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 16th June 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Taking a demeanour a May’s NameJet sales - An deeper look at some of last month’s sales on NameJet. If you didn’t catch Andrew Allemann’s insightful take on April sales at NameJet, it’s worth a read.  This time, I’m filling in with some observations on last month’s sales — “observations” being a euphemism for knee jerk reactions and blind spots! Out of 76 sales, I’ve picked 10 to look at: Liao.com $100,000 – Mentioning this one would be obligatory for the price alone.  Not only is ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Will .Berlin be #1 this week? Domains are giveaway for subsequent 5 days. - Free domains will boost total .Berlin registration numbers. .Berlin got off to a nice start thanks to a free .Berlin promotion. A new promotion may propel the domain name to the #1 slot on the new top level domain name charts. Officially, 20 registrars are offering .Berlin domain names for no more than 5.55 euros from June 16-21. But that max is just a max, and some registrars are giving the domain names away for free. InternetX, for example, will let you register ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Lend.me launches as a Prosper for domain names - Peer-to-peer loans use domain names as collateral. Francois Carrillo, who runs the Domaining.com news aggregation site, has launched Lend.me, a loan marketplace for domain name owners. It’s a peer-to-peer loan marketplace similar to Prosper and LendingClub. A key difference is that the loans are secured with domain names. The site acts as a matchmaking site between people who want to lend money and those that want to borrow. Much like on the popular peer-to-peer ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.CEO selling goes from stupid to… - New TLD not doing so well? It doesn’t suck, it’s just “limited release”. By all measures, PeopleBrowsr’s two top level domain name launches have been flops. .CEO has 1,244 domains in the zone file. .Best has 434. This isn’t a huge surprise to me. .CEO launched with some silly and sexist videos. Its marketing wasn’t well executed. That, and it’s a stupid idea for a top level domain name. Registrars haven’t exactly rushed to carry either .CEO or .best, ... read more ...
 
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HP employees threatened aspirant Splunk? - Competitor says HP employees and consultant set up websites and social media accounts to disparage it…and then crossed the line with physical threats. I’ve read a lot of bizarre domain name disputes, but two recent ones involving an HP employee take it to another level. Big data company Splunk just won two UDRP domain name disputes against the domain names DontGetSplunked.com and SplunkFail.com. Splunk alleged that these were basically part of a grassroots campaign ... read more ...
 
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CentralNic buys domain name registrar Internet.bs (IBS) - CentralNic gobbles of up large domain name registrar in $7.5 million deal. Publicly traded CentralNic (LSE: CNIC) has purchased Bahamian domain name registrar Internet.bs (IBS). The move gives CentralNic, currently positioned as a registry, a strong entry in the retail registrar market. CentralNic is traditionally known for offering third level domain names, but it is the technical registry services provider powering dozens of new top level domain name applicants. ... read more ...
Fri 13th June 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Is .xyz’s selling wrong, intelligent or both? - Inflated numbers will result in more mainstream press mentions. A lot has been written over the past couple weeks about .xyz and its so-called “sham” registrations. Network Solutions is giving away free .xyz domain names and is not even requiring account holders to affirm that they want the domain names. This is drastically inflating the number of registered .xyz domain names. As a result, .xyz is at the top of the new TLD charts. It has over 100,000 registrations. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
What domain names Harvard Business School and others bought final week - Harvard among end user domain name buyers last week. Sedo sold $1.1 million worth of domain names last week. Here are some that were purchased by end users; see previous end user sales lists here. Want to sell domains like these on Sedo? Download this report to learn how. PuzzleRings.com $18,000- jewelry company Uctuk, which operates the website PuzzleRing.com (singular). IdentityToys.com $1,395 – Fremont, California company IdentiToy Inc. They design “Object-to-display ... read more ...
Thu 12th June 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy End User domain name sales - A slow week in the aftermarket. GoDaddy and Afternic sold just $1.3 million worth of aftermarket/expired domain names last week, a far cry from the usual $1.8M-$2.0M it turns in. It may be a hanghover from the holiday weekend in the U.S. a couple weeks ago. An additional reason might be the temporary loss of Afternic on its Premium level distribution. Both Afternic and Sedo had to temporarily remove Moniker due to its ongoing problems. GoDaddy’s registration path ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
EDR: Results and research from over 150 lapsed domain name auctions - In this week’s Expired Domain Report (EDR), Joseph Peterson gives the rundown on over 150 expired domain name auctions. “Smart” is the word of the day, judging by the top 2 expired auction results from GoDaddy.  It’s not surprising, really.  Computing has infiltrated our lives, and smart phones are conquering both the younger generation and the developing world.  But although the #1 spot is about mobile tech, the #2 domain, SmartRoom.com, seems to be ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Egton loses Patient.com UDRP, though it should have been retreat domain name hijacking - Egton Medical loses big time, but panel doesn’t admonish it for frivolous filing. Egton Medical Information Systems Limited has lost a UDRP it filed against Health Axis Group LLC in March over the domain name Patient.com. This was a particularly egregious filing and obvious abuse of the policy. The three person panel found that Egton Medical didn’t prove any of the three prongs of the UDRP. Egton also made ridiculous arguments, such as Health Axis Group’s ownership ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Today: Two firsts in spam - A text message domain sales pitch and email spam message that links to a .club domain name. Just when I thought I’d seen it all when it comes to spam, today I experienced two firsts. The first was that I received an SMS message offering three domain names for sale. I don’t know the sender, although it was pretty easy to look up their corporate identity using whois. They were pitching .xyz domains, by the way. So that makes it the first time someone has contacted ... read more ...
 
