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 14th January 2014
Written by The Domains in EN
Chicago Sun-Times to exam Bitcoin and Twitter paywall with startup BitWall - The Chicago Sun-Times, the 9th largest newspaper in the USA, is testing a social paywall that will accept both Tweets and Bitcoin in partnership with the content monetization startup BitWall. For 24 hours on February 1st, 2014, Chicago Sun-Times readers will be prompted to donate Bitcoins to or Tweet about the Taproot Foundation to test the functionality and acceptance of Bitcoins on the site. The Taproot Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that helps design, marketing, IT, strategic management, ... read more ...
 
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“In a face of confusion, people will default to something they trust and understand” - George Pongas is the general manager for Aus Registry, AusRegistry is the current registry operator and wholesale provider for all commercial .au (Australia) domain names including .com.au and .net.au, and non commercial domain names .gov.au and edu.au. He recently posted something on the Aus Registry website with regards to 2013 being a good year for .au domains. He makes mention of the new gtlds at the end of his post and shares the sentiment of many readers here and in the industry as a whole. ... read more ...
Mon 13th January 2014
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Go Daddy CEO calls stream domain space soiled and not descriptive - Blake Irving CEO of Go Daddy sat down at the Consumer Electronics Show and gave a talk about the changes taking place in the domain space. Irving calls the current space polluted and talks about the new names being descriptive. He talks about pizza, doctor, dentist and then says LA, of course LA has been available and is a cctld. This inclusion is why some think that the repurposed country codes may get an extra boost as people just include them when talking about the new gtlds. Click to watch the ... read more ...
 
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Heritage Auctions and RightOfTheDot.com Partner On Live Auctions Of New gTLD Domains & Contention Auctions - Heritage Auctions and RightOfTheDot, LLC announced today an exclusive joint partnership to provide live and online auction services for premium domains in new gTLD extensions that are being launched over the next several years. Examples of premium domain names that may potentially be for sale via this new offering could include names like Night.Club, Tour.London, Hotels.NYC, Divorce.Law, Poker.Vegas, Concert.Tickets, and on, across the spectrum of recently created new domain space. The partnership ... read more ...
 
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Demand Media Files With SEC To Spin Off Domain Registries and Registrars Into Rightside - Demand Media, Inc. (DMD), a leading media and domain name services company, today announced that its newly formed wholly owned subsidiary, Rightside Group, Ltd. (“Rightside”), has filed a Form 10 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with the planned spin-off of Rightside as an independent publicly traded company. “The filing marks an important step reached on Rightside’s path to becoming an independent company that will be one of the world’s ... read more ...
 
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RPG Life Sciences Ltd. of Mumbai Guilty Of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking - RPG Life Sciences Ltd. of Mumbai, India, represented by Anand Anand, India has just been found Guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) on the domain RpgLife.com by a one member UDRP Panel. The domain name was registered back  on October 28, 2005 Despite generating some $47 Million in revenue in 2012-2013 the company tried to grab the domain name away from its owner without compensation. Here are the relevant facts and findings by the one member panel: The Complainant operates a pharmaceuticals ... read more ...
 
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Domaining.com & TheDomains.com Launch The New gTLD Ticker - Domaining.com and TheDomains.com have a new look this morning as they launched the new gTLD ticker on the top of each site. The new gTLD ticker is an advertising program, the brain child of Francois Carrillo, Founder and C.E.O of Cybertonic which operates Domaining.com who is in charge of making the ticker work Michael Berkens of TheDomains.com is in charge of sales and client relations for the new advertising program. The program is strictly limited to 2o strings in 2014. At the moment we have ... read more ...
 
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.CN Landrush exceeds 50 Million Yuan - NiceNic.net out with another interesting piece of news, the .CN Landrush auctions of previous reserved domains has generated over 50 Million Yuan/RMB.  That equates to over $8.2 million They posted today: As of Jan 12th, 2014, the open auction of previously-reserved .CN domain names by CNNIC entered into heating-up period, and the total price of recent auctions already exceeded 50 million yuan/cny/rmb, of which GAME.CN, GW.CN, LB.CN, CM.CN stood out with final biddings surpassing million. The whole ... read more ...
 
