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 21st August 2015
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Lawyer Gerald M. Levine Writes The Definitive Book on UDRP's - At well over 500 pages, Gerald M. Levine who is an attorney,  and sits on panels of neutral arbitrators for the American Arbitration Association for commercial and IP disputes, has written the definitive book on the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, (UDRP). The book is entitled “Domain Name Arbitration: A Practical Guide to Asserting and Defending Claims of Cybersquatting Under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy” Mr. Levine ” describes the book as an important, ... read more ...
 
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BankLoans.com for $1,000, Pendants.com for $1,500 is that something we competence be meddlesome in ? - If you are interested we need a time machine to go back to 1998. Namepros member Hookbox dug up a blast from the past that looks at some big time names for very cheap prices. Of course the timeframe was 1998 and not many understood the value or potential of domain names like Rick Schwartz did. The archive is from Webspaces.com https://web.archive.org/web/19981202074137/http://www.webspaces.com/   ... read more ...
Thu 20th August 2015
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CB Insights: Covers World's Most Popular Non-.com Startup Domains, though Confused on New gTLD's - CB Insights.com which covers the startup/ venture capital markets published an interesting post entitled “The Non-Dotcom Bubble: The World’s Most Popular Startup Domains Other Than .Com” The story contains a chart tracking the most popular Non-.Com domain name extensions for funded tech companies from 2010-2015. Of course since the first new gTLD didn’t launch until 2014, none are reflected in the chart. Unfortunately as you will see later,  CB Insights is very confused about new gTLD’s ... read more ...
 
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Facebook Surpasses Google as tip Referrer for Digital Publishers - Facebook has now surpassed Google when it comes to referrer traffic, a recent report from Parse.ly revealed data showing that Facebook has become number one when it comes to referring traffic to websites. I can say that does not hold true for TheDomains.com, this relates more to the largest online publishers. SocialTimes.com reports: Until recently Google has been the top traffic referrer online. But according to data from Parse.ly, which provides web analytics for digital publishers that include ... read more ...
 
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Ashley Madison Hacked Info Site CheckAshleyMadison.com Taken Down After DMCA Notice - On August 19, 2015 hackers released a huge amount of data from the breach at AshleyMadison.com and the race was on. Several websites were set up to allow users to “search” the data, allowing users to see if a specific email address was included in the release. One of those websites, according to TheHill.com is CheckAshleyMadison.com. That domain name was registered, well, yesterday on August 19, 2015 at eNom under privacy protection according to whois records. Well, it was also TAKEN DOWN today ... read more ...
 
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"Straight Outta" Viral Meme Launched On Days Old Domain By Apple / Beats By Dre - Maybe you have seen those images flying around the web recently on Facebook and Twitter etc with the block term “Straight Outta” and then you can type in the term you wish… Well, that viral meme is the works of Apple Inc. / Beats By Dre / Universal Pictures and was launched on the domain name StraightOuttaSomewhere.com that was registered only 28 days ago on July 23, 2015 at corporate domain name registrar CSC Corporate Domains. At the time and until yesterday, it wasn’t fully clear who ... read more ...
 
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Breaking: Full Developed Puppet.com Domain Name Sells to Puppet Labs? - Puppet.com has been acquired by a currently unknown company Update: suspected buyers Puppet Labs have confirmed the purchase in a reply to a tweet from me and stated in that tweet asking if they purchased the domain “Yes, thanks! We wanted it for years got a good deal. Easier way for people using Puppet at 27K co’s to find docs other help.”. This domain name very likely sold for A LOT of money and this is why I say that. Beverly Hills Teddy Bear Company owned the domain name. Marksmen, a ... read more ...
 
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1st Day New gTLD Totals: .Taxi 2,167; .Dog 1,589; .Run 1,260; .Hockey 441; .Theater 405 - 5 new gTLD’s launched yesterday into General Availability (GA) when domain names could be registered on a first come, first served basis. Including domain names registered in the Sunrise period by Trademark Holders and those who paid an extra fee to register domain names ahead of GA in the Early Access Period (EAP) here are the total after the first day of GA: Taxi 2,167 .Dog 1,589 .Run 1,260 .Hockey 441 .Theater 405 It should be noted that .Taxi completes with .Cab which launched a while back ... read more ...
Wed 19th August 2015
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Dot Online Starts EAP Today -     At noon Eastern (1600 UTC) EAP starts for .online. A million domains have the word ‘online’ in them. Back when Go Daddy was reporting monthly sales figures, online was always one of the most popular keywords tied to sales. One week from today .Online will enter general availability. Leave a comment with how many .online domains you think will be registered after the first 24 hours of GA. The person closest to the actual number will win a free (non premium) .online domain courtesy of Radix. Radix ... read more ...
 
