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 5th August 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Top 5 Domain Name Wire stories in July - ICM Registry, new TLDs, and Sony’s domain name renewal lapse all make the news. The doldrums of summer are beyond us. Here’s a look back at July in the domain name business. 1. .XXX worth more with .Sex in the bag? – ICM Registry, which operates the .xxx top level domain, has settled the contention set for .sex. It plans to offer .sex domains to owners of matching .xxx domain names. 2. Sony forgets to renew domain name, takes down online gaming service SOE.com ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Panel denies QIQ.com UDRP, though denies RDNH - QIQ.com to remain with domain name owner after WIPO decision. A World Intellectual Property Organization panelist has denied a UDRP filed against the domain name QIQ.com. However, she denied a reverse domain name hijacking claim without giving any sort of reason. Based on the facts presented to the panel, respondent Netico, Inc registered QIQ.com in 1999, more than a decade before complainant QIQ Communications Pty Ltd had any rights to the QIQ name. Therefore, panelist ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Gmail adds IDN support - Google will support non-Latin characters and accented characters. Non-Latin characters will now work with email addresses when using Gmail. Gmail has added support for internationalized domain names in email addresses, in what is certainly big news for the more than half of the world that uses a non-Latin alphabet. That means that addresses ending in شبكة. (dot Shabaka) should now work. (I’m assuming Gmail handles all IDNs, including right-to-left.) That also ... read more ...
Mon 4th August 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
A demeanour during .Com numbers over a past 5 years - .Com continues to grow, just at a slower pace. There are many ways to measure .com. There’s the zone file, the monthly reports Verisign sends to ICANN, and Verisign’s quarterly numbers revealed to investors. Each of these numbers is measured differently. For example, some include domains in pending delete, while others don’t. The quarterly number combines .com with .net. The key to measuring .com over time is to use consistent numbers. To compare apples to ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Wow: BTC.com domain name sells for $1.0 million to Bitcoin company - Three letter domain name sells for seven figures. Domain name brokerage firm Domain Guardians has brokered the sale of the BTC.com domain name to a bitcoin company. GAWMiners, seller of bitcoin mining machines, is the buyer. This is an example of how a three letter domain name can gain significant value based on new popular terms. I’m a bit shocked by the price. It makes me wonder how much Bitcoins.com would have sold for in the recent Heritage Auctions domain ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Rightside starts trade currently as NAME on a NASDAQ - A big day for Rightside (and the domain name industry). Today is a big day for domain name company Rightside as it begins to trade on the NASDAQ. Shares are down slightly right now to $15.65. Rightside has been spun off from Demand Media. Owners of Demand Media shares will get one Rightside share for every five Demand Media shares. (Demand is doing its own 5/1 reverse stock split, hence the Rightside allocation.) Shares in Rightside will trade under the ticker NAME. While ... read more ...
Sat 2nd August 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Rightside promotes Matt Overman, hires Dwayne Walker - Former NameJet GM gets a promotion and Dwayne Walker jumps from Oversee.net to Rightside. Matt Overman, formerly General Manager of NameJet, has a new role at Rightside. According to Rightside’s Executive Leadership page, Overman is now VP GM, Aftermarket and Premium Domains. His bio describes his responsibilities as covering the “monetization and premium domain sales business”. In another domain name industry executive move, Dwayne Walker has joined Rightside ... read more ...
Fri 1st August 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Expired Domain Roundup: Tequila, Exotica and more - Sometimes $30 is more shocking than $20,250. GoDaddy Auctions’ sale of Exotica.com for over $20k comes as no surprise. There were already 97 bids up to $6,700 after day 1 (with 8 days remaining); and, by the penultimate day, those numbers had risen to $15.5k and 153 bids. From there, it only took 15 bids more to nudge up to $20,250.  “Exotica” has been used with adult connotations but also denoted a style of music popular in the 1950s. I don’t see a revival ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Web.com discusses .XYZ and hazard from Google - Company responds to question about .xyz giveaway and threat from Google becoming a domain name registrar. Web.com held its quarterly conference call yesterday. Analysts asked the company about Network Solutions’ .xyz domain name giveaway and the threat from Google becoming a domain name registrar. The answers below are from David Brown, CEO. On. .XYZ: And then finally on the xyz, we have a long history of offering domain names at very low price in order to attract ... read more ...
Thu 31st July 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
German domain name .Reisen tops Donuts’ launches with 2,262 registrations - Domain buyers go traveling with .Reisen. Donuts launched another four domain names into regularly-priced general availability yesterday. Based on overnight zone files, which don’t include a full day, .Reisen was the most successful launch. .Reisen, German for travel, got 2,262 registrations. That brings its total with sunrise and early access to 2,262. .University and .Toys received about the same number of first day registrations. .University added 1,136 to reach ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Donuts: 775,000 domain names served - Donuts’ domain name registration base keeps growing. They keep stacking up.Donuts sent out a newsletter today that announced it is up to 775,000 domain name registrations. The mega-registry has released 111 top level domain names in general availability, so that’s an average of roughly 7,000 registrations per TLD. Frankly, this shows that the “portfolio” registry business is quite good. Scoff all you want at its TLDs with fewer than 5,000 registrations, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sedo sells $17M of domains in Q2, including a new TLD for $100k - Sedo reports on its domain aftermarket sales so far this year. Sedo released its market report for the first half of 2014 today. The company sold about $17 million worth of domain names in the second quarter, down slightly from $19 million in Q1. In the second quarter is sold 7,453 domains, down from 8,763 in the first quarter. One interesting item of note: Sedo sold a second level domain in a new TLD for $100,000. The name is confidential, but that bests the luxury.estate ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Estibot to launch domainIQ for retreat and chronological whois - New service will launch next week. The company behind Estibot is launching a new domain name service called domainIQ next week. domainIQ provides reverse whois (all the domains owned by a person or company), historical whois, and other intelligence about domain names. Many of the features are currently found in DomainTools, and some are also found in the free service Whoisology. domainIQ will certainly compete with these services, depending on what level of detail ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Web.com misses income target, acquires UK online office company - Web.com’s Q2 revenue numbers don’t hit company’s target. Web.com, which owns Network Solutions, Register.com and SnapNames, released earnings after the bell today. GAAP revenue for the second quarter was $138.2 million. Adjusted revenue was $144.7 million. Although that’s up 10% year-over-year, it’s below the company’s guidance range of $146.0 million to $147.5 million. The company added 38,500 subscribers last quarter. The earnings press release does ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Amazon.com starts charity domain name registration - Et tu, Amazon? Amazon.com is now offering domain name registration in conjunction with its web services. This move is not similar to Google’s recent foray into the retail registration market. Instead, it’s similar to what Google did many years ago — offer domain name registration through partners. Web services providers understand that domain name registration is a key part of getting online. Making it easier to get and integrate a domain name makes it easier ... read more ...
