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.

Wed 7th May 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Club lands among Top 10 new TLDs on initial day - .Club is now one of the top ten new TLDs. The .Club domain name is now among the top 10 most registered new TLDs after launching this morning. The exact number of registrations (based on the zone file) won’t be available until tomorrow. It takes about 15,000 registrations to make the top ten as of today. The company received 2,000 registrations combined from sunrise and a premium-priced landrush. 100 of the landrush domains are going to auction. .Club CEO Colin ... read more ...
Tue 6th May 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Is Shutterstock disturbed about a boycott? - Company registers boycott-related domain names. What is stock photo company Shutterstock (NYSE: SSTK) so worried about? The company recently made a number of defensive domain name registrations related to boycotts and three of its brands. All of the domains included the brands preceded by “boycott”, e.g. BoycottBigstock.com, BoycottBigStockPhoto.com, BoycottOffset.com and BoycottShutterstock.com. A brief Google search didn’t pull up any discussion about boycotting ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Is .expert a subsequent “big” tip turn domain name? - .Expert is in the same category as .guru. How will the two compare? .Guru continues to lead the new top level domain name charts in terms of number of domain names registered. It currently has about 55,000 registrations and gets hundreds of additional registrations on some days. Tomorrow Donuts releases a similar new TLD in the Early Access Phase: .expert. Will .expert rival .guru in terms of registrations? It’s a tough question. Although .guru and .expert can ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Survey: domain name sales, marketplaces, and brokers - Will domain values go up? Survey says… This year’s Domain Name Wire survey asked a number of questions about how people use domain name marketplaces and brokers. Domain Marketplaces The majority of survey-takers use only one or two domain name marketplaces. 30% use just one and 32% use two. However, 58% said they’re considering adding their domains to one or more additional marketplaces in 2014. The number of options for how to list domains at marketplaces ... read more ...
Mon 5th May 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Rich still not removing rich - More domains registered…by the registry’s executive director. Last month I wrote about the .rich top level domain name, which had a mere 22 domain names in its zone file. (It was actually just 21 because I counted a registry domain.) After ICANN’s long hiatus of publishing zone files last week I was surprised to see the .rich zone file up to 36 domain names. At about $2,000 a pop retail, that would be a nice pick up. Domains such as born.rich, howtobe.rich, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Top 5 Domain Name Wire stories from April - April was a notable month in the domain name industry. April showers bring May flowers. Or so they say. Unfortunately, not in Austin this year. The drought continues. But it rained lots of stories in the domain industry last month: a big acquisition, more new TLDs, and a controversial keynote at DomainFest. 1. Uniregistry activates thousands of reserved domains per TLD, causing a firestorm with domainers. Especially because of comments Shilling had made earlier about ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
13 finish user domain name sales from Sedo - A motorcycle parts company, real estate firm and lawyer make domain name purchases. Sedo’s most recent sales week had $1.1 million worth of domain name sales. Here are some that I identified as “end user” domain name sales. You may view more end user sales here. Verosa.com $1,099 – Verosa, which appears to be a new company in Vacouver. Movineo.com $4,000 – Movineo Network S.A., which uses the domain name Movineo.com.br WorthyBooks.com $1,000 – Worthy ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Qwalify does’t validate for send in Qualify.com domain name dispute - Panel says Qualify.com wasn’t registered in bad faith to take advantage of Qwalify, Inc. Greg Ricks has successfully defended his third UDRP dispute in under a month. Ricks previously defended JustBelieve.com and Massy.com, and today WIPO issued a decision in his favor for Qualify.com. I wrote about the Qualify.com filing at length in February, so you can read the gist of the complaint here. A key to the case was that Ricks registered the domain name more than a ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
My thoughts on final month’s NameJet domain sales - Some great deals and some questionable purchases. NameJet just released a list of sales over $2,000 from April. Here are my thoughts on some of them…the last one being the most interesting. Certifications.com $17,100 – I like this domain. There are thousands of certifications people can get, and many of them come with a fee. I’m not sure how many are offered online, but this domain could be a fantastic directory with an affiliate or lead gen model. Through.com ... read more ...
Fri 2nd May 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Expired domains: head, shoulder, knees and toes - Some ship has sunk; and as the cargo it carried sinks below the surface, domain resellers pick over its contents like fish seeking edible morsels from among the debris. The vessel’s captain may not know this goes on, having given up for lost whatever was in his ship’s hold. But we know. And we know too that the flavor of the sinking scraps will vary day to day, depending on who is throwing excess baggage overboard or who has sprung a leak. Often, whether a conscious ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.CEO: How not to marketplace your new tip turn domain name - .CEO marketing is not well executed. I’ve written before that .ceo as a standalone domain name doesn’t make sense to me. I see some potential for a network for CEOs, and the company behind .ceo has plenty of experience with social networking. But that wouldn’t be about a domain, it would be about a network. dotCEO sent out an update on its first 30 days yesterday. It doesn’t look good and has me scratching my head even more. It seems .ceo is dropping the ball ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Web.com paid $7.4 million for SnapNames - Web.com paid $7.4 million for SnapNames and hopes for a revenue contribution of $5 million this year. Web.com paid $7.4 million cash to acquire SnapNames from KeyDrive, the company revealed on its investor conference call yesterday. The company described it as a “small tuck-in acquisition” at a financially attractive price. Web.com expects SnapNames to generate about $5 million in revenue for its period of ownership in 2014. The acquisition became public on March ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Medicare.com domain name sells for $4.8 million - A huge domain name sale: Medicare.com sells for $4.8 million. eHealthInsurance Services, Inc. has acquired the domain name Medicare.com for $4.8 million. On the company’s investor conference call yesterday the company said it paid $4.5 million in cash for the domain and forgave $0.3 million in receivables from the seller. The seller was apparently an existing business partner with eHealth. Although the whois record for Medicare.com has used whois privacy for a long ... read more ...
