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 24th November 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Plan now for these Black Friday domain name specials - Registrars are discounting domain name registrations, and some of the sales have already started. People in the United States are getting ready to unplug for a couple days to eat copious amounts of turkey. As soon as they’re finished digesting turkey legs and pumpkin pie, the holiday shopping season is officially underway. I’ve made a couple posts on twitter soliciting information from domain name registrars and registries that are offering discounts for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I’m posting ... read more ...
Mon 23rd November 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Verisign issues matter on Chinese marketplace for domain names - Company says it can’t predict if surge will continue, nor what renewal rates will be. .Com registry Verisign issued a statement today regarding an upcoming presentation at a financial conference and provided commentary on the Chinese domain name market. Domain name registrations in China are leading to an outsized performance in domain name registrations this quarter. The company said its domain name base is up 4.1 million for .com and .net this quarter as of November 22, 2015. The company noted: …While ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Twerking & Clubbing – Jeff Sass – DNW Podcast #60 - When will new top level domain names have their “twerking moment”. Have new top level domain names had their twerking moment yet? Jeff Sass, CMO of .Club, talks about what it’s going to take for new top level domain names to go mainstream. We also discuss what’s going on in China and the value of short domain names. Jeff also discloses (for the first time) the sale of a single-letter .Club domain name. Also: Beware of domain name pumping, .Booking domain name auction and is Verisign stock ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
KeyDrive to rebirth TrafficClub name for NX trade monetization - Traffic.Club Sàrl will be the new name of KeyDrive’s NX traffic monetization service. I took a trip down memory lane last week when I noticed that the domain name TrafficClub.com sold on Sedo for $899. TrafficClub.com was a domain traffic splitting system created over a decade ago by Moniker. Clients pointed their domain names to TrafficClub, and the service split-test traffic between multiple parking companies. Oversee.net shuttered the service after acquiring Moniker. It pushed customers to ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
3 Letter .Com hits new auction site during $10 with no reserve - Greg Ricks is betting a valuable domain on getting attention for his own auctions. Domain name investor Greg Ricks has added auctions to his Perfect Name site, and he’s putting up a 3 letter .com domain name at no reserve to draw attention to it. DXC.com is currently in an auction on Perfect Name with a starting bid of $10. Ricks has already sold the domain name 447.net for $5,150 on the platform. Now he’s upping the game. I asked Ricks why he’s using his own auction platform rather than one ... read more ...
Fri 20th November 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Judge: .XYZ statements were puffery and opinion - Judge explains why he dismissed Verisign’s lawsuit. Daniel Negari has lots to smile about today.Judge Claude M. Hilton has issued his reason for granting .XYZ’s motion for summary judgment in a battle with .com giant Verisign. The judge granted the motion for summary judgment on October 26. In an opinion released today, Hilton said that .XYZ’s and Daniel Negari’s statements were a combination of fact, opinion and puffery. For example, saying “all the good real estate is taken” is merely ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
XYZ 2, Verisign 0 - Judge dismisses registry change lawsuit. A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit Verisign filed against .XYZ and CentralNic. Verisign sued the companies after two of Verisign’s clients sold their top level domain names to .XYZ and switched to CentralNic for registry services. .XYZ acquired .Theatre, .Protection and .Security. The original applicants for these domain names had contracted with Verisign to run them. Once .XYZ bought the names; it wanted to move the names to CentralNic since the company ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
259999.com sells for $15,100 (and other lapsed domain name sales) - Who says there’s nothing new UnderTheSun.com ($3.8k)? Two months ago, a pair of 6-digit numerical domains topped these charts. But those headline-making expired auctions – $7.5k and $7.3k – fail to match last week’s $15.1k sale … even added together! Has the entire asset class doubled in price after 2 short months? Well, that can’t be inferred just by looking at a few peak sales. But it’s safe to say appreciation in this sector has been – hmm, so many adjectives to choose from ... read more ...
