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 7th October 2013
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ThePrive.com Loses Bid To Grab 17 Year Old Prive.com In A UDRP - Fortrend Group LlC of Port Orange, Florida, whose website is located at Theprive.com, lost its bid to grab the generic domain name Prive.com Unfortunately  the panel did not find Reverse Domain Name Hijacking and even failed to discuss the issue although the complainant only started in business in 2008, only received a  trademark in 2010 and the domain name was registered in 1996 and of course the word Prive is generic the English translation of the French word private. Of course the domain holder ... read more ...
 
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CBS.de Sells for $30K on Sedo & Meetings.co.uk Sells For A Measly $1,200 - A couple of sales of note crossed the Sedo.com sales wire this morning. The domain name CBS.de sold for 22,015 Euro’s or around $30,000. The CBS of course is one of the four Major Television broadcast networks in the United States but can stand for thousands of other things as well. .De is the ccTLD for Germany. It will be interesting to see who the buyer of the domain is. On another note the domain name Meetings.co.uk sold for just 800 GBP or around $1,200 Its a bang on domain name and to see ... read more ...
 
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ITU: Only 40% Of The World Pop Will Be Online By End of 2013; 4.4 Billion Remain Unconnected - The UN International Telecommunication Union (ITU) today issued a report showing an additional  250 million people came online in 2012 and  estimated by end 2013 that 40% of the world will be online, but 1.1 billion households, or 4.4 billion people will remain unconnected. The findings came in the  ITU’s flagship annual report Measuring the Information Society 2013. By end 2013 there will be 6.8 billion total mobile-cellular subscriptions – almost as many as there are people on the planet. An ... read more ...
 
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Google/Mastercard/Amex/Paypal/Discover Go After After MugShots.com & Mug Shot Removal Sites -               According to Cnet.com, Google along with credit card processors Mastercard, Amex, Discover and Paypal  are going after sites like MugShots.com (Cnet actually put that one on top of their article which appears above) Sites like Mugshots.com, take public Mug Shot photos from law enforcement and put them up on the site where they get indexed by Google under the person’s name and then offers those people arrested through other sites that are promoted on the Mug Shot site, services ... read more ...
 
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DomainNameSales.com Intergrates Make Offer For Sale Domains On Godaddy & DomainTools.com - DomainNameSales.com, announced today that they have new integrations with Godaddy.com and DomainTools.com that allow its customers to list the domain names in their DomainNameSales.com account on a make-offer basis at Godaddy.com and DomainTools.com. When a Godaddy or DomainTools customer conducts an exact match search of a DomainNameSales.com customer’s domain name they will be directed to an inquiry page where the buyers details are sent directly to DomainNameSales.com.                       From ... read more ...
Sun 6th October 2013
Written by The Domains in EN
Autobytel Sells AutoWeb.com With Trademark For $1.5 Million To AutoWeb & Launches PPC Network - According to a press release out today, as part of  a bigger transaction AutoWeb has acquired the domain name AutoWeb.com and related trademarks from Autobytel (Nasdaq: ABTL), for $1.5 million in AutoWeb stock. Here is the full release: “”Autobytel Inc. (Nasdaq: ABTL), the company dedicated to helping automotive consumers and dealers connect online, announced it has invested $2.5 million in cash to help build, launch and grow AutoWeb, Inc.’s pay-per-click (PPC), auction-driven automotive advertising ... read more ...
Sat 5th October 2013
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Founders Institute Fi.co Incubator Portfolio of Companies Has A Valuation of $5 Billion - TechCrunch.com just covered The Founders Institute which uses the domain name Fi.co, is an incubator, and just hit a big milestone, more than 1,000 companies have graduated from the program. “Instead of targeting twenty something programmers who have already started working on new companies, the companies founder Adeo Ress said his team created “a structured process” that would allow people who were working at big companies and “daydreaming” about their own startups to learn about the ... read more ...
 
 
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TechCrunch Covers Another Company Built Around.TV: IRIS.TV Raises $1.7 Million -       TechCrunch.com covered yet another startup that just got some angel funding and is built around a .TV domain name. IRIS.TV which was founded by the folks behind Jukebox TV is coming to market with $1.7 million in seed funding from angels in the media and finance world, including folks like Bob Jacobs, who was Bill Cosby’s long-time agent and is considered the “godfather of television syndication”; Nick Rau, co-founder of Vizu (which recently sold to Nielsen); former Viacom exec Jimmy ... read more ...
 
