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.

Thu 17th July 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain name owners loses UDRP, sues, gets $7,500 - MyArt.com owner can keep domain name and some cash. In April I wrote about how the owner of My-Art.com filed its second UDRP against the domain name MyArt.com and won. It was a bad decision based, in part, on an incorrect claim that the domain name was transferred to a new owner after the first decision. The owner of MyArt.com didn’t respond to the UDRP filing, but sued after the decision was handed down. The lawsuit, filed by law firm Lewis Lin LLC, claimed reverse ... read more ...
Wed 16th July 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
There’s no such thing as a reward .Info domain name any more - The market is quickly becoming flooded with acceptable alternatives to .info (and .biz) domains. Sedo is trying to sell some of its own .info domain names in an auction right now, and takers are few and far between. The auction is called the “Premium .info Auction”, and I’ll agree that some of the second level terms are decent: inbox, carwash, slogan, grooming, etc. But why would anyone pay much for these domains? Five years ago I might pay somewhere in the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
End users group to .co.uk domain names as second turn .UK names launch - Good .co.uk domain names sell to end users who will be able to claim the matching .uk domains. Sedo sold lots of good .co.uk domain names last week. I suspect this is because of the launch of second level .uk domain names. Owners of .co.uk domain names have first rights on the matching .uk domain name, and there’s been a lot of interest in the UK. You can view previous lists like this here. If you’d like to learn how to sell your domain names like these on Sedo, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Latest .City domain name launches with 4,000+ registrations - .Wien launches. .Tokyo is next week. The latest geo city top level domain name to launch received more than 4,000 registrations on its first partial day. .Wien (German for Vienna) launched yesterday and added 4,201 domain names to the zone file. That brings its total to about 4,650. The registrations are spread across multiple registrars, mostly focused in Europe. United Domains got about a quarter of all registrations, judging from nameservers used. .Wien domain ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sony forgets to replenish domain name, takes down online gaming use SOE.com - Sony Online Entertainment goes down thanks to expired domain name. Sony forgot to renew a key domain name, SonyOnline.net, which resulted in an outage on its popular Sony Online Entertainment game network found at SOE.com. While SOE.com did not expire, its nameservers are set to SonyOnline.net. When the latter went down, so did SOE.com. The Register surmised that it was probably a simple DNS issue that took the site down, rather than an expiration*. Whois records ... read more ...
Tue 15th July 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Will new TLDs get a second wind? - It’s likely, but when is the big question. Most new top level domain names are struggling to break even the 10,000 domain name barrier. Many applicants tell me they aren’t worried; it’s the long game. That’s true for many of them, especially the portfolio applicants. I’ve also heard the argument that new top level domains will get a “second wind” when big companies start using the domain names. This is a fair argument. 99.999% of people don’t know ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Bar picks adult 1,000+ registrations, .rest a bit slower - .Bar has decent first day while .rest struggles out of the gate. The .Bar domain name added 1,116 names to its zone on the first day of general availability. That’s about the same number of domain names that .pub got when it launched last week. This seems like a solid number given the high pricetag on the domain. As a point of reference, GoDaddy is charging $100 for .bar domains compared to $40 for .pub. I expect .bar to show steady growth going forward, especially ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain name auction services should rethink automobile extensions - The current method of preventing bid sniping leads to bidder fatigue. Last Friday GoDaddy sent out a somewhat confusing notice about a change to GoDaddy Auctions and auto extensions. Previously, any bid placed within the last five minutes of an auction extended the clock by five minutes. Now, a bid placed in the last four minutes of an auction will reset the clock to five minutes; a bid placed between the four and five minute marks will increase the clock by one ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sedo does a graduation that domain registrars should do - Domain name registrars would see good results from a marketing push similar to this. Sedo just sent out a marketing pitch to people that have listed domains for sale with “club” in them in the past. The subject line was “Did you try selling [something]club.com? Invest in THESE names now”, with a pitch for investing in .club domains. You can see the marketing email below. I’m surprised that I haven’t seen more of this from domain name registrars. Registrars ... read more ...
Mon 14th July 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
10 important sales from NameJet final month - Here are ten of the more notable sales that took place on NameJet in June. Every month NameJet sells dozens of domains above the $2,000 mark.  Andrew Allemann took a look at April, and I followed his lead with May.  Here I’ll be thinking aloud about 10 of the 69 finalized domain sales that NameJet reported for the month of June. XCW.com $30,100 – Obviously, I should mention the gold medalist.  Yet, although this LLL.com stands in the top position on NameJet’s ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Yoweri Museveni domain name put to good use - The ads on Museveni.com are rather ironic. “Frank, I’m not amused,” – Yoweri MuseveniUganda’s president Yoweri Museven signed into law a harsh anti-gay law earlier this year. Museveni might be disappointed to see what comes up when you type the domain name Museveni.com in a web browser. The parked domain name is owned by Frank Schilling’s Name Administration and is parked on his Domain Name Sales platform. The parked page includes ads for “Gay Rights”, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Demand Media spin-off of Rightside set for Aug 1 - Rightside’s debut as its own publicly-traded company is imminent. Demand Media plans to complete the spin-off of its domain name business on August 1. Rightside will become its own public company on that date. It will trade on the NASDAQ under the symbol “name”. Demand Media shareholders will receive one Rightside share for each five shares of Demand Media stock they own. Rightside owns a number of domain name businesses covering the entire spectrum of the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New TLDs this week: .Bar, .Gripe, .Moda and more - Punto 2012 enters the race, a city TLD launches, and Rightside tries to be fashionable. The weekly deluge of new top level domain names hitting the market continues this week. This week is notable because a new entrant is finally launching two of its domain names. Monday Punto 2012 launched .bar and .rest today. The company’s nic.bar and nic.rest sites don’t have much information, but the domains appears to have broad registrar adoption. The domains aren’t ... read more ...
