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 2nd January 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
NeuStar & Web.com Make Forbes “Tech Stocks To Buy In 2014 For Growth & Value Investors” - Forbes published a short list of “Tech Stocks To Buy In 2014 For Growth Value Investors” and two companies from the domain space made the list NeuStar (NSR) operates the .US ccTLD and .Biz TLD, .NYC new gTLD and is also the back end provider for .Co and for hundreds of new gTLD’s. Shares of NeuStar traded between $41.82 – $57.29 in the past 52 weeks and sits just around $49.75 as of publication. Web.com (WWWW) owns two of the top 10  domain name registrars, Network Solutions and Register.com, ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Before Launching Its New Home For Tech, Wall Street Journal Quietly Acquires WSJD.com - We often call out companies for a acquiring bang on domain name before launching a new product or service, so we have to give some Kudos to Dow Jones Company, Inc. the publishers of the Wall Street Journal for buying the domain name WSJD.com before launching WSJD on January 1, which it described as follows: “Happy New Year! Today we are launching a new home for the Journal’s technology coverage. It’s called WSJD—the D is for Digital—and we hope you will take a look and quickly become a ... read more ...
 
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Afternic/Godaddy Sells $1.1 Million In Domain Names - Afternic/Godaddy released its sales report right before the New Years Break for the the week of 12/23/13 – 12/29/13. Sales totaled $1,120,500 All sales were lead by Folia.com Looks like one New York based Real Estate Investment Trust picked up a pair of domains for $8,300 each; NewYorkREIT.com and NYREIT.com   <![CDATA[]]> Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
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Aio Quitely Acquires AIO.com But Bucks The Trend & Uses The Longer AioWireless.com -   Aio Wireless, a prepaid cell phone company headquartered in Washington DC, has been running television commercial in heavy rotation on several cable channels including CNN. The company’s domain name is AioWireless.com which they registered 6 years ago back in 2007. The company quietly acquired the domain name Aio.com around May of 2013. The domain was owned by a a large China company AIO CHINA which also had an office in San Jose California. Although the company has owned the shorter version ... read more ...
Wed 1st January 2014
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Uber.org Leads The Go Daddy Auctions Domain Report for Dec 2013 - Go Daddy finished the year selling 38,841 domains vs 39,715 in November. Uber.org was the top sale for the month at $36,000. The domain registered in 2001 looks to have been sold by the Canadian powerhouse Original.com. The whois shows Go Daddy and the name still points to an Internet Traffic parked page. (click to enlarge) ... read more ...
Tue 31st December 2013
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Lets Set The Record Straight; My 5+ Year Journey Through New gTLD’s - As the year closes I thought it would be a good time to take a look back at thedomains.com and what we have had to say about it since we started writing about it over 5 years ago. For many, you first heard of the new gTLD program on theDomains.com. Seeing that a monumental change to the naming system was coming we have written about it every step of the way Readers have all kinds of opinions on the new gTLDs. I think its fair to say its the most divisive issue in the domainer community not only in ... read more ...
 
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New York Times Interview Vin Cerf On ICANN/ITU & Where The Internet Is Going - The New York Times just published an interview with Dr. Vin Cerf in a story entitled “Viewing Where the Internet Goes”. The backdrop is due to the ” Snowden affair”, ” the new year is likely to see renewed calls to change the way the Internet is governed”. “In particular, governments that do not favor the free flow of information, especially if it’s through a system designed by Americans, would like to see the Internet regulated in a way that would “Balkanize” it by preventing ... read more ...
 
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Tucows Joins Sedo MLS Network - Sedo, today announced that Tucows, one of the leading global provider of domain names and other Internet services, has joined its SedoMLS network. The partnership will enable Tucows to automatically distribute more than 17 million actual existing premium domains and premium domains of more than 400 upcoming new generic top­level domain (gTLD) extensions to the more than 13,000 resellers in Tucows’ OpenSRS reseller channel, and also allows Tucows registered domains to be listed for sale on the ... read more ...
Mon 30th December 2013
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10 Year Old Domain Klickerz.com Saved In UDRP - Rita A. Girondi just lost her attempt to grab the domain name Klickerz.com The domain name Klickerz.com was registered on on May 25, 2003 by Light Church. Klickerz.com was a Parking company back in 2006-2007 Here is how Klickerz.com was  listed on Parkingprograms.com, back in 2006: “Klickerz is majority-owned by a cooperative of Domainers, Direct Navigation Associates.’ “Every domain owner will have the opportunity to buy into the co-op though membership is not required. ” “Our objective ... read more ...
 
