Monica Kirchner, co-founder and CEO of Dot Luxury, was on Bloomberg TV this week talking about .Luxury and new top level domain names in general. It’s really hard talking about top level domain names to an audience that’s never even heard of ICANN, and I think she does a pretty good job. Kirchner says the company has already sold over 1,200 domain names. Although small compared to other TLDs, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Frank Schilling gets retreat domain name hijacking win on Puket.com - “Ah, Puket, let’s file this case and hope they don’t show up.” Clothing company IMB Textil S.A., which uses the domain name puket.com.br, has been found guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) for trying to steal Puket.com through UDRP. Frank Schilling parked the domain name Puket.com, an alternative spelling of Phuket in Thailand, and it showed links related to to island. IMB Textil filed the UDRP after initiating purchase negotiations with Schilling, ... read more ...
Thu 11th September 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Expired domains: LiYou.com for $22k, Drastic.com for $12k and more - Would a radio program devoted to “Ethiopian entertainment, sports, and news” and broadcasting out of Washington D.C. pay $22,323 to drop the word “radio” from its domain name? No. But China may have enough individuals named Li You for one of them to be NameJet’s $22.3k high bidder for LiYou.com. To me that price seems inordinately high for a personal name, but there may be some meaning I’m unaware of. Chinese is Greek to me. TalkingBooks.com ($10.4k) ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Here are a numbers for this week’s TLD launches - .London steals the show. 6 new top level domain names launched this week. A simple way to describe the results: .London. everything else is just details. .London added 12,421 to the zone on the first partial day and another 695 on the second day to bring its total to 35,663. After that, .digital had the second best launch in terms of registrations. It added 2,159 domains to reach 2,648. .Digital is a bit more generic than Donuts’ other domain name launches this ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
List of finish user domain name sales adult to $50,000 - .Co owner pays dearly for .com, Shopzilla buys a .co.uk domain and CitizenHawk picks up a typo on behalf of Home Depot. Sedo had 525 transactions last week for a solid $1.4 million worth of domain name sales. A lot of the bigger sales are still in escrow. Still, we know about end user sales of $9,999 and $50,000 for domains that have already transferred. Here are some of the end user domain names sales for the week: (You can view previous lists like this here. If ... read more ...
Wed 10th September 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Big news: GoDaddy now entirely organic with Afternic - Fast Transfer integration is good news for all domainers that sell domains with fixed prices. It’s been almost a year since GoDaddy acquired Afternic, and domainers can finally realize a huge benefit of the acquisition. Starting later today, GoDaddy will be fully integrated with Afternic as a “Fast Transfer” partner. This means two things for domain name investors: 1. If you have domain names listed for sale at Afternic’s Premium level, your domains will get ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.London tighten to 35,000 domain registrations after initial day - .London shows solid numbers upon launch. The .London top level domain name launched with much fanfare yesterday. According to the DomainIncite Pro zone file reports, .London added 12,421 domain names to the zone file in the first partial day to reach 34,968. If you asked me a few months ago if .London reaching 35,000 on day one would be a strong number, I’d say yes. That said, I raised my expectations a bit after its very strong landrush period. Perhaps the landrush ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sedo and TLDs foster domain names during dmexco - Top your frozen yogurt with a heap of .media and a sprinkle of .pics. Sedo and a number of top level domain registries are promoting domain name options at Europe’s biggest digital marketing conference this week. The company has a booth at dmexco, taking place in Cologne today and tomorrow. The event is expected to draw 32,000 people. The booth has a wall featuring a number of top level domain options. It also has a frozen yogurt machine and toppings. All of the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Radio row set staid by CPE, .Art claims denied - .Radio contention set resolved and .art still up in the air. European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has won the contention set for .Radio after prevailing in a Community Priority Evaluation (CPE) for the string. That means Donuts, Afilias and BRS Media (with Minds + Machines as the back end) are out of the running for the .radio top level domain name. EBU scored 14 points out of a possible 16. 14 points are required in order to prevail. It scored 3 out of 4 on Community ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
An instance of new TLD channel selling pleasantness of Minds + Machines - Getting registrars excited about promoting new TLDs is key to each registry’s success. I’ve written numerous times about what new TLD companies are doing to promote their domain names to end users. Just as important is marketing them to domain name registrars, which typically act as the channel to get domain names into the hands of end users. This is especially important given the flood of new domain names hitting the market every week. Here’s an example of ... read more ...