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.PW surprisingly flattering renouned with phishers in China - NiceNic.net put out a report that looked at phishing activity in China, very few .cn sites are involved in phishing and surprisingly there was a decent number of .pw sites being used. Anti-Phishing Alliance of China(APAC) announced “December 2013 Anti-Phishing Sites Brief Report”. According to the report: APAC totally dealt with 168,835 phishing sites over the years and in Dec 2013, 5,681. Below please find some diagrams and statistical data: - See more at: http://nicenic.net/news/messview.php?ID=12796#sthash.T1sykyhc.dpuf The ... read more ...
 
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Penn State Lets PennState.com Expire & The Domain Is In Auction W/ $4,583 Min Bid - Penn State which certainly has had one of the biggest scandals in the United States over the last few years leading to criminal charges, the resignation of the President of the University and the legendary football coach Joe Paterno, has now let the domain name PennState.com expire. The domain name PennState.com is registered to Penn State formally known as the The Pennsylvania State University. The University has owned the domain since at least 2001 according to DomainTools.com The University let ... read more ...
Sun 12th January 2014
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Expect Some BIG News This Week Out Of NamesCon - With the NamesCon conference getting ready to kick off in Las Vegas this week everyone in the domain industry should be on the look out for some big news and announcements. If history is any lesson, many companies in the space have used domain conferences like TRAFFIC, Domainfest and the ICANN meetings to release stories of new ventures,  deals, developments and launching of new opportunities. With over 600 people now expected to attend NamesCon should gets its fair share of announcements and press ... read more ...
 
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Virginia Says Yelp Must Reveal The Real Names of 7 Who Left Critical Reviews - A decision in Virginia could affect the free speech of users of the popular review website Yelp. This could also trickle down to other areas where free speech is concerned. The case revolves around Hadeed Carpet based out of Alexandria, Virginia. The company did not believe that some of the negative comments it received were from actual customers. They sued Yelp to get the identities of these individuals and won. The case was appealed and the appellate court  affirmed the lower court’s ruling. ... read more ...
Sat 11th January 2014
Written by The Domains in EN
Overstock Reaches Sales of $130,000 in First Day of Accepting Bitcoin - Overstock CEO says the company made $130,000 in first day of Bitcoin sales. #Bitcoin's first full day on @overstock.com was a huge success: 840 orders, $130,000 in sales. Almost all new customers. #stunned — Patrick M. Byrne (@OverstockCEO) January 10, 2014 Patrick M. Byrne did an interview on CNN which was interesting and worth watching. The interviewer and Byrne have a good back and forth where she is skeptical of Bitcoin to go mass market.  Byrne respectfully disagreed. He does mention they ... read more ...
 
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Domain Registrar Uses The 2nd Coming Of .Com “Beer.com Sold For $7M” To Sell New gTLD’s - Domain Name Registrar, OnlyDomains.com has started to sell new gTLD’s chatting about the second coming of .Com domain aftermarket saying on the front page of its site: “Remember when the domain name Beer.com sold for $7 million dollars? ” “For the first time since the dawn of the Internet, people everywhere have an opportunity to claim ownership of a whole new range of top level domain web addresses. ” “Domains like .App, .Venture, and even .Sex are coming soon. How much will yours be ... read more ...
 
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Search Engine Watch: 4 Local Search Tactics That Will Matter More in 2014 - In an article published by Adam Dorfman on Search Engine Watch, he took a look at 4 factors that should play bigger in Local SEO  for 2014. Number one on the list was Improving Brand/Domain Authority. Domain Authority is a big factor over at Moz who defines it, “Domain Authority represents Moz’s best prediction for how a website will perform in search engine rankings. Use Domain Authority when comparing one site to another or tracking the “strength” of your website over time. We calculate ... read more ...
Fri 10th January 2014
Written by The Domains in EN
Aftermarket.com Rolls Out Affiliate Program: $1 Each New Account; 25% Of Commissions - In an email sent out this afternoon, Aftermarket.com announced an Affiliate Program which they described as a “commission-based, revenue-sharing incentive program with a unique twist.” “Park Sell with us, and we’ll reward you for referrals to Aftermarket from your parked domains.” “We automatically place multiple referral links on every parked domain, giving you multiple opportunities to earn more money through our Affiliate Program. ” “Every time someone signs up for a new Aftermarket ... read more ...
 
