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.

Mon 12th October 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
New Domain Extension .Cloud Announces 1st Three Pioneers: Sets Out Launch Dates - The new domain name extension .cloud, announced today over the coming weeks, more than 30 Pioneers will begin using .cloud domains starting with ScreenCloud, a London-founded SaaS company, which is “creating powerful, easy-to-use products to help businesses and retailers take control of their digital signage. Screen.Cloud has built the new. cloud into its entire company branding, recognizing the relevance of the domain over a standard .com alternative.” “Pioneers range from market leaders ... read more ...
Sun 11th October 2015
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Godaddy .Miami Domain Name Auctions Hit The 4 Figures - .Miami went live for General Availability (GA), where they could be registered on a first come, first served basis, on October 2nd. .Miami did not have a landrush or an Early Access Program (EAP) .Miami is being managed on behalf of the city of Miami by Minds + Machines which has premium registration and renewal domains as well as reserved domain names. Godaddy has had a policy for all new gTLD launches, if more than 1 person pre-registers a domain name and they catch the domain, then the domain ... read more ...
Sat 10th October 2015
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Better Pay Attention As ICANN Opens Up Comment Period For Changes To UDRP & URS - “The report makes it clear that UDRP reform is going to be on the table and well as the addition of NEW RPM meaning its possible that a new procedure in addition to The UDRP and the URS might be recommend. “The UDRP was created in 1999 to resolve disputes concerning disputes over entitlement to domain names registered at the second level of the DNS. It is an ICANN Consensus Policy that is applicable to all gTLDs, including those launching under the New gTLD Program. The uniform operation of ... read more ...
Fri 9th October 2015
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.NYC Gets Around 650 Domain Registrations Out Of 16k+ On The ICANN Collision List - .NYC celebrated its one year anniversary yesterday by releasing over 16,000 domain names which were previously unavailable due to being placed on the ICANN collision list. We ran the list through a whois program earlier today and according to the results somewhere around 650 of these domain names got registered. If you have ever gone through an ICANN collision list a substantial percentage of the list contains a lot of nonsensical domains, containing random letters and/or numbers or are otherwise ... read more ...
 
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Amazon Registry Appears To Be Off To A Rough Start - We wrote a couple of weeks ago about Amazon launching Amazonregistry.com as a domain name registrar for at least the new gTLD’s At the time the site resolved but was not taking any registrations. But since at least yesterday the site is returning an error page something you usually don’t see on a website of one the largest corporation’s on earth: ... read more ...
 
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Company Re-Brands From .Com To .XYZ Purchased For $5,700 -   A company which re-branded to a .Com in March, from a .Org, has purchased an .XYZ domain name from a domainer and re-branded to an .XYZ domain name. According to its site, “Engage, is a division of INHS, is one of the largest MEDITECH hosting partners in the United States. With 20 years of extensive MEDITECH experience, Engage provides a wide range of infrastructure solutions including hardware refresh, virtualization, data migration, data center migration and implementation. Engage leverages ... read more ...
 
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Domain Holdings Brokers The Domain Adopting.com For $125,000 -   DomainHoldings.com has brokered the domain name Adopting.com for $125,000 according to a blog post. The purchaser of the domain name is Adoptimist.com. The blog post gives a few  details on the negotiation and sale. The post also says: On par with adopting of the single word variety there are: Adopt.com Adoption.com Adopted.com I think there are a few more including adopts.com adoptions.com. However to note adoption.com doesn’t seem to be going anywhere unless you buy the whole company nor ... read more ...
Thu 8th October 2015
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Frank Schilling (FTS, Corp) Now Owns 5.5% Of Rightside - According to a SEC filing (Schedule 13D), a corporation out of the Cayman Islands FTS, Corp (FTS) now owns over 5.5% of the outstanding shares of publicly traded Rightside Group, Ltd. (Nasdaq: NAME). FTS is the initials of Frank Schilling and the form is signed by a Ria Scott Blyth who according to their Linkedin page is an Executive Assistant for Uniregistry. According to the filing FTS, Corp owns 1,008,142 shares representing 5.5% of the outstanding shares of Rightside. According to the filing, ... read more ...
 
