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.

Fri 28th August 2015
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Domain Movers: LifeMoment.com, TrackKey.com & More Domains - Here are the latest Domain Movers that I have detected that are all corporate related. These domain names will often relate to a future project of some sorts, like a future advertising campaign, new product or service etc. Check.com GmbH has acquired the domain names Ceck.com and Check.co ($10,099) both at Sedo. Check.com was acquired in September 2014 for $1 Million in a private transaction. SuperFix.com has come out of privacy at GoDaddy and using GoDaddy name server to transfer to MarkMonitor ... read more ...
Thu 27th August 2015
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Can The FTC Sue You For Lax CyberSecurity ? - A couple years ago after some famous website hack, I was sitting in a Chipolte and said to a friend that somewhere down the road companies are going to get sued big time for getting hacked if they were lax in their security. My friend told me I was an absolute moron. His take was that a company did not ask to be hacked and would have no way of knowing if they would be hacked. So today I was reading an article on AboveTheLaw.com, the headline “Can The FTC Sue You For Lax CyberSecurity? (Spoilers: ... read more ...
 
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Meet The Owners of The Domain Twins.com And It's Not MLB, Actual Twins - Grantland.com did a long and very detailed article about “the website MLB couldn’t buy” and that website in reference is to one of only 3 domain names NOT owned by Major League Baseball (MLB), Twins.com. The story states: The Millers told me that they staked their claim to Twins.com so early that they got it for free. It was the era of Internet land grabs, when all one had to do to rope off a URL was be the first one with the impulse. (They admiringly mention a friend of theirs, Jeff, who “scored,” ... read more ...
 
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One Guys Registered 15 Domains At $12,500 On .Loans/.Credit - .Loans and .Credit were two of the new gTLD extensions that went into the 1st day of the Early Access Program for collision domain names (EAP) Period yesterday and one guy, Ken Bramon of KB Productions Kirkland Canada spent around $180,000 registering new gTLD domain names. The wholesale cost to registrars a domain name is day one of EAP is $10,000. As each registrar sets the retail price I’m not sure what Mr. Bramon paid, he registered the domains with Enom.com and he could have a discounted ... read more ...
 
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RightoftheDot/4.CN Domain Auction from DOMAINfest.asia is Live & Over 30% Have Bids - The online auction that RightoftheDot.com along with 4.CN are holding, in conjunction with DOMAINfest.asia, went live yesterday  afternoon and out of the 531 domain names in the auction, as of publication 165 of them have  bids which over 30% of the domains in the auction. Moreover 50 of the 165 domain names with bids have more than one bid. There are 14 days to go to auction starts to end. The auction will close over a 4 hour staggered period in blocks of domain names starting on September 10th ... read more ...
 
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Thomson Reuters Acquires Premium Domain Name TR.com - According to whois records, MarkMonitor’s parent company, Thomson Reuters has acquired the premium two letter domain name TR.com from Wolters Kluwer US. Wolters Kluwer has owned TR.com since August 2005 and was using the domain name for Telecommunications Reports under the business name CCH Incorporated. Thomson Reuters Corporation is a major multinational mass media and information firm founded in Toronto and based in New York City and Toronto according to Wikipedia. Thomson Reuters is a publicly ... read more ...
 
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Minds + Machines Picks Up $3.5 Million For Withdrawing New gTLD Apps For .Art & .Data - Minds + Machines (LSE:MMX), today announced the Company has gained, in aggregate, net proceeds of over $3.5 million (approximately £2.3 million) for withdrawing its applications for .data and .art. The new gTLD .Art was won by UK Creative Ideas beating 9 other applicants in a private auction including Minds + Machines .Data is still showing on ICANN site as being in contention between Minds + Machines (Top Level Domain Holdings) with Donuts and Dish Networks but apparently that string has been ... read more ...
Wed 26th August 2015
Written by The Domains in EN
.Online Breaks All New gTLD Records With 28,000 Registrations in 1st 30 Minutes - Radix the registry behind .Online entered General Availability earlier today announced that .Online has smashed the record for a new gTLD launch by registering 28,000+ domains in the first 30 minutes itself. After a stellar Sunrise performance, .online closed with 1,130 Early Access Program (EAP) orders, the highest number of EAP registrations recorded by any new gTLD domain extension. “Several customers even paid an additional premium registration fee to grab names like buyit.online, discuss.online, ... read more ...
 