Wed 30th July 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Big names buy domains: Under Armour, Mary Kay, SAP and more - Large companies snap up domain names at Sedo. This week’s Sedo end user sales list is packed with big name end user buyers. Fortune 500 companies bought domains for under $2,000. The list follows. You can view previous lists like this here. If you’d like to learn how to sell your domain names like these on Sedo, download this report. Enterprise.bm $1,200 – Enterprise Rent-a-Car. .BM is the country code for Bermuda. Pendler.de 999 EUR – Software giant SAP. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.London’s singular “SunPriorityRush” duration ends tomorrow - Tomorrow is a key deadline for .London domain names. The .London domain name is launching, and it’s very different from previous domain name launches. I reached out to Antony Van Couvering with Minds + Machines to learn more about the .London launch. One key thing to note: the London Priority Period, which ends tomorrow, is actually open to everyone. People in London will get priority, but this is your first chance to claim domain names regardless of whether you ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.XXX value some-more with .Sex in a bag? - It’s a mess in both cases, simply for creating an environment where domain owners are either given the chance to pay for the alternates, or feel cheated if they don’t. It’s a passive aggressive version of extortion. Even with just 4 similar TLDs, they are essentially saying to a buyer “We’re nice to you, so we’ll let you decide if you are going to pay us 4x the price or let us confuse your visitors by letting your competition get almost the same name” If ICM created 6 ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN tells justice ccTLDs aren’t property, can’t be awarded to plaintiffs - Victims of terrorism want to be paid (in part) with country code top level domain names. ICANN has responded to the U.S. federal court in the District of Columbia, arguing that ccTLDs (country Code top level domain names, e.g. .ca and .de) are not property and can’t be awarded to plaintiffs in a case involving terrorism. Plaintiffs in Jenny Rubin, et al vs. The Islamic Republic of Iran, et al, say they are victims of terrorism from Iran, Syria and North Korea, and ... read more ...
Tue 29th July 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Celebrate Broadway celebrates .Broadway win - Contention set for .broadway top level domain name won by trade association. Celebrate Broadway, Inc., a subsidiary of The Broadway League Inc., has won the contention set for the .Broadway top level domain name. Other applicants included Donuts and Key GTLD Holding Inc. One of the larger shareholders in Celebrate Broadway is a subsidiary of the same company that owns Broadway.com. The Broadway League Inc. is a non-profit that bills itself as the national trade association ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Holdings scarcely triples sales in second quarter - Company sells close to $10 million worth of domain names. Domain name brokerage Domain Holdings had a big second quarter, turning in almost 3x the sales of its first quarter. The company reported today that it sold $9.9M worth of domain names in the second quarter of this year. That compares to just $3.4 million in the first quarter. How did it do it? The company says it made over 12,000 phone calls and send 72,000 targeted emails. While the company did not report ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.XYZ now has over 400,000 domain name registrations - Freebies and deep discounts add up to a big figure. The .XYZ domain name now has over 400,000 registrations, according to zone file reports. Of course, the majority of these registrations were given away free to Network Solutions customers on an opt-out basis. nTLDStats.com shows that about 353,000 .xyz domain names were registered at Network Solutions. If it charged full price, then you’d expect it to have maybe 1,000 registrations. The second place registrar for ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Finally, well-targeted new tip turn domain name marketing - Network Solutions’ pitches .republican domain names to owners of political domain names. A couple weeks ago I wrote about how Sedo did a new TLD promotion that registrars should be doing. Sedo looked at its existing customer base for people interested in buying and selling domain names with “club” in them and marketed .club to them. I finally have an example of a domain name registrar doing a similar thing: This goes a step further. Rather than just look for ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Company wants to heading a tenure “Domain Auction” - After reading what I wrote, it almost makes me think that the single best strategy one of the new TLD companies can use to guarantee long term success would be to create a handful of sites with broad appeal with their TLD. So, instead of slogans and hype, they’ve got to either encourage or develop a few great sites under their TLD. I honestly think that if the the majority of US consumers saw or heard an advertisement for a site that is not a mainstream TLD, they wouldn’t even know ... read more ...
Mon 28th July 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
A “slow” week for new TLD launches - More Donuts, but not much else. There’s not much on the docket this week for new top level domain name launches. According to the Calzone.org calendar, the only TLDs hitting general availability this week are a handful from Donuts on Wednesday. Four Donuts domain names enter regularly-priced general availability: .reisen (travel in German), .Toys, .University and .Town. A couple potential “gripe” terms enter EAP: .wtf and .fail. Given the relative lack of interest ... read more ...