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Wow: .Hotel row set resolved after CPE - .Hotel applicant wipes out competition by winning community status. In what is sure to be a shocker to many new TLD applicants, HOTEL Top-Level Domain s.a.r.l has prevailed in its Community Priority Evaluation for the .hotel domain name. It was the only applicant to elect community status and has now won the contention set. This means the other six applicants for .hotel, including Donuts, Minds + Machines, Famous Four and Radix, have lost their chance to run .hotel. The ... read more ...
Wed 11th June 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sorry, Moniker. It’s Over. - My long relationship with Moniker is coming to an end due to irreconcilable differences. I’ve been a Moniker customer for a decade. Probably longer. I haven’t been a completely satisfied customer, but I have been a content customer. Until a week ago. That’s when Moniker flipped the switch on its new system. It completely scrapped the old Moniker we all knew. It replaced it with KeyDrive’s reseller platform. Unfortunately, the transition has been an unmitigated ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Why no RDNH for Thingify.com? - A classic abuse-of-proceeding case, but no RDNH finding. A WIPO panel just handed down a decision in a UDRP for Thingify.com. It follows a familiar story line: 1. Person starts company, but matching .com domain is taken. 2. Company opts to use a different extension, in this case Thingify.net. 3. Company then tries to buy .com but can’t strike a deal at the price it wants. 4. Company files a UDRP it has no chance of winning. In the case of Thingify, Inc, it knew ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Will WHOIS be assassinated? - 166 page report describes plan to completely scrap WHOIS as we know it. Last year I wrote about a plan to scrap Whois as we know it and replace it with a new Registration Directory Service (RDS). The initial proposal, created by an ICANN working group, was rather complicated and 49 pages long. Now the Expert Working Group has issued its final report. It weighs in at 166 pages and is sure to be a hot topic at the upcoming ICANN meeting in London. I read the executive ... read more ...
Tue 10th June 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Watch: .Ninjas invade X Games - .Ninja sponsors the X Games. We’ve talked quite a bit on this blog about the need for top level domain name registries to promote their new domain names to end users. Here’s a great example of a company doing just that. The X Games came to Austin for the first time this past weekend. The young audience is a great target for the .ninja domain name, and .Ninja owner Rightside was there promoting the new name. The company sponsored a laser tag center and had a booth ... read more ...
 
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One Domain Investor obliged for bulk of .webcam and .trade domain name registrations - One investor responsible for most initial domain name registrations in .webcam and .trade. A single domain name investor was responsible for the bulk of domain name registrations of Famous Four Media’s domain names launched yesterday. .Webcam added 3,655 domain names to reach 3,678. Approximately 3,100 of them were registered at registrar Encirca by a single domain name investor. .Trade got 3,197 registrations to reach 3,235. I count nearly 2,400 of them registered ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy gets obvious for “Domain name steal protection” - Patent is mostly about whois proxy email services. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted patent number 8,751,685 (pdf) to GoDaddy for “Domain name hijack protection”. The patent, applied for in 2010, is actually a divisional patent of an application I wrote about in 2008. The earlier patent application hasn’t been granted yet. The majority of the patent is about whois proxy services (e.g. DomainsByProxy) rather than domain theft prevent; It’s a ... read more ...
 
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.Co.com drops pricing on “Premium” domain names, releases reserved - Company will slash prices on premium domains and offer many reserved domains at regular prices. .Co.com, a new third level domain name option, is dropping prices on premium domain names and has removed tens of thousands of domain names from its reserved names list. The company released a list of the previously reserved domain names that are now available for registration in a blog post. The list includes some metrics, but not the actual traffic the domains receive. ... read more ...
Mon 9th June 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
What domain names Microsoft and others bought - Microsoft headlines last week’s Sedo end user sales list. Microsoft is the biggest name on last week’s Sedo end user sales list, but a flower delivery company bought the most expensive (disclosed) domain name. There’s also a .berlin domain name on the list. Below are end user sales I found on the list Sedo sent last week; see previous end user sales here. Bouq.com $40,000 – Flower site The Bouqs. Bouq is short for Bouquet. They have a video that explains ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sex.sells: 15 .Webcam domains sell for $175k - .Webcam hits premium gold with large sale ahead of launch. Famous Four Media launches its first three top level domain names today, and one of them is off to a nice start thanks to a big premium sale. The company announced today that it has sold a package of 15 adult .webcam domain names for a total of $175,000. While some new TLDs have failed to find their footing with premium domain sales, it seems that the adult community is very interested. Famous Four Media probably ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
This week in new TLDs: Famous Four, Donuts…and .UK? - At least seven new TLDs hit the market this week, and expect a lot of press around second level .uk domain names. Famous Four Media finally gets into the mix this week as it launches its first three top level domain names: .webcam, .trade and .bid. All hit the market today. It already made news this morning with the sale of 15 .webcam domains for a total of $175,000. According to the Calzone.org calendar, .商城 also begins its claims period today. However, the company’s ... read more ...
 
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Which new TLD is on top? Here’s one answer. - Search data shows that .directory is winning in terms of total indexed pages. No, this article isn’t about whether .xyz or .club should be considered the most registered new domain name so far. Instead, it’s a different look at how to measure the most successful new top level domain names. Matt Bentley, who you may recall from back in the day at Sedo, now runs a search engine optimization service called CanIRank. He collated some data on how many unique URLs on ... read more ...
 
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Demand Media spinoff Rightside to list on NASDAQ as “NAME”, scores some-more TLDs - NAME is coming soon to the NASDAQ. Demand Media moved one step closer to spinning off its Rightside domain name business today with the filing of an amended registration statement. The company plans to issue new shares for the spinoff that will trade on the NASDAQ under the ticker NAME. The SEC filing does not say how many shares of Rightside will be issued for each share of Demand Media stock. Demand Media plans a reverse stock split before the spin off. Rightside ... read more ...