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.

Thu 23rd January 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Building Your Business on Google + - If you have been looking to improve you Google + account and use it for your business. I know a lot of people don’t love Google + but there are some who have been looking to get more active. Google + has made it available now to get custom urls instread of that ugly long string of numbers. You can see how to do that here. Plus Your Business is a site that is providing free training courses in many aspects of using Google products. In a blog post they did about using Hangouts for certain niches ... read more ...
Wed 22nd January 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Now a Makers of Candy Crush Saga Want to heading a word Saga - On Monday we wrote about King Studios and their trademarking of the word Candy. The company seemed to be going out and trying to enforce the mark even though its still open for opposition at the USPTO.  King also received a trademark for Candy in Europe as well. In article out today on Complex.com Hanuman Welch writes that King  seems to be looking to protect the word “Saga”  The author brings up a good point that King really does not own a lot of other “Candy related” titles, but they ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Harvard Business School Study: Display Ads Drive Search Clicks After Two Weeks - Greg Sterling wrote an article on Search Engine Land today that related to a study showing display ads drive search clicks with a delayed effect. The study was conducted by Harvard and Ozyegin University researchers. Ozyegin is located in Turkey. From the article: The conclusions and insights are useful, however, and can be boiled down to the following: Display advertising does indeed generate more search volume, clicks and conversions Search ads don’t drive increased interaction with display ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Quartz: “The biggest land rush in a story of a internet starts on Feb 4″ - Leo Mirani and David Yanofsky wrote a very thorough piece for Quartz on the new gtlds. Their article titled, “The biggest land rush in the history of the internet starts on February 4″ The article did a nice job in the set up and background of the program, then they took a look at the existing tlds and their reach on the Internet. They looked at new tld applicants and talked about “Free Money Forever” From the article: Free money, forever For its owner, setting up a generic top-level domain ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Confirmed: There Will Not Be A .Co/Godaddy Super Bowl Commercial This Year - Godaddy.com released one its commercials that it will be airing during the Super Bowl today. I confirmed with Godaddy that there will not be a .Co domain name registry co-branded commercial running on this year’s Super Bowl. The .Co registry ran co-branded ads with Godaddy for the past three Super Bowls. My favorite of the bunch, actually my favorite television commercial of all time for domain names, was last years Godaddy/.Co commercial entitled Your Big Idea .Co. Godaddy also confirmed that ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
TeamWork.com Sold For $675,000 To Company With $12 Million In Sales - According to Siliconrepublic.com, an Irish software company located in Cork, TeamworkPM just bought the domain name Teamwork.com for $675,000. According to domaintools.com is appears the domain name was actually sold last year by domain investor Alexander Lerman to the software company. Alexander acquired the domain name back in 1999. The software company which bought the domain has 20,000 customers in 147 countries includingeBay, Microsoft, Oxfam, Forbes, PayPal, Electronic Arts and NBC. The company ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Company Wins UDRP On Domain It Let Drop After Domain Holder Says He Bought It For $21K - We just wrote about a guy who bought a domain name for $31,000, let it drop and lost a UDRP to regain control. This time Intrac Group AB of Stockholm, just won the rights to the domain name intrac.com, from intrac.biz,  who said they paid $21,500 for the domain. Here are the relevant facts and findings by the one member panel The Complainant is the registered owner of a trademark for INTRAC in Sweden (Trademark No. 0372029), filed on July 5, 2004 and registered on May 6, 2005. The Complainant operates ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Guy Buys iSound.com For $31K Asks $4M; Lets Its Drop & Loses UDRP, To Get It Back - In one of the more interesting UDRP cases I’ve not because of the law or the decision but because of the fact pattern. Jeremy Same (The Complainant) just lost his bid to get iSound.com back, a domain he bought in 2012 for $31,000 and let drop, to the company that he tried to sell the domain name to for $4 Million dollars. Here are the relevant facts and findings of the one member panel The  Complainant “is an Internet entrepreneur recognized across the world for his introduction of innovative ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Did Expedia Get Caught Trying to Buy Its Way To The Top of Google ? - Search Engine Land wrote a piece yesterday on the travel website Expedia losing 25 % of their search visibility in Google. The possible reason is for unnatural links. From the article: Expedia.com’s Google Traffic Decline: Patrick Altoft noticed a drop in Expedia’s traffic today and posted about it on Twitter. If you look at their decline today, it looks like Google has penalized Expedia in their search results. We reached out to Marcus Tober from Search Metrics who sent us additional details ... read more ...
