Author Archives: The Domains

About The Domains

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 5K domain names . Michael is also a Director of RightoftheDot.com which is a consultant in the new gTLD space and a broker of super premium domains. Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest this year.

Tue 20th October 2015
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.Wang Adds 90K+ Domains in 1 Day: 160K in 3 Days: Becomes 3rd Largest New gTLD -   The new gTLD .Wang gained some 90,000 new domain registrations in the last day or so and over 160,000 new domain registrations since October 17th which is an increase of 50% According to Registered.Today  .Wang gained more than 90,000 new domain registrations yesterday. According to ntldstats.com, the number of .Wang domain registration has grown from 285,000 on October 17th to over 445,000 on October 19th an increase of more than 50%. .Wang has now become the third most registered new gTLD ... read more ...
 
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Sedo Weekly Transactions Total $1.7million led by oka.com during $60,000 - 624 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1.7m. 50% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings.  Highlights of public sales are: Top .com: oka.com at 60,000 USD Top ccTLD: treu.de at 30,000 EUR Top “other” TLD: beijing.biz at 3,398 USD New gTLD Sales: werbeartikel.kaufen    2,100    EURthecrossing.church    1,999    USDaffinity.solutions    1,400    USDseo.academy              798    USD There were 52 LLLL.com sales ... read more ...
 
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MyRescue.Dog Awards A Total of $100,000 to 16 Local Dog Shelters - Petfinder Foundation announced the winners of the MyRescue.dog fundraising campaign, a month-long effort to celebrate rescue dogs and raise funds for the shelters and rescue organizations that save them. The campaign began on National Dog Day August 26 and ran through Sept. 26 www.MyRescue.dog a site built on a new domain extension of the new gTLD domain name registry Donuts. The “top dog,” a dachshund named Cora-Bella, won a $25,000 donation for Midwest Dachshund Rescue based in Highland,IN Lori ... read more ...
 
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Lucky 8's: Rick Schwartz Tops $10.5M in Sales For 2015: Sells 989.com For $818,181.81 - Rick Schwartz a/k/a the Domain King just sold the domain name 989.com for $818,181.81, topping $10.5 Million in domain name sales in 2015. For Rick who always talked about having a 20 year plan, 2015 marks the 20th year and its been a record setter. For a guy who made a reputation for saying NO to offers,  has said Yes for the 4th time in 2015: Rick previously announced the sales this year of shows that “8” is his lucky number too: Porno.com for $8,888,888 which is still by far the highest reported ... read more ...
Mon 19th October 2015
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Another Great One Word .Com Domain Name; Raisin.com Sells -   The domain name Raisin.com just sold for what is as of now,  an undisclosed amount. The domain which had an original creation date of 1995 was owned by a  “T Clayton” of San Fransisco for what seems to be just a few years. The domain name came out of Sedo Escrow and the new owner of the domain is SavingGlobal GmbH of Berlin whose website is SavingGlobal.com According to Bloomberg.com, “SavingGlobal GmbH operates as an online marketplace for foreign fixed deposits in Germany. The company’s ... read more ...
 
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Sometimes Shorter Is Not Better: StreetHub.com Rebrands to Trouva.com -   TechCrunch.com published a post about a UK startup, Streethub.com raising another $2.4 Million in funding. StreetHub.com “helps independent shops and boutiques be discovered and sell online,  including offering ‘click and collect’ functionality via its mobile app and 90 minute local delivery”. “It’s also launching a new brand and consumer-facing offering: Trouva is an e-commerce site that promises to curate and make available items to buy from its 350-strong network of independent ... read more ...
 
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There Are Now 2,121 ICANN Accredited Domain Name Registrars - During remarks made at the 54th ICANN Meeting being held in Dublin, Akram Atallah,  the President of the Global Domain Domains Division of ICANN stated that there are now 2,121 ICANN Accredited Domain Name Registrars in the world. ICANN has accredited 579 domain name registrars just since the last ICANN meeting in Buenos Aires 53, which was held June 21-25, 2015. ICANN has also dropped the requirement that a domain registrar carry liability insurance which should great increase domain registrars ... read more ...
Sat 17th October 2015
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HopScotch.com Hit With UDRP By Owner of HopScotch.fr - This is a weird one for sure. A UDRP has been filed against the domain name Hopscotch.com The Complainant is listed as the Hopscotch Group, which is a french PR company whose website is on the domain name hopscotchgroupe.com The company also owns the domain Hopscotch.fr, but that domain isn’t even being forwarded to the company main website at hopscotchgroupe.com As you can see the word “groupe” in the company’s URL is spelled the “french way” with an “e” at the end. However according ... read more ...
Fri 16th October 2015
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IAC To Spin Off Match.com, Tinder, OkCupid.com + 42 More To IPO Of The Match Group (MTCH) - IAC/Interactive (IACI) is spinning off 45 sites including Match.com, Okcupid.com and Tinder into a new public company called the The Match Group which filed for an IPO Friday, applying to be listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker “MTCH.” The company has filed to raised up to $100 million in the IPO. According to the S-1, The Match Group had 4.7 million paying subscribers worldwide at the end of the third quarter. The company is reporting trailing twelve months revenue of $1 billion ending June ... read more ...
 