Tue 9th September 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
iPhone6.com by iPhone28.com are registered, and Apple doesn’t possess them. - People have registered every iPhone#.com possible up to iPhone28.com. Apple owned the domain name iPhone5.com when it announced the new device two years ago. It wasn’t the original registrant, but Apple filed a UDRP to get the domain name ahead of launching the phone. The same can’t be said for the iPhone 6, assuming that’s the name, that will be launched today. Someone originally registered iPhone6.com in 2008 and sold it on Sedo in 2010. The current owner ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
UDRP filed opposite $19k lapsed domain Bespoke.com. Is it a former owner? - Valuable domain name expired earlier this year and now faces UDRP. The domain name Bespoke.com expired in May. It went through the entire expiration cycle, making it one of the best domain names to fully expire this year. A bidder at DropCatch.com paid $18,805 to purchase the domain name. Now that buyer is being forced to defend the generic domain in a UDRP, and it might be against the company that let the domain name expire. Bespoke Services Group S.A. filed a UDRP ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Reverse domain name hijacking of Verb.com in a “Foolish rubbish of time” - “Baseless” complaint was a “foolish waste of time”. Three related hair care products companies have been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking after trying to steal the domain name Verb.com through a UDRP. Verb Products Inc., Verb Hair Products Canada Inc., and Moroccanoil Israel Ltd. filed the complaint with the assistance of law firm Conkle, Kremer Engel, PLC. The three person WIPO panel that heard the case said it agreed with the first statement ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Apple combined a i-era. Is it abandoning it? - Apple makes an interesting branding shift. Apple introduced a few new products today. As expected, it introduced the iPhone 6. It also introduced the iWatch– –Wait, no it didn’t. It introduced the Apple Watch. It also introduced a new payments solution called Apple Pay. This is a big shift. Apple obviously can’t change the name of the iPhone, but it chose to brand its new products and services as Apple instead of i-. Apple created the ‘i’ brand, but it ... read more ...
Mon 8th September 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Dolly Parton to be .Country pioneer - Celebrated country music singer gets Dolly.country and other domains in pioneer program. .Club got 50 Cent, .Country gets Dolly Parton. The .country domain name, being launched by Minds + Machines in partnership with Uniregistry, announced today that Dolly Parton will be a member of its pioneer program. This means Parton gets a handful of .country domain names and agrees to lend her likeness and marketing support to the domain name. Parton’s .country domain names ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Aborted Sedo understanding blamed on domain burglary in engaging soccer domain name case - Domain theft, a cancelled Sedo sale and Spain’s national soccer league. Liga de Fútbol Profesional, the Spanish soccer league with 42 teams, has lost a UDRP over the domain name LaLiga.com. “La Liga” translates to the dictionary term “league”, but the WIPO panelist who heard the case agreed that the term had acquired secondary meaning. The soccer league has multiple trademarks on the term. Indeed, LaLiga.com was clearly created with the league in mind. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Only use WHOIS services we trust - Few things in life are truly free, including whois data websites. There are a lot of great sites out there for doing whois lookups. DomainTools, for example, has long been a great source to lookup a domain and get extraneous information about the domain/site. But you need to be careful which sites you use if you value your privacy. Non-registrar whois sites make money in one or more ways: advertising, subscription fees, data collection. If you don’t see advertising ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New TLDs this week: .London, .Global and more - .London headlines this week’s new top level domain name releases. A GoDaddy advertisement in London for .London.One of the most-watched TLDs on the docket is launching this week as .London goes into general availability on Tuesday. It will have to compete with Apple for news coverage, but I suspect that tech journalists will be clamoring for something to write about other than “10 ways the new iPhone will blow your MIND!” Based on registrations during the priority ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Tennessee guitar association moves the website to Guitars.com - Company has owned the domain name since the 90s. Tennessee guitar company Gruhn Guitars has moved its website from Gruhn.com to the valuable domain name Guitars.com. This isn’t a case of a company paying big bucks for a great domain — it’s about a company finally getting around to leveraging an asset is has owned for more than a decade. The Nashville Business Journal reports that Gruhn registered the domain name in the late 90s. It has forwarded traffic from ... read more ...