Tue 21st January 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Sedo Transactions Total $1.6 Million - Over the past week, 710 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1.6 Million 47% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings. Highlights of public sales are: ·         Top .coms: homify.com at 30,000 EUR ·         Top ccTLD: rabatkoder.dk at 36,500 USD ·         Top “other” TLD: boot.net at 11,500 USD <![CDATA[]]> Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Look out New Gtlds, Here Come Star Domains - W.Kenneth Ryan has a dream and it is for a multiplexed naming system. Ryan has created the Asterisk browser to make for the possibility of his naming system, he shows an example of how it would work using Johnson.com for example. This browser makes domain name translations completely invisible to the user.  Any name*number address will be translated into the corresponding native format for domain name resolution, and any domain name registered in the test format will be presented to the user as ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Afternic/GoDaddy Sell $1.86 Million In Domain Names - Afternic/GoDaddy released its sales report for the week of 1/13/14 – 1/19/14 All sales for the week totalled $1,866,118. The top .com sale was lead by Crafting.com for $51,500, with the top non-com sale lead by Heg.net for $5,000. Below is the complete report: Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Booking.com Which Applied For .Booking Rolls Out Campaign Using Booking.Yeah - Booking.com which applied for the new gTLD .Booking announced today a new advertising campaign wrapped around Booking.Yeah Its the “first-ever brand campaign” for Booking.com. Booking.com applied for the .booking new gTLD. No one applied for .Yeah It seems like a horrible move which will only serve to confuse the public on the new gTLD’s We have chatted before about while Brands might led the charge of the use and adoption of new gTLD’s they might also led the confusion. Booking.com is not ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
NameSilo.com Becomes 2nd Domain Registrar To Accept Bitcoin - A second domain name registrar, NameSilo.com announced that it was offering Bitcoin as a new method of payment on its website. NameCheap.com became the 1st domain name registrar to offer BitCoin back in March of 2013. The move makes NameSilo the latest established business to accept payment via the digital currency, and one of the first major domain registrars to do so. “It is important to us to respond to the requests of our customers,” said Michael Goldfarb, co-founder of NameSilo. “Our ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Authorization.com sole for $35,100 on NameJet - Authorization.com sold for $35,100 on NameJet 27 bids from $20,000 between two bidders. Domain Timeline:  The domain was registered  12/13/2000 by DomaiName – A Division of Internet Yakin Aman out of Indonesia 2003 The name looks to have dropped and Buy Domains became the owner. 11/28/10 Registration changes to  Media Community LLC which was a company based out of Oregon that became a subsidiary of NameMedia in 2007. 7/1/12 The domain moves to Moniker and privacy 11/1/13 Comes out of privacy ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Matt Cutts on Guest Blogging, You Should Probably Stop - Matt Cutts, head of web spam at Google made a post today on his personal blog concerning guest blogging. Matt basically said that if you are guest blogging for links, just stop it. From the article: Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it’s become a more and more spammy practice, and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging then you’re hanging out with really bad company. Back in the day, guest ... read more ...