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.NYC One Year Anniversary Is Today; Collision List Drops & City Issues Updated Stats - To mark the one-year anniversary of .nyc, the City of New York published the latest statistics on the state of the .nyc domain name. The ICANN Collision list for .NYC is being released today for registration today as well. It will be interesting to see how many get registered. Here are the more interesting stats from the report which can view in its entirety here. To date there are just over 85,000 .nyc registered domain names, more than any other city new gTLD. The average retail cost paid for a ... read more ...
 
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CSC October's New gTLD Utilization: 5,340 New gTLD Sites in Alexa Top 1M - CSC’s Published Its October New gTLD Utilization Report,  showing the pace of .brand registrations accelerating with a 50% increase since their September report. The report was prepared by Here is the top 10: .link.tokyo     ... read more ...
 
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Domain Movers: Baib.com, YN.com, Battlecast.com & More Domains - Welcome to Domain Movers where we detect domain names on the move, mainly all by large corporations for one reason or another. These are often early detection’s and often result in a new product, service, business or advertising campaign in the near future. Since this is often the very first time anything is being mentioned about “it”, it can be challenging to find out very much information relating to what “it” may actually be or relate to… but it often gives us clues. Here we go with ... read more ...
Wed 7th October 2015
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Forbes.com Covers .Film & 1st Domains; February.film & Septembersofshiraz.film - Forbes.com just covered the launch of the new gTLD .Film “So far, two new movies will be the first to debut the .film web extension: Osgood Perkins’ February starring Emma Roberts, Kiernan Shipka and Lucy Boynton (www.February.film); and Wayne Blair’s Septembers of Shiraz starring Salma Hayek and Adrien Brody (www.Septembersofshiraz.film).” Yesterday, .film was officially launched by the Motion Picture Domain Registry, which developed policies the new gTLD directed aiming to reinvent the ... read more ...
 
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Minds + Machines To Go With An 8 Day Early Access Program For .Law/.Abogado - Minds + Machines announced today for the first time, they will be running an Early Access Program (EAP) as part of the launch of .law and .abogado (spanish). The EAP period will run 8 days from 12-18 October. “During this EAP period an extra fee will be charged in addition to the standard annual charge for each domain name. Each day, the EAP fee will descend in price until the point where on the 8th day, the EAP fee will no longer exist and only Standard or Premium name annual charge will apply.” I’m ... read more ...
 
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.Club To Auction C.Club & 24 Double Letter Domains - According to a press release that is just out, C.Club and twenty-four 2-character .CLUB domain names are set to hit the auction block on October 29, 2015 in a series of five fast-moving auctions with each auction lasting three days. “This auction will be held on the Chinese EachNic.com platform, and marks the first time .CLUB Domains, the Registry behind one of the world’s most popular new domain extensions, is offering this set of domains in a public auction format. The domain inventory included ... read more ...
 
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Tagheuer Loses URS Which Now Seems Limited To Domains Parked or Offered For Sale - Tagheuer has become the latest trademark holder to lose a Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) proceeding on the domain name tagheuer.digital Ho-Hyun Nahm, as Examiner found in favor of the domain holder although the domain did not resolve finding: “Passive holding can be considered as an indication of bad faith. However, in case of the disputed domain name, it has been less than four (4) months since its registration on June 19, 2015. As such, the period of passive holding is too short to infer Respondent’s ... read more ...
Tue 6th October 2015
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Sedo Weekly Transactions Total $1.5million led by PassiToN.com for $64,000 - Over the past week, 689 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1.5m. 55% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings.     Highlights of public sales are: Top .com: passiton.com at 64,000 USD Top ccTLD: j.de at 22,000 EUR Top “other” TLD: reward.net at 14,800 USD New Gtld sales: entrepreneur.beer    2,500    USDtrusted.company    1,800    EURastro.club    1,500    USDdig.life    999    USDisy.club    800    USD Last week ... read more ...
 
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.Club Sells $64K In Premium Domains In September - The .Club Registry announced today on its blog that premium name sales for September, including SnapNames auctions, came to $64,423.82. As you read through the report I don’t think there is any other registry as transparent as .Club and that is just one of the reasons that I love working with them through RightoftheDot.com “”September marks the first full month that .CLUB names were available on SnapNames. As of September 30, 2015, total cumulative sales of registry reserved premium .CLUB ... read more ...
 