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2014 Final UDRP Stats From WIPO & NAF: 0.003% of All Domains Subject to A UDRP/URS - This week the WIPO published it stats for the cases it determine under Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (“UDRP”)  in 2014. Back in September the other major organization that hears UDRP and the only one to decide cases filed under the Uniform Rapid Suspension System (“URS”) the National Arbitration Forum (NAF) announced their stats for 2014. So now that we have the stats for both those organizations we can see what the case loads in terms of decisions in 2014 for UDRP and URS ... read more ...
 
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Unblock.com Saved In UDRP But Panelist Should Have Found Reverse Domain Hijacking - NetProtect, Inc. just lost its attempt to grab the domain name unblock.com in a UDRP in a silly case that should have resulted in a finding of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) but the panelist was IMHO lazy and decided just to throw out the case. Calvin A. Hamilton was the sole Panelist for the National Arbitration Forum (NAF) who rejected Complainant argument that it had acquired unregistered common law trademark rights. “In order to acquire rights in an unregistered trademark, Complainant ... read more ...
 
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Twitter is meddlesome in a second turn of new gtld applications - TrademarksandBrandsOnline.com published an article that Twitter plans to participate in the second round of new gtld expansion. Stephen Coates is trademark counsel for the social media giant, he told the website that he doesn’t know exactly which extensions they would apply for, but that he would imagine .Twitter being high on the list. Interestingly Coates said the jury was still out on whether or not there are marketing benefits by using a new gtld, but he did think there were other benefits ... read more ...
Thu 15th October 2015
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Blackstone's B2R Holdings Rebrands As Lending.com - B2R Holdings, a portfolio company of a Blackstone Group (LPBX ) , announced today that B2R rebranded itself as Lending.com and said it hoped to extend $10 billion in loans over the next three years. According to Jason Hogg, the  CEO of Lending.com, expects to help facilitate $10 billion in loans in the next three years. Lending.com was founded with funds managed by Blackstone Tactical Opportunities. Blackstone, is the world’s biggest private-equity firm with more than $330 billion under management. The ... read more ...
 
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Tim Schoon Auctioned off 118 4 letter.coms on 4.cn - Tim Schoon of PEJ.com auctioned off 118 four letter .com domains on 4.CN. The auction ended yesterday, some wondered why Tim auctioned them all off on the same day ? There was a discussion about it on Namepros and Tim gave his rationale. I even thought a smart trader would control the supply to get maximum price out of each sales. I’m so wrong. Seems to me the bubble is not ripe yet. I held this auction at 4.cn today. There are some very large buyers out there who do not bother bidding ... read more ...
Wed 14th October 2015
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Former Adult Site VS.com Is The 3rd Reported Two Letter .Com Domain Sale Today - The domain name VS.com appears to have sold. The domain name was registered to a VS Media, Inc. of Calabasas, California until a couple of months ago when it went under privacy at Godaddy.  However the servers did not change and the domain was registered at Godaddy while it was owned by VS Media, Inc. VS.com as recently as 2006 was an adult site Video Secrets according to Screenshots.com More recently the domain was used to sell Customized Live Video Web Communication The domain name’s whois ... read more ...
 
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There Goes Another Two Letter .Com: PT.com Appears To Have Been Sold -   The domain name PT.com appears to have been sold. The domain was owned by a Mark Conrad of Rochester New York for many years and his former company Performance Technologies, who owned the domain since at least 2001. The domain has an original creation date of March 3rd, 1989. The buyer is Xu Caijun of Hangzhou Midaizi Network Co., Ltd. of HangZhou, China. If you’re asking how would anyone know that the domain name was for sale? All you had to do is check out the domain PT.com It looks like ... read more ...
 