Mon 20th January 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Candy Crush Maker Now Looks To Crush The Competition With Trademark - Sorry, but I see their submitted classes as far more than overly broad, perhaps even completely insane. Actually read everything they want to own the word “candy” for… Apparatus for recording, transmission or reproduction of sound or images; Blank magnetic data carriers and recording discs; Blank magnetic disks, pre-recorded magnetic disks featuring computer games; Compact discs, DVDs and video recordings featuring computer games; Calculating machines, Data processing equipment, namely, ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Trademark Owner Loses Bid To Grab 11 Year Old Domain With 1 Year Old Trademark - Andtech Corporation just lost its attempt to grab the domain name andtech.com from the domain owner Portmedia Domains/Portmedia Holdings Ltd which was represented by Ari Goldberger of Esqwire.com The Complainant Andtech got its trademark on Christmas Day 2012. The domain name owner registered the domain September 4, 2003. The Complaint offered $1,000 for the domain and the domain owner responded with a $20,000 offer to sell. Instead of buying the domain the complaint decided to spent $5K or more ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
UDRP Panel Oversteps Its Authority & Transfers 17 Year Old Murko.com - UDRP’s were to settle clear cut disputes for trademark holders where a matching domain name or one which was confusing similar. I think this panel has gone way beyond a set of facts that qualifies for simple in awarding a domain name murko.com registered some 17 years ago back in 1997 to a complainant on common law trademark rights grounds. Moreover for to order a transfer of a domain name on a UDRP the complainant is suppose to show the domain holder registered the domain in bad faith and used ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Famous Four Open Its First New gTLD .Bid & You Can Bid To Own The Domain - FFM today announced a “reservation program” .Bid called Bid on .Bid The .BID Reservation program is split into two phases: Bid-on-.BID and First-Come-First-Served (FCFS) Bid-on-.BID When?                    From 14:00 UTC on 20th January 2014 until 10:00 UTC on 14th February 2014 Registrants are invited to submit their bids for .BID second level domains through participating ICANN accredited Registrars. The minimum bid will be just $20.00. Reservations at the standard retail ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
CM.CN leads Premium .CN Auction Selling for $176,103 - NiceNic.net posted the latest results for the English word domain .cn domain auctions along with the Premium .CN domain auctions. These were domains previously reserved by CNNIC. The current exchange rate: 1 CNY = 0.165240 USD See below the latest 2014 Premium .CN domain sales list and their final bidding prices in CNY: cm.cn    1,066,000one.cn    1,004,000shop.cn    1,002,000 me.cn    920,000 dj.cn    824,000 ys.cn    810,000 name.cn    762,000 Ly.cn    758,000 tao.cn   ... read more ...
Sun 19th January 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
SlideShare.net voted #1 in a .NET100 - Verisign and Entrepreneur put together .Net100 and apparently the votes are in for the top ranked .net sites on the Internet. Coming in at number 1 was SlideShare.net. The site has an Alexa ranking of 118 and is a very popular resource for those looking to create slideshow presentations. Welcome to the .Net100 – a ranking that measures the top sites on the web with the .net domain extension. Entrepreneur and Verisign came together to assemble the ranking, which is based on quantitative factors ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
WhizzBangsBlog Is Back & Says Domainfest Will Be Held Mar 31- Apr 2, 2014 - Michael Gilmour has been hard at work for a relaunch of WhizzBangsBlog.com as a website with a social networking platform and is reporting that there will indeed be a Domainfest and it will be held on March 31st-April 3rd 2014. In a post Michael Says: “DomainFest is announced! The dates are 31st March until 2nd April. Further details to follow. :-)” As far as WhizzBangsBlog, the blog is now a  social network to me which he describes as “Facebook but only for the domain community” but to ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ICANN BC Committee Tells ICANN Not To Allow Singular & Plurals Strings (Again) - Elisa Cooper the Chair of the ICANN Business Constituency has told ICANN (again) not to allow singular and plural’s strings of the same word. The letter dated December 30, 2013 was just  published yesterday on ICANN’ site yesterday. We at TheDomains.com previously stated that allowing singular and plural strings of the same word i.e. .car and .cars was going to be a huge mess and was one of the top policy mistakes ICANN made in the new gTLD program. Of course the problem has gotten worse ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Donuts Comments On ICANN Last Resort Auction Rules - Donuts filed a comment with ICANN over the ICANN Last Resort Auction Rules which were up for public comment. Unlike Google which thinks the one year period in which is would take ICANN to hold all Last Resort Auctions is too slow, and Unregistry which think the period is too quick, Donuts thinks the timing is just about right although wants applicants who agree to have a second extension period of 3 months to resolve contention privately. Donuts also suggests allowing other contention sets to jump ... read more ...