Thu 1st May 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Wolfram wins .CEO URS brawl on second try - This time the case computes. Search and data company Wolfram has won a Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) case for Wolfram.ceo…on the second try. It lost the first case because it filed the case as Wolfram Research, Inc. The panelist noted that the trademarks mentioned in the case were owned by Wolfram Group LLC. So Wolfram refiled the case as Wolfram Group LLC and won this time around. The registrant, Andrew Davis, claimed that Wolfram is a common name. The panel didn’t ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Blackberry files obvious app for predictive & energetic tip turn domain key - Idea is to change from .com to another TLD depending on what you type. Phone maker Blackberry has filed a patent application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for a predictive and dynamic top level domain name key. We’ve all used the .com key found on many Android devices and previously on Apple phones and tablets. Recent Apple changes now make you press and hold the “.” key to enter .com or select from a list of other extensions. Blackberry’s idea ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Namecheap hunt “favorites” is cool. I’m still watchful for improved new TLD search. - Namecheap’s interface is a nice upgrade for domain discovery. It could do better with TLD context, though. Namecheap unveiled a new domain searching interface this morning. The highlight for me is the ability to pick favorite TLDs for future searches. For example, I “hearted” .com, .zone, .guru and .in. When I search for domains in the future I can see results for these favorite extensions by clicking on the Favorites tab. This is a nice upgrade as I no longer ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Build starts building: 1,700 domains so far - .Build domain name lays the foundation. .Build domain names for the construction and building industries hit general availability on Tuesday. Tim Switzer, head of operations and registrar relations for .BUILD, told Domain Name Wire that the company has about 1,700 registrations including sunrise, landrush, and general availability. Switzer said the number is about what the company expected given the higher price of .build. The domain name retails for about $99. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Moniker to switch to DomainDiscount24 interface - Moniker’s interface is being retired. A big change is coming for Moniker customers. The registrar will soon switch it user interface to one very similar to DomainDiscount24.com, another registrar within the KeyDrive family of companies. KeyDrive acquired Moniker in 2011 but has barely touched the site design. In fact, Moniker.com’s interface hasn’t been touched in years, and frankly it’s time for a change. When you transfer domain names out of Moniker you ... read more ...
Wed 30th April 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New TLD auction prices attack highs: Minds + Machines, Uniregistry, Donuts all win some domains - Average purchase prices may be north of $3 million. By all accounts, registries paid much more to settle contention sets during last week’s private auctions than in previous ones. Minds + Machines won auctions for .garden and .yoga. It spent a net $5.97 million for the two domains once the proceeds of losing the .deals and .property private auctions and withdrawing the applications are taken into account. That means it paid much more than $6 million to win auctions ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
22 finish user domain sales and some reward .co.com sales - GoDaddy and Afternic combined to sell about $1.8 million worth of domain names last week. Before jumping into the regular end user sales list, I want to point out a couple premium .co.com sales. SurfMyAds.com, a company that creates shopping sites, paid $3,750 each for Istanbul.co.com and CouponCodes.co.com. .Co.com, led by Ken Hansen, Paul Goldstone and Gregg McNair, offers third level domain names. OK, on to the regular list. (You can see previous domain sales ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Donuts’ Claims Plus use starts today - Trademark Claims end, Claims Plus begins. One of the Rights Protections measures in place for new top level domain names is the Trademark Claims service. For 90 days after a new TLD enters general availability, registrars must show a notice if a second level domain name registration matches a mark in the Trademark Clearinghouse. Donuts’ first batch of seven domain names (.ventures, .singles, .bike, .holdings, .plumbing, .guru, .clothing) concluded the 90 day period ... read more ...
Tue 29th April 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
FICEP SPA guilty of retreat domain name hijacking in unwashed UDRP case - This case is particularly dirty. Italian machine tool manufacturing company FICEP SPA has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking in a UDRP for FICEP.com. Czech Arbitration Court panelist Jane Seager got the call right as this is a very clear cut case of reverse domain name hijacking. It was a pretty dirty filing. FICEP SPA filed a case against respondent FICEP in October. It was a clear-cut case that it lost. Although FICEP SPA has been around for decades, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Villa.com changes registrars as partial of Villa landgrab - Who’s behind this Villa landgrab? Last year I wrote about how someone was buying up lots of country code domain names with villa and villas at the second level. Since then I’ve continued to watch dozens of similar domain names get purchased/registered with Mark Monitor. All of them have Mark Monitor’s version of Whois privacy “DNStinations”. Now the final shoe has dropped: Villa.com has moved from Whois privacy at Fabulous to Whois privacy at Mark Monitor. Was ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
3 new domain registries ask ICANN for dual impression domain names - .Wiki, .globo, and .ceo registries want to offer two character domain names. Three new top level domain name registries have asked ICANN to allow them to register two character domain names under their TLDs. New TLD registries aren’t allowed to offer two character second level domain names per their agreements with ICANN, but I expect this to change in coming years. The requests are very different. 1. .Wiki applicant Top Level Design has asked for two character ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DomainAgents’ new complement competence accelerate your domain name sales - DomainAgents adds system for domain name sellers. Domain sales platform DomainAgents has made a major upgrade with the hopes of helping domain name investors sell more inventory. DomainAgents launched as a “certified offer” service in 2012. Domain buyers would pay to submit an offer on a domain and DomainAgents would track down the owner to present the offer. Negotiations would take place over email. The original concept was somewhat similar to Network Solutions’ ... read more ...