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7578.com Hit With UDRP - The domain name 7578.com just got hit with a UDRP I’m have never seen a UDRP filed on a NNNN.com domain name so it could be the first but it also could be an attempt to get back a stolen domain. The domain was owned by a Jocelyn Michel of Montreal until late October of this year  when it was transferred to someone in Hong Kong under privacy at OnlineNIC Inc. However checking screenshots the site has been under construction for a number of years, since at least October 2009 so it could have been ... read more ...
 
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Domain Investor Rob Grant Opens Up LittleRobsters.com - Domain investor Rob Grant has opened up the first fan site devoted to a tropical shirt  under the domain name LittleRobsters.com All that appears on the site is a tropical shirt Welcome to the official fan page for Rob Grant’s tropical shirt! As the father of Lana Del Rey seems as Rob is getting into the action,  with a play off of Lady Gaga fans which are known as Little Monsters with LittleRobsters.com Speaking of Lana Del Rey she was nominated for several Grammy  Awards including “Best ... read more ...
Sun 29th December 2013
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Shocking; ICANN May Make Money Off The New gTLD Program - ICANN released its 1st  quarterly financial statement, as Domainincite.com,  pointed out, ICANN has spent $119.2 million of its original $344.9 million program budget (which comprises application fees net of refunds).” “As of September 30, it still had $225.7 million in cash dedicated to the program, which is accounted for separate to ICANN’s regular operating budget.” ICANN completed the  initial evaluations of  (IE) of the 1930 applications in August. One can argue that ICANN therefore ... read more ...
Sat 28th December 2013
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Buy Of The Year? 3-D.com Sells For $5K On Sedo; 3d.com sole For $500K - Just crossing the Sedo.com wire, might just be one of the best domain name buys of 2013; 3-D.com just sold for $5,000 There are 293,000,000 search results in Google for the term “3-d” with the hyphen. While we typically don’t love hyphenated domain names, in this case, the term 3d is often used and referred to in commerce as 3-d. Without the hyphen the term “3d” returns 691,000,000 results in Google. So 3-d has about 40% of the references of that 3d does in Google and 3d.com sold for $500,000. At ... read more ...
Fri 27th December 2013
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Matt Cutts Spends Christmas Talking Domains and Wikipedia Content - Search Engine Roundtable covered a couple topics from Matt Cutts of Google. Matt apparently took the time during the Christmas holiday to go over a couple of questions that concerned webmasters on the Google Webmaster Help forums. The first question dealt with expired domains with penalties from Google Hello I purchased a new domain name last month. When I’m searching on Google, I can’t find anything similar. Therefore I have purchased it. But after the purchase, accidentally I went to the archive.org ... read more ...
 
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Verisign Is Taking Back Expired Two Letter & Two Number .TV Domains - Verisign the registry for the .TV registry is apparently taking back any expired new Two letter (LL.TV) .TV domain names as well as any two numbered (NNTV) domain names. Recently a domainer that had a back order on a two letter .Tv domain and a two numbered domain received this notice from Verisign: “Thank you for contacting Verisign Support. I reached out to our Operations team to determine where they were in their investigation. They have a resolution for the issue prepared. However, the business ... read more ...
 
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Frank Schilling’s Name Administration Beats Back UDRP On 13 Year Old Vuescan.com - Edward B. Hamrick dba Hamrick Software lost its bid to grab the domain name vuescan.com in a UDRP from Frank Schilling’s Name Administration Inc. who was as always represented by John Berryhill, Esq. However the panel refused to make Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) ruling despite finding the domain holder did not register or use the domain name in bad faith, made legitimate use of the domain and that 9 years had passed since the Complainant first sent a C D letter to the domain holder. Here ... read more ...
Thu 26th December 2013
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Stat Porn - Domainers like stats and here are some of an adult nature but also may help with domains, ppc campaigns and running your adult website. PornHub.com took a look back at 2013 and while we are not going to get into the more risque stats, there were some that dealt with the numbers behind porn, the shift from the desktop to mobile and the most and least popular days. The numbers are pretty big as Pornhub stated they had  over 14 billion visitors in 2013 which is not over yet. Over the last year, our ... read more ...
 