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Twitter Says In Their S1 That Their Tweet Trademark May Become Unprotectable - According to USA Today, Twitter in its S1 the document it filed for its IPO states “There is a risk that the word “Tweet” could become so commonly used that it becomes synonymous with any short comment posted publicly on the Internet, and if this happens, we could lose protection of this trademark,” Tweet is already in Merriam-Webster dictionary with the word defined as “a post made on the Twitter online message service.” “What remains to be seen is how widely used the word Tweet becomes ... read more ...
Fri 4th October 2013
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WTF: ChrisKay.com Sells For $30,000 On Sedo After Its Just Dropped One Year Ago - The domain name ChrisKay.com just crossed the Sedo sales wire selling for 22,000 Euro’s or just about $30,000. In 2012 The domain name was owned by Chris Kay of Essex UK and registered at Tucows until it went into redemption and dropped in March 2012 The domain name was then registered by  someone in China then transferred  to a Christoph Kunckel of Germany in June of 2012. Now the domain name was purchased for $30K, looking at Screenshots.com its not clear if the buyer of the domain name is ... read more ...
 
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USA Today: New Jersey To Start Online Gambling On Nov 26th - USA Today is reporting that New Jersey will allow Internet gambling starting on Nov. 26. Atlantic City’s 12 casinos may begin a “soft play” period on Nov. 21 for invited guests. If all goes well, the casinos can begin full Internet gambling at 9 a.m. EDT on Nov. 26. Gamblers have to be physically located within New Jersey’s boundaries in order to play. According to the story, 9 of the city’s 12 casinos existing online casino partners to offer Internet gambling The Tropicana Casino and Resort ... read more ...
Thu 3rd October 2013
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CBS/Cnet Quitely Sells Events.com To Bump Network & Gets Ready To Launch - CBS Interactive quietly sold the Killer domain name Events.com sometime in late April of this year to BUMP Network, Inc. CBS Interactive is a subsidiary of CBS Corporation which owns CBS. CBS Interactive purchased Cnet in June 2008 and acquired this domain name Events.com as part of that acquisition. BUMP Network, Inc owns Bump.com which is a different company than Bu.mp which was recently acquired by Google While Bu.mp is the developer of Android/iOS app that allow users to share contact info, photos, ... read more ...
 
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You Can Buy .XYZ Gear Before You Can Buy An .XYZ Domain -               Domain investor and new gTLD applicant Daniel Negari has opened up a store to sell some gear for his new gTLD’s of .XYZ and .College The .XYZ store is now opened and selling the “Latest .XYZ Gear” although it only at the moment has a few different shirts for sale. Dan was the only applicant for .XYZ and won the private auction for .college. While neither extension has launched and while you probably won’t be able to register a .XYZ or .College domain until next year, ... read more ...
 
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Schilling’s Uniregistry Is Positioned To Become The Most Successful New gTLD Registry - We think the Frank Schilling’s Uniregistry is uniquely positioned to become, pound for pound, the most successful new gTLD operator. So first a disclaimer, we don’t own any part of Uniregistry (unfortunately) and Uniregistry doesn’t and hasn’t even advertised on TheDomains.com.  Finally this is obviously an opinion piece as opposed to a news post. With that out of the way, Uniregistry has applied for just over 50 strings. Uniregistry is one of the largest applicants for new gTLD’s.  Many ... read more ...
Wed 2nd October 2013
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NameJet.com Announces $312K In Top Domain Sales In September - Namejet.com just announced over $312,000 its “top domain sales” for September 2013. TTM.com led the way selling for $28K and Onions.com which sold for $19,100 Here are the reportable sales of $2K or more for September: <![CDATA[]]>  Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
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Afternic.com Sells $1.3 Milion In Domains Led By One Of Our’s Emancipated.com For $30K - Afternic.com just published its  reportable weekly domain sales for the week of 9/23/13 – 9/29/13. Total domain sales for the week, including confidential sales and sales under $1000, summed to $1,296,502. All sales were led by one of our domains, (Worldwide Media, Inc. d/b/a MostWantedDomains.com) Emancipated.com which sold for $30,000 Here are all reportable sales:     <![CDATA[]]> Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
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Godaddy Acquires Online Invoicing Company Ronin, Its 5th Acquistion in 15 Months - GoDaddy, today announced the acquisition of Ronin, an online invoicing company marking the fifth in 15-months, which includes Outright, M.dot, Locu and Afternic. The acquisition, made quietly in April, has been fully integrated into GoDaddy Online Bookkeeping – providing a full-service solution for any small business looking to simplify and organize their finances and get back to business. Online Bookkeeping combines GoDaddy’s 2012 acquisition of Outright.com with Ronin. Outright helped small ... read more ...
 