Fri 11th July 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Is 3,500 domains a delayed start or good start? - Last month Famous Four Media launched its first few domains, including .webcam and .trade. .Webcam and .Trade each received about 3,500 registrations on the first day. .Bid received fewer than a thousand. It turns out that the bulk of registrations were undertaken by a single domain investor. I didn’t figure this out until I had written part of a draft story about the launch. I had tentatively titled the post “Famous Four has a solid first day” based on the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Expired Domain Report for this week - Last week, the expired domain market posted gains of …  Well, nobody knows. Without any cost basis to refer to, who can say whether it’s a bull or a bear? In any event, the former domain owner gains nothing from the sale of a domain that expires, sells, and transfers. Right? Gains.com, however, did finish at NameJet with bids up to $25.5k.  So it looks as though the expired domain market is pretty robust. Other NameJet auctions were more modest. At under $1000, ... read more ...
Thu 10th July 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
End users buy relating domains and domain hacks - Many end user domain purchases this past week were for “matching” domains. What strikes me about the latest list of end user domain name sales taking place at Sedo is the number of companies that are buying “matching” domains. They own a ccTLD and want the .com, or they own a .com and want the “hacked” version of a new TLD (e.g. the owner of EnglishClub.com buying English.club.) In some cases the buyers might look at these purchases as defensive plays. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Services domain name adult to 4,600 and .Pub 1,300 after one day - .Services runs out of the gate, .pub is toast-worthy. Two new top level domain names launched yesterday and both had fairly good days. Donuts launched .services, its only domain name to come out of the Early Access phase this week. It added roughly 4,000 domain names on the first day to hit 4,584. The domain name is in Donuts’ middle tier of pricing, so it will set you back about $25 to $40 depending on where you register it (NameCheap on the low end and GoDaddy ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Registrar’s .Co.com promo misses a point - Promotion misses the point of getting the .com I’ve always wanted. The .co.com third level domain name launched in general availability this week. The company is using the tagline “Get the .com You’ve Always Wanted”, pitching you on getting a .co.com domain because the .com domain you want is already taken. Conceptually this makes sense. Yet a promotion I received from a registrar yesterday doesn’t seem to exactly capture the spirit of this. “Second chance ... read more ...
Wed 9th July 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Investing in new TLDs? Hope for modest, not great, success of program. - Early investors in new top level domain names might get a better return if new TLDs as a whole are a mediocre success instead of a home run. Domain investors have registered a good chunk (the bulk?) of new TLD offerings to date. Is this a good investment? I’ve thought about the potential returns from a number of angles. There are three scenarios I see: 1. New TLDs are a big failure. They don’t take off and end up being small niche TLDs like many existing sTLDs. 2. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.XXX sells some-more premiums and offers giveaway domain names by partnership - Sales keep coming in for .xxx in its third year. .XXX continues to sell premium domain names for prices that new TLD operators would love to obtain. The company recently sold three more .xxx domain names, including extreme.xxx, for a total of over $150,000. .XXX registry ICM Registry also announced a partnership with ModelCentro for Models.xxx. ModelCentro runs a hosted system for fan sites. Verified models using the ModelCentro platform are able to register one ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Bitcoins.com gives Heritage Auctions a press it has been looking for - HA adds a press-worthy domain name to its July auction. One of the things Heritage Auctions is trying to do with domain name auctions is bring domain investing to the mainstream. By mainstream, I mean collectors and investors in coins, memorabilia and other items HA already auctions. It’s working the press angle, too. Yesterday the company announced it will be auctioning off Bitcoins.com in its July 24 auction. Heritage finally has a domain name the press wants ... read more ...
Tue 8th July 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Texas License plates sound a bit like new TLDs - A lot of niche license plates, just like niche domain names, might not make sense in the long run. Apparently not what the Dr. ordered.The Dallas Morning News published a story this past weekend about specialized licensed plates and a lack of sales for niche plates. Like many states, Texas offers specialized plates for supporters of certain causes, alumni of various colleges, etc. Texas is planning to cancel certain plates that have fewer than 200 users. Police are ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Frank Schilling beats IBM in domain dispute - Reserved three letter .link domains won’t be suspended. Frank Schilling’s North Sound Names, the company under which he registers premium domains in his new TLDs, has defended two such domain names from a URS filed by IBM. IBM filed a Uniform Rapid Suspension case against the domain names DB2.link and AIX.link. North Sound, with the help of attorney John Berryhill, successfully convinced the URS panelist that it registered the domain names as part of a collection ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Co.com exits landrush with thousands of registrations - Third level domain option enters general availability today. .Co.com, a new third level domain name registration, enters general availability today with “single-digit thousands” of registrations already. The registry says that the greatest interest is coming from countries where third level domain names (e.g. something.com.au, something.co.uk and even something.com.co) are already commonplace. Some third level .co.com domain names already get traffic because of ... read more ...
Mon 7th July 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
This week in new TLDs: .Pub, .Christmas and more - Frank Schilling tries to put you in the holiday spirit and Rightside raises its glass. You know what amazes me? One of the .brand TLDs to “go live” this week, .中信 and .citic, has a better information page than some of the other new TLDs launching. But readers probably aren’t interested in .brand domain names they won’t be able to register, so here’s a look at other domain names launching this week. It’s Christmas in July! Your local furniture store ... read more ...