Thu 19th November 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Want to Write for Domain Name Wire? - Have interesting data to share? Domain Name Wire is seeking qualified writers for data-driven and/or recurring, column-style posts. These stories could be an analysis of particular top level domain name usage, trends in the aftermarket, domain name sales data, interviews, or registration trends. I’m open to suggestions on other topics. Writers would be required to source their data, and accuracy is critical. This offer is open to individuals and companies. For companies, keep in mind that these ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
2 Great (and Free) Tools for Domain Investors - Better bulk search and a handy new tool from DomainPunch. I come across good tools for domainers from time-to-time, and want to pass a couple good ones along to you. First is NameBright’s bulk availability search. Alan Dunn mentioned this tool in a blog post yesterday, and I gave it a shot. Most registrars limit you to 100 bulk searches at a time, or 500 if they’re generous. NameBright lets you check up to 5,000 names at a time. Even more importantly, it’s fast. Compared to other registrars, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
RDNH should have been deliberate in BankWell.com decision - Panelist gets decision correct but doesn’t consider reverse domain name hijacking. A World Intellectual Property Organization panelist has denied New Canaan, Connecticut-based Bankwell Financial Group in its cybersquatting complaint against Bankwell.com. However, panelist Peter Dernbach did not consider if Bankwell engaged in reverse domain name hijacking by bringing the case. He probably should have. The same owner has had the domain name since he registered it in 2003. Bankwell wasn’t formed ... read more ...
Wed 18th November 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Booking.com buys .Hotels domain name for $2.2 million - Booking.yeah! Hotel booking company Booking.com has won exclusive rights to run the .hotels top level domain name for $2.2 million. The company was the only applicant for the .hotels domain name. However, .hotels and .hoteis were one of two sets of domains to be considered “too similar” in ICANN’s first pass of string similarity. (Other domain names were trapped through individual string similarity objections.) Therefore, there was a public auction today between Booking.com and Despegar Online ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
As .Com registrations surge, is Verisign a good buy? - Domain name registrations are outpacing Verisign’s guidance. There was a rather spirited conversation over at DomainSherpa today about the landrush on short domain names. Is it a bubble? Maybe so. But guests Frank Schilling, Andrew Rosener and Shane Cultra discussed one way you can play in this boom without ever buying a numeric or four character domain name: buy Verisign stock. The thinking is that most analysts and people following the stock market aren’t keeping up-to-date with .com and .net ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Oversee.net co-founder Lawrence Ng launches $10 million incubator - OnRamp Fund is just the latest of Ng’s ventures post Oversee.net. Lawrence Ng today announced the launch of OnRamp Fund, a new incubator with $10 million to invest in early-stage startups. Ng co-founded Oversee.net, best known for its DomainSponsor domain parking service. He served as CEO of the company until 2008, and then Chairman of the Board from 2008-2015. He took his money off the table in Oversee.net when Oak Hill Capital invested $150 million in the company. That move was well-timed. Ng ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google cranky compelling domain names to existent customers - Company sends $10 discount to some Google Analytics customers. One of the reasons domain name registrars are keeping a close eye on competition from Google Domains is the search giant’s massive user base of small business customers. It already has customers plugged into its email, apps and analytics services. It’s easy to cross-sell a domain name to them. Here’s one example. Google sent this email to some of its Google Analytics users this morning: $10 off isn’t quite free at Google Domains, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
With 24 hours to go, all .Club domains in auction have 2+ bids - .Club auction is sizzling on Sedo. The .Club numeric domain name auction on Sedo is a rare sight: All 37 domain names have bids and will sell when the auction closes tomorrow. In fact, each domain name has at least two bidders, so it’s likely we’ll see lots of activity over the next 24 hours. 666.club leads the pack with 49 bids and a current price of $3,200. I’ve always found this to be an interesting number. It’s a lucky number in China, while elsewhere it is considered the mark of the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
What domain names Business Insider and 18 others bought final week - Here are companies that bought domain names last week. Sifting through Sedo’s weekly sales list to find end user domain name sales is becoming a time-consuming task, but it’s good news for Sedo and the domain name aftermarket. The run on short domain names is filling Sedo’s coffers. Last week the company handled an unusually high 807 domain name transactions for an unusually high $2.4 million in sales. Based on the total of public sales, that means the company also handled some high value private ... read more ...