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Oversee Founder & Former CEO Lawrence Ng Links Up With Metamorphic Ventures -   According to SocalTech.com, Lawrence Ng, the founder and former CEO of Oversee.net, which of course at one time owned DomainSponsor.com, Moniker.com and SnapNames.com along with around a reported one million domain names, is now running an asset management company called LNG Management and has linked up with New York City based venture capital firm Metamorphic Ventures. “According to LNG Management, Ng has become an advisory board member for Metamorphic Ventures. LNG said that Ng is incubating ... read more ...
 
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.XXX, .Porn., .Adult & .Sex Start Selling Premium Domains Through Registrars + 2 Characters - ICM Registry (ICM) which operates .xxx as well as the new gTLD’s .porn, .adult and .sex announced today the launch of its tiered-pricing, premium names program for .XXX, .ADULT, .PORN and .SEX.domain names. ICM is joining a growing list of new gTLD registries who are selling the vast majority of its premium domain names through the registrar channel with premium registration and renewal prices. These names include SEO based keywords as well as two character names. ICM will continue sell some of ... read more ...
 
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.Sex Matching Program For .XXX Domain Owners is Open - ICM Registry, the company that operates .XXX, .PORN, and .ADULT announced today the launch of its .SEX Domain Matching/Sunrise B program. From now until October 30th, if you own a .XXX domain name, or if you are a trademark owner that reserved a name during the .XXX Sunrise B program, you are eligible to participate in this unique opportunity to register .SEX names before they become available to the general public. This program gives most .XXX participants a priority opportunity to register domain ... read more ...
 
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Famous Four Sells $2.1 Million In Domain Names: 320 Premiums Through Registrar Channel - According to a story out today in itnewsonline.com Famous Four Media (FFM) is now selling premium domain names in some of their new gTLD extensions through the registrar channel.  Since launching the premium domain program three months ago FFM has sold 320 domains  ranging in 8 pricing levels. “In the month of August, Famous Four Media reported a transaction value for premium names in excess of $2.1million.” “Famous Four Media’s premium names vary in price from a very affordable $200 through ... read more ...
Mon 5th October 2015
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The Mega Church; LifeChurch.TV Switches to Life.Church - According to a press release out tonight, the megachurch known as LifeChurch.tv has changed its domain name to a new gTLD; Life.Church The church, based in Edmond, made the announcement in a news release today saying the change is in anticipation of the ministry’s 20th anniversary in 2016. “Over the past two decades, the church has had three other names including Life Covenant Church, Life Church, and LifeChurch.tv. The change to Life.Church brings both a new name and a new website address to ... read more ...
 
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After 13 Years Luxury Jewelry Brand Chopard Gets HappyDiamonds.com - Chopard International just won control of the domain name HappyDiamonds.com which was registered on November 1, 2002. The domain is going to a parked page and I can tell you as a buyer of Chopard Jewelry the term Happy Diamonds is a major brand for the company and they have held a trademark on the term since 1979. The issue for me is how is it possible for a brand that sells VERY expensive jewelry allow someone to use a direct match domain for 13 years before deciding we should take some action ... read more ...
 
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DollarBank.com Moving Banking Internet Operations To Dollar.Bank -   DollarBank.com announced today it was going to be moving its online banking operations to the domain name Dollar.Bank in October: “.BANK is a new, more secure Internet domain for banks. It is an easily identifiable channel for trusted communications between banks and their customers. Since the .BANK environment is exclusive to the banking industry, it provides a level of security unmatched in traditional Internet environments such as .COM. The strict controls in place help to mitigate cyber ... read more ...
 
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Domain Movers: Remodeling.com, TrueFan.com, Helix.com & More Domains - Domain Movers is always exciting as it is every changing. Large corporations spending some $$$ to secure a brand and you get an early insight into this because of domain name? YES! Large corporations SELLING domain names they already own… it happens and today proves it happens more than just once or twice.. Here is an “insiders view” of some recently purchased, registered and sold domain names by large corporations. These are often future brands, new products, new advertising campaigns and ... read more ...