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Pop Artist, Songwriter, Producer & DJ Calvin Harris Files UDRP on CalvinHarris.com - British born music artist Calvin Harris has filed a UDRP on the domain name CalvinHarris.com Calvin Harris is a songwriter, record producer, remixer and DJ and his  second studio album, Ready for the Weekend, which debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and earned a gold certification from the British Phonographic Industry within two months of release. Its lead single, “I’m Not Alone”, became Harris’s first number one on the UK Singles Chart. Calvin Harris holds the record for the ... read more ...
 
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GeekWire Looks during a brands regulating .News - Sometimes when you read an article on a technology website you need to make sure the author is not related to the company in a sponsored content or guest blogger type deal. Many times when I read new gtld stories I see these types of articles, nothing wrong with them but they don’t carry any weight since the author has a vested interest in promoting the topic. I read an article on GeekWire that gave .news and registry owner Rightside a little plug, the author Jacob Demmitt is a staff writer for ... read more ...
 
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Domain Movers: Avia.com, Prelaunch.com, Protect.com & More Domains - Welcome to the ever exciting Domain Movers where I detect domain names on the move for one reason or another. The vast majority of these domain name movements are by some of the largest companies in the world! Some are just valuable domain names in general and startups also join the mix! These are often early detection’s that are being reported for the first time and often lead to new brands, services, products and advertising campaigns. Here we go! Vum.com which had a for sale price of $75,000 ... read more ...
Tue 25th August 2015
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The PGA Loses UDRP On The Domain PGAgolfpassport.com - A one member UDRP panel rejected the complaint of the The Professional Golfers’ Association of America of Florida on the domain name pgagolfpassport.com which was registered sometime in 1995 or 1997 Complainant is the largest golf association in the United States, and for decades has used in commerce the mark PGA and of course own domain PGA.com At the time the Complaint was filed, the Domain Name resolved to a website featuring the greeting “Welcome to the Golf Passport.” The “Golf Passport” ... read more ...
 
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Sedo Weekly Transactions Total $1.7million led by H123.com - Sedo had 474 transactions take place on their marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1.7m. 56% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings.    Highlights of public sales are: Top .com: h123.com at 21,500 USD Top ccTLD:  nachbarschaft.de at 12,700 EUR Top “other” TLD: hypnosis.science at 3,000 USD New GTLD sales: hypnosis.science    3,000    USD carsharing.wien    850    EUR Names like NeckWallets.com or 001mm.com show you how random the name game can be. ... read more ...
 
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Ralph Lauren Launching New PoloTech Shirt, Domains Registered In The 90's - Ralph Lauren is getting ready for an August 27, 2015 launch of a “smart shirt” using the moniker of PoloTech according to BrandChannel.com. As a domain name investor, I often read articles like the above mentioned and pick out generic terms and check the availability of the them as domain names. This often results in most terms as domain names being registered in .Com’s but it’s simply amazing that often times, the terms are registered already and for how long many of them are! So, using ... read more ...
 
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Sedo Talks Domain Values and Market Data on StartUpStud.com - StartupStud.com conducted an interview with Sedo, on topics such as what determines a domain’s value, how should an entrepreneur go about getting the best domain ? .Com vs new gtlds when it comes to value and sales data. A couple questions from the interview: StartupStud.com: What are the primary factors that determine a domain’s value? Sedo: A few of the major categories we take into consideration when placing a value on a domain are the TLD, length of the domain, linguistic suitability, and ... read more ...
Mon 24th August 2015
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Add ABC.cm to a list of Google Names - Looking at whois records for other cctlds on the heels of the .mx purchase, it looks like ABC.cm changed hands on 8/7. The domain looked to have been owned by a Chinese registrant. Of course .cm has been in the news before, Kevin Ham was once profiled in a Business 2.0 article that is published on CNN. Maybe Disney will care about this name if Google is indeed the buyer. The domain was dropped and registered in 2014 so a quick flip. From the article: And what few people know is that he’s also the ... read more ...
 
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.Website Crosses 100,000 Registrations - Radix announced that .Website has crossed 100,000 registrations, this makes it the 11th largest new gtld Fun Facts Figures about .website 2,61,84,980 DNS queries the .website zone receives in 4 days! 18,900 domains have an SEO percentage score of 80% 333+ domains sold at an Annuity Premium price 6th Most Popular nTLD choice of Corporations They also put out an infographic highlighting the .Website story. ... read more ...
 