Tue 17th November 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
NAF Panelist Flubs another UDRP Decision - Panelist doesn’t address domain name owner’s evidence. Panelist Bruce Meyerson seemed to ignore evidence that the domain name owner had rights and legitimate interests in the domain name.Earlier this year I was dumbfounded by the actions of panelist Bruce Meyerson in a UDRP case at National Arbitration Forum. He literally asked the complainant to change its argument so he could find in its favor. Meyerson just decided another UDRP case at NAF that calls his judgment into question. The case involves ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Be clever about domain name pumping - Carefully consider the source of domain name sales data. It’s no secret that money is being made with short domain names right now. It has moved beyond 2 and 3 character domains to longer domain names. I applaud those who have taken advantage of this price appreciation and are making money. But I also want to give a bit of a warning. Lately, I’ve come across cases of boisterous “pumping” of certain types of domain names. People are shouting from the rooftops that certain domain names are ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Electronic Frontier Foundation takes down travesty malware site - Site was spreading malware under “Pawn Storm”. It’s a bit ironic, really. Electronic Frontier Foundation, which defends privacy and online freedoms, was itself spoofed in an attempt to spread malware. The organization has won control of the spoof site, ElectronicFrontierFoundation.org, through a cybersquatting complaint with World Intellectual Property Organization. The domain name was used as part of “Pawn Storm“. A spear-phishing attack included a link to the fake site. The perpetrators, ... read more ...
Mon 16th November 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
9 years later, Twitter gets Twitter.com.au - Company finally gets hold of Australian domain name. Twitter has won a cybersquatting complaint against the owner of the Australian domain name Twitter.com.au. The company filed the complaint with World Intellectual Property Organization. Jason Boyce registered the domain name in 2006, just as the Twitter service was in development. Twitter hadn’t bothered him about the domain name (at least formally) until 2012, when it objected to Boyce’s trademark filing for Twitter.com.au. Now, in 2015, it ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
This week's new TLDs: Save a .Earth, .Forex and more - Targeted to eco-friendly sites, .Earth launches on Thursday. Earlier today I wrote about two new top level domain names that launched today: .broker and .forex. Investment opportunities are limited since .broker will set you back about $700 and .Forex is over $1,000 per year. There are two other domain names launching this week. On Wendesday, Zodiac Gemini launches .八卦, which translates loosely as “gossip” in Chinese. If you are anchored by the prices of .broker and .forex, then you won’t ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Read this UDRP before induction Monte Carlo domain names - Group waits for gambling use before filing claims. Société des bains de mer de Monaco has lost a UDRP it filed against the domain names MonteCarlo.biz and MonteCarlo.ws. This is an interesting case. The complainant is primarily owned by the government of Monaco. It has won previous UDRPs related to gambling and Monte Carlo. In the UDRP, the complainant stated that it monitors domain names with “Monte Carlo” in them. It doesn’t claim exclusive used to the term Monte Carlo, but as soon as the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Monte Cahn – DNW Podcast #59 - Moniker founder discusses domain name investing. Monte Cahn founded domain name registrar Moniker and later sold it, and now is a partner with domain name consultancy Right of the Dot. On today’s program, Monte talks about how the domain name business has changed over the past 20 years, and how it might change in the future. He discusses current domain investing trends and the upcoming domain auction at NamesCon. Also: GoDaddy “make offer” fix, Verisign’s IDN plans, Start spreading the .News ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
This new tip turn domain name costs $30,000 per year to register - $30,000 a year for a domain name registration? We’ve seen some sky-high prices for domain name registrations in new top level domain names. .Rich for about $2,500 a year comes to mind. But that’s nothing compared to the price for .Spreadbetting. IG subsidiary Boston Ivy wanted to keep this domain name for its own use. But ICANN cracked down on “single registrant generics”, and the company was forced to offer .spreadbetting domain names to its competitors. There’s a bit of a loophole in ... read more ...