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Cognac Maker REMY MARTIN Loses UDRP On TheRemyMartin.com: Domain Holder Is Saved By Social Networks - E. REMY MARTIN C° of Cognac, France, just lost a UDRP on the domain name TheRemyMartin.com to a “Remy Martin” of Palm Desert, California who appears to have represented himself. The one member panel found that the domain holder did not register the domain in bad faith despite the fact that the domain was inactive  and was being held to develop a blog of restaurant reviews. Interestingly the case seemed to turn on the domain holder’s social networking accounts and used the domain holders ... read more ...
 
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500.co Makes Over $44 Million In Additional Seed Funding - According to VentureBeat, Accelerator program and investment group 500 Startups which proudly uses the domain name 500.co, just announced $44.1 million in new seed fund today, the second the group has raised since launching. The second fund is also substantially higher than its initial $29.6 million fund from 2011. “As for 500 Startups, the group typically invests $25,000 to $250,000 in early-stage companies that are typically already making a profit or on their way to doing so. Some of its past ... read more ...
 
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Applicant Auction Announces Next Private New gTLD Auctions To Be Held On Oct 21 - Applicant Auction announced today that is would be holding its third set of new gTLD private auctions. The Third Applicant Auction is scheduled to be held on October 21. If you would like to particpate in the next round of Applicant Auction you will have to commit to the auction and return all the signed contracts by no later than Friday, October 11. “In the 1st two Applicant Auctions 14 strings were settle resulting in over $18 million in payments to applicants who have withdrawn their applications. You ... read more ...
Tue 1st October 2013
Written by The Domains in EN
GovernmentShutdown.com Guy Was Smart Enought To Register It In 2007, Isn’t Smart Enough To Turn It On - Well unless you live in a cave, and even if you do live in a cave its pretty hard to miss the news that the US government has been to some extent shutdown. So while we try to stay politically neutral lets look at the best domain names that would cover this crisis, The domain name GovernmentShutdown.com is pretty hard to beat for a bang on .com covering the subject that has been in the news non-stop for the last week. While you may think that a slick domainer registered the domain a short while ago, ... read more ...
 
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Sedo Transactions Total $1.4 Million; Moneta.com For $150K; LT.org For $26K - Over the past week, 746 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1.4 Million This amounts to $51.2 Million in year-to-date sales revenue. Over 45% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings. Highlights of public sales include: ·         Top .coms: moneta.com at 150,000 USD ·         Top ccTLD: gta-worldmods.de at 15,000 EUR ·         Top “other” TLD: lt.org at 26,000 USD Sedo Congratulates  to the buyer and seller of Moneta.com ... read more ...
 
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17 Year Old Domain Vendita.com (Sale In Italian) Saved In UDRP & Narrowly Misses RDNH Ruling - Vendita Technology Group, LLC just lost its bid to grab the domain name Vendita.com The domain owner was represented by Ari Goldberger and Jason Schaeffer of ESQwire.com. Although the complainant had a trademark on the term Vendita the three member UDRP panel found the term was generic and would have found Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) if not for the citation of one case by the Complainant Here are the relevant findings by the panel: The Domain Name was registered by Respondent on November ... read more ...
 
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UDRP Filed On 14 Year Old Three Letter .Com: QLP.com -                       Quality Logo Products, Inc. has filed a UDRP against Get On The Web Limited of Great Britain on the 3 letter domain name QLP.com As you can see the domain name goes to a page where the domain is being offered for sale for $125,000 The site on QLP.com says: Get On The Web Limited some years ago registered for its websites, portals and client projects a number of generic domain names (including this one), which are now no longer required. We are offering for sale the ... read more ...