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A New Platform Benefiting Homeless Dogs; MyRescue.Dog Launched By PetFinder & Donuts - Petfinder Foundation (in partnership with Donuts Inc.) announced today the launch of MyRescue.dog a website to generate money and awareness for homeless dogs. “MyRescue.dog is a site where adopters can post pictures and short stories about their beloved rescues, and consumers can vote for their favorites through September 26. Each posted picture generates a $10 donation to Petfinder Foundation, and each vote generates a $1 donation, all up to $100,000. The shelter or rescue group from which the ... read more ...
 
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Domain Movers: Texture.com, FijiFit.com & More Domains - Domain Movers is a series where I detect domain names on the move, with the majority of the following being acquired or sold by large corporations. The remaining are simply valuable domain names on the move as well for one reason or another. Here we go with the latest domain name registrations, purchases and simply movers: Amazon Technologies, Inc. has registered the domain names AmazonLaunchPad.com and Amazon-LaunchPad.com. They do not own the EMD currently. They also registered AmazonView.com adding ... read more ...
 
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Did Google Buy ABC.mx for $17,700 ? - I came across a blog post on PublicDomains.com and it talked about ABC.mx being sold by the owner of the blog. To our surprise one of our domains sold last week (08/04/1) and matches Google’s new site, that domain is ABC.mx. We purchased the domain back in September of 2009 from the landrush phase at a price of $799.99, and we were using it for our own corporate online business. Our assumption is that the domain was bough by Google or it’s new spun-off Alphabet, because of the purchase price: ... read more ...
Sun 23rd August 2015
Written by The Domains in EN
Radix Does Record 532 Regs for EAP Day 5 in Just 45 minutes - Radix announced that .Online, in just the first 45 minutes of Day 5 of its Early Access Program (EAP),  that allows people to register domain names for an extra fee ahead of General Availability (GA), they had 532 registrations. We posted last week that .online is giving away a free .Online domain name to TheDomains.com,  reader that comes closest to the number of total number domain names after GA has been live for 24 hours. Radix did 120 registrations from Day 1 to Day 4 of EAP. I had been monitoring ... read more ...
 
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Armor.com and Armour.com Domain Name Sell! Under Armour The Buyers? - Armor.com and Armour.com domain names have been sold! Both domain names were owned by Arms Armor, Inc. of Minneapolis, MN and registered at Network Solutions for a very long time. Both domain names have now transferred to NetNames Ltd. The Arms Armor website states that “Our new domain name is arms-n-armor.com! Please update your bookmarks now.” confirming the change of ownership. There was also a mention in the news section of the website dated August 17, 2015 and an August 10, 2015 statement ... read more ...
Sat 22nd August 2015
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Gifs.com Seems To Have Sold To GifYT Startup - The premium generic domain name Gifs.com has launched a new website based on this announcement on Medium.com by Co-Founder of GifYT, Rory O’Reilly, and they have a new domain name that was not owned by the company until recently according to whois records. Every day, GIFs are being created and used to deliver engaging content — from news, to sports, to art, to humor, gifs are used more and more. Gifs, long a mainstay of the web, have greater potential than ever before. That’s why today, ... read more ...
 
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#BlackLivesMatter Launches JoinCampaignZero.Org: CampaignZero.org Is Hospital Asst Site - TheHill.com is just one of the many media outlets that reported on a new online platform for the Black Lives Matter movement:: “The Black Lives Matter movement announced on Friday that it has an official platform for curbing police violence and reforming criminal justice in the U.S. The social activism group released its most comprehensive policy outline to date on a website titled Campaign Zero “We can live in an America where the police do not kill people,” the group said on its new Internet ... read more ...
Fri 21st August 2015
Written by The Domains in EN
Auto Zone Demanding Small Business Change Name and Give them their Domain Names - Here is an interesting story on Dcourier.com, Cycle Zone Motorsports Marine is a family owned Arizona business that has been around since 2012. Auto Zone sent the company a letter demanding they change their name and hand over their domain names. Your use of a name and mark that included the term ZONE to engage in services that overlap with those offered by AutoZone under its ZONE Marks is likely to confuse customers into believing that your business is associated or affiliated with, or sponsored ... read more ...