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.Org Adds 130K Registrations, Tops 10.5 Million: Registrants In China Own 3.2% - Public Interest Registry, the not-for-profit operator of the .org, .ngo and .ong domains, today released the results of its bi-annual domain name report “The Dashboard.” The .Org domain name extension, added 130,865 additional registrations over the last 12 months, bringing the total domains under management (DUM) to 10,547,247. Other findings outlined in The Dashboard include: .org registrations in international markets demonstrate steady growth, particularly in Asia where China has 3.2 percent ... read more ...
 
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Verisign: XYZ Is 6 On The Top 10 Trending Keyword For .Com Registrations In September - Verisign’s (VRSN) published the top 10 keywords in registered in .COM and .NET in September and with the help of Google who bought amazing publicity to the .XYZ extension with its acquisition of abc.xyz, the term XYZ was number 6 on the top 10 .com list. In all 2356 .com domain names were registered that contained XYZ and here is the list of  September .com registrations that contained XYZ Curiously the domain name google-abcdefghijklmnopkrstuvwxyz.com was registered in September before it was ... read more ...
 
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Netflix Finally Wins A URS on Netflix.pics; The Difference?; The Domain Was Parked - Netflix finally won a Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) case on the domain name Netflix.pics Netflix recently lost two URS cases on the domain names Netflix.news and Netflix.website. There were two difference between this case of Netflix.pics and the other two URS they lose One was the Examiner which in this case was Debrett Gordon Lyons. Unlike the other two cases where the domain names did not resolve with the domain holder claiming they were intending to launch sites on Netflix.news and Netflix.website, ... read more ...
Tue 13th October 2015
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Sedo Transactions Total $1 Million Led by SkinWellness.com @ $15K & 0702.com At 10K GBP - Sedo.com published its transactions for the week. Lots of LLLL.com continue to sell in the low $x,xxx range In all 631 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1 Million. 56% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings. Highlights of public sales are: · Top .com: skinwellness.com at 15,000 USD and 0702.com which sold at $10,000 GBP which is actually higher than $15k · Top ccTLD: lola.co at 10,000 USD · Top “other” TLD: non.org at 9,888 USD   ... read more ...
 
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WIPO Publishes 2014 UDRP Figures & 2015 YTD: 14% of WIPO’s 2015 Cases Are New gTLD's - The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)  released it annual report yesterday for 2014 and Year to Date numbers through September 2015 for cases it decided under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (“UDRP”) Cases filed ins 2014 were up only 2% from 2013,  with 2,634 cases being lodged by trademarks owners claiming abuse of their mark. Country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) – accounted for 13% of all filings in 2014 with 71 national domain registries now designating ... read more ...
 
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Famous Four Media Becomes 3rd New gTLD Registry To Pass 1 Million Domains - According to a Press Release out today, Famous Four Media has become the 3rd new gTLD registry to pass one million domain names. Donuts was the first to hit 1,000,000 domain registrations but they  offer well over  100 new domain extensions for sale. .XYZ was the second registry to hit 1,000,000 domain names but they did that only on 1 new domain extension .XYZ. According to the press release; Famous Four Media “reached this milestone in just over a year following the launch of its first Top ... read more ...
Mon 12th October 2015
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Quick Poll: What Will Be The High Bid On Health.Org - Earlier today we posted about a Godaddy.com expired domain name auction underway for health.org. The auction still has over 9 days to go as of publication. Assuming the domain auction does not get called off because the owner renews the domain name we opened a poll question to ask “What Will High Bid Be For The Domain .Health.org?” The poll is located on the right about half way down the page. For bragging rights you can also put you’re actual prediction in the comments beow With bidding at ... read more ...
 
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New gTLD's: Stock Firm Trefis Says Verisign "Doesn't Have Much To Worry About" - Stock investment firm Trefis.com issued a report on Verisign (VRSN) today entitled “The New Domain Name Game” and concluded when it comes to new gTLD’s (new domain name extensions): “It appears that VeriSign doesn’t have much to worry about, at the moment, when it comes to the introduction of new domain name extensions. “Even though the company’s market share has been reduced (52.5% in 2007 to 46.6% in 2014) and will probably continue to decline in the future due to higher competition ... read more ...
 
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Health.Org Tops $141,000 In Bidding In Expired Domain GoDaddy.com Auction - .Health.org is in an expired domain name auction at GoDaddy.com and bidding has topped $141,000 with over 9 days to go. According to the stats shown on the GoDaddy auction page, the 22 year old domain is estimated to get almost 7,000 visitors a month. Arguably the domain name Health.org is one of the top 5 best possible and most valuable .org domain names. As of publication there are only 17 active bidders on the domain, but the only way to become an active bidder is to top the current high bid ... read more ...