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The Oscars Files Another Suit Against Godaddy Under ACPA Alleging Continued Violations - The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences which hands out the Oscars has filed anther lawsuit against Godaddy under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (“ACPA”). This suit filed on Novmeber 15, 2013, “supplements a currently pending action between the same parties asserting the same theories of infringement under the ACPA and related state theories that was filed in May 2010, Case No. 2:20-cv-03738-ABC-CW” This lawsuit names additional parked domain names that ... read more ...
 
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Apple Makes A Nice Catch - 9to5Mac.com did an article that they believed Apple acquired Evernote competitor Catch, Apple later confirmed to Allthings D that they did indeed acquire Catch and then the company was closed down. That was reported in TechCrunch in July. Catch.com was registered in 1996. With all the talk of the app and it being shutdown, it seems everyone has overlooked the value of a five letter, generic domain name. A name that could be used to really stand out as a brand and easily recognizable. It will be interesting ... read more ...
Wed 25th December 2013
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Mack Trucks Plays Grinch & Files UDRP On 16 Year Old MackTruck.com - NWC Body Works, Inc. of Elk Grove Illinois just got hit with the proverbial Mack Truck.  as Mack Trucks filed a UDRP to gain control of the domain name MackTruck.com The UDRP has a filing date of December 25, 2013 Bah humbug. Not sure why the company picked this day to file a UDRP on the domain since the domain was first registered way back in October 1997 which makes the domain more than 16 year old. According to Domaintools.com the domain has been owned by NWC since at least 2001 which is the ... read more ...
 
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Godaddy/Afternic Sales Total $1,550,036 Led By Supporter.com For $35K - GoDaddy and Afternic’s released its sales report for the week of 12/16/13 – 12/22/13. Total domain sales for the week summed to $1,550,036. All sales were led by Supporter.com for $35K, followed by uchat.com for $20K. The top non-.com sale of the week was Bludot.ca for $10K. CoinCase.com for $5,500, keep you eyes on that one think it might be something. Below is the entire sales report: Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
Tue 24th December 2013
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Mamma Mia ! Italy Passes a Google Tax - M Italy passes the Google Tax. In what seems to be a law that violates European Union rules the Italian Senate has passed a law that will require companies to purchase their Internet ads locally. Forbes covered it here From the article: The Italian Senate has now passed the “Google Tax” and Italian lawmakers really do seem to be entirely blind to the fact that this law is illegal under European Union rules that cover trade and the establishment of companies. But what’s worse than this is that ... read more ...
 
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Registrar BigRock Gets ICANN Terminated Registrar Dynamic Dolphin’s Domains - ICANN has authorized the bulk transfer of gTLD domain names from Dynamic Dolphin, Inc. to BigRock Solutions Ltd. due to compliance actions taken by ICANN that resulted in the de-accreditation of Dynamic Dolphin, Inc. Former registrant-customers of Dynamic Dolphin, Inc. should receive notices from BigRock Solutions Ltd. advising of the transfer. Customer questions about the transfer should be directed to BigRock Solutions Ltd. The Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) of Dynamic Dolphin, ... read more ...
 
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88888.com Sold For $245K; 888888888888888888888888.com Is Dropping Tomorrow - The domain name 88888.com  was sold for $245,000 just a few weeks ago by Name Administration. At the time we chatted about how the number 8 was super lucky in Chinese Culture so what could be better than five 8′s? How about 24 eight’s in a row. The domain name  888888888888888888888888.com  is dropping tomorrow as is already on the Namejet.com 50 most back ordered list for tomorrow for pending delete domains. If you wondering the .com with 23 number 8′s in a row is taken, as is the .com ... read more ...
 
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Porn.XXX Ranks On 1st Page Of Google for Porn; Good News For New gTLD’s - Well its taken a while but the bang on domain name Porn.xxx is has made it to the first page of Google for the search term “porn”. As you might imagine, porn its one of the toughest terms to rank on the first page on, with millions of adult sites all trying to get in that position. Interestingly with all the talk about how Google has lessened the importance of Exact Match Domains, 4 of the top 6 sites  ranking on the first page of Google under the search term porn have the word porn in the ... read more ...