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.CEO Domains Sunrise Starts Feburary 10th; GA Mar 28th - CEOTLD Pty Ltd, the registry operator of the new dotCEO top level domain, has announced that its Sunrise period will open on February 10th. During Sunrise, “trademark owners can register dotCEO domains, thereby protecting and enhancing their brands and company names”. Specific dotCEO Sunrise details can be found on the ICANN Website. dotCEO is positioned as the only TLD to convey authority and power. dotCEO will be marketed to brand leaders, business leaders (20M CEO’s globally) and ... read more ...
 
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That’s A Pretty Penny - Heritage Auctions which ran its first successful domain auction a few months back is currently running an auction in Florida (non – domain related). Aron Meystedt mentioned HA.com is having a big auction in Florida this week called F.U.N. There are a few of the worlds’ most valuable US coins in the auction. Some of these results are just WOW I think this shows that the buying power Heritage has is pretty big and if they can gradually get more and more people interested in domains then Aron is ... read more ...
 
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UDRP Panel Hands Over KnowhowInsurance.com To TM Holder of KnowHow - A one member UDRP panel just handed over the domain name KnowHowInsurance.com, to the trademark holder of “Know How” The Complainant registered the domain name KnowHow.com on  June 22, 1995; knowhow.co.uk January 14, 1997, and knowhowmovies.com on  June 27, 2011. The UK trade mark of KNOWHOW was registered on January 21, 2011, for goods in class 9, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40 and 42, under number UK00002557010. The UDRP panel expanded the trademark holders rights to include other words in domain with ... read more ...
 
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GoDaddy Signs Registry-Registrar Agreement with .CLUB - According to a press release we just received,   .CLUB Domains, LLC, the company formed to own and operate the new “.CLUB” generic top-level domain name (gTLD), announced today that GoDaddy, the world’s largest domain registrar, will be offering “yourname.club” Web addresses to clubs, membership organizations, affinity and loyalty groups, and anyone sharing a common interest or passion. Of those registrars who have been taking pre-registrations over the past several months, the .CLUB extension ... read more ...
 
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How To Give Your Business A Name That Sticks - Salesforce.com did a piece entitled, “How To Give Your Business A Name That Sticks” The author of the article is Deborah Sweeney who is the CEO of MyCorporation.com. The article covered three main areas: Pick a name that defines you, Make sure no one else has that name and Build your brand. From the article: Pick a name that defines you When naming your business, you want a potential customer to look you up online, or walk by your storefront and instantly get a good idea of what it is you do ... read more ...
 
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Voice Search May Lower Cost Per Click - People have talked about voice search for a long time, many use it on their mobile phone to dictate their query using voice instead of typing. Laurie Sullivan wrote a piece a couple hours ago that could have an effect on people who park domains and generate income from websites that monetize through Google Adsense. The longer phrases spoken in voice search queries create a much closer match. It serves a more relevant ad to consumers, improves the quality score of the brand, and produces a lower bid ... read more ...
Thu 9th January 2014
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Google Refuses To Remove Pic From Sexy Execs Blog - There seems to be a storm brewing about a site that has not been in active in close to 3 years. The site did not even bother to get its own domain name opting for a free blogspot blog. The site in question is SexyExecs.blogspot.com.  Sexy Execs made blog posts over a two year period. They would post a pic of an executive, some of these were user submitter pics, and then they made some snarky and sometimes critical remarks about the person. This mocking did not sit well with one person profiled,  ... read more ...
 
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Where You Can Find Soon To Be Dropped Or Recently Dropped .XXX Domains - I had a reader ask me where they can find recently dropped .XXX domain names. While drop list of .com, .net, .org .tv and .me are easy enough to find .XXX seems harder. I checked Snapnames.com and although they have a .XXX option there are no dropping domain names listed, probably because they don’t try to catch dropping .XXX domains. NameJet.com doesn’t have a .XXX TLD option to search for dropping domains. The best source of soon to drop or recently just dropped .XXX domain is the registry ... read more ...
 
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MediaPost: “Google Holds Right Cards for a Horizontal Market” -   Gord Hotchkiss did a piece today about Google and the mobile market. As Hotchkiss sees it Google holds all the cards to take advantage of everything coming down the pike. He notes Google is pushing hard to make Android the default operating system in the Open Automotive Alliance. Google is basically looking to turn cars into really big mobile devices. Laurie Sullivan covered this for MediaPost here. From the article: if you piggyback that search functionality onto the de facto operating system ... read more ...