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Me.TV Registered In 2005 Saved In UDRP Against TM Filed in 2011 But No RDNH - Weigel Broadcasting Co. of Chicago, Illinois just lost its bid to grab the domain name Me.Tv from Hot Media, Inc. of Kirkland, Washington The three member panel of Michael A. Albert, Michelle Brownlee and William R. Towns refused to find Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) even though the domain name was registered in 2005 and the trademark was not registered until 2011. Here are the highlights: Complainant owns the federally-registered trademark METV in the United States, which it uses in connection ... read more ...
 
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Did Microsoft Acquire Zikera, Owners of Groove Music App? Appears So! - Microsoft announced the rebrand of Xbox Music to Groove Music back in early July 2015 and ZDNet.com and many other sites questioned if Microsoft had acquired a company called Zikera, which was founded in 2009 and had over 1.5 Million downloads of its app according to CrunchBase. A Microsoft spokesperson said “we have nothing more to share at this time.” according to the ZDNet article in early July 2015. Why would Microsoft want to buy Zikera? Well, Zikera already had a music app called Groove: ... read more ...
 
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Washington Post Covers Several New gTLD's & Asks: Who Needs .com? - The movement is on! Google has greatly helped all new gTLD’s and there are many mainstream media sites covering gTLD’s daily. This is really great news in general for the domain industry as a whole and clearly the gTLD’s! Although many of these stories relate to .com when talking about the new gTLD’s, like a new one today from the WashingtonPost.com with a title of: “Who Needs .com? Domains When .Vegas, .PR, .NYC are Trending” The story highlights several companies using gTLD’s like ... read more ...
Tue 18th August 2015
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Sedo Weekly Transactions Total $1m led by Vybe.com - Sedo had 461 transactions take place on their marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1m. 51% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings.     Highlights of public sales are: Top .com: vybe.com at 25,000 USD Top ccTLD:  shop.be at 21,100 EUR Top “other” TLD: 06.org at 10,000 EUR New GTLD sales for the week included: forex.club    5,000    USDprofit.one    2,500    USDadventist.church    1,999    USDcustomer.xyz    1,999    USDlux.club    1,500    USDneo.club   ... read more ...
 
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So What Happens When There Is a .ABC? Disney Applied For It & Its Coming - After announcing it selected the domain name abc.xyz for its holding company Alphabet, Google has been going around buying all sorts of “abc” domain names. Last week we told you that Google bought ABC.Global. Onlinedomain.com spotted 78 new gTLD’s that Google registered using “abc. Last night .Club registry announced on Twitter that Google bought ABC.club. Also last night Onlinedomain.com spotted 8 more new gTLD’s that Google bought or registered starting with “abc” Which bring us ... read more ...
 
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eNom.com Is fasten SedoMLS Network - eNom.com  just announced that it is joining  SedoMLS eNom and its’ resellers’ customers will be able to sell their premium domains on the SedoMLS premium network and which includes hundreds of sales partners, including top registrars around the world. As the largest global domain distribution network, SedoMLS offers maximum exposure syndicating listed domains on more than 650 partner websites which now includes eNom. Matt Overman, VP GM, Aftermarket and Premium Domains at Rightside. is quoted ... read more ...
 
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Wikipedia's Traffic From Google is in Decline - Apparently Wikipedia is losing traffic that it receives organically from Google. Founder Jimmy Wales confirmed that traffic is down and that it has been going on for some time now. Most web users are used to seeing Wikipedia show up on the first page of most search queries, so why the traffic is going down is open to a couple theories. Barry Schwartz wrote on SearchEngineLand.com: I noticed this decline back in March, so this has been happening for a long time now. Back in the day, Wikipedia dominated ... read more ...
Mon 17th August 2015
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Sorry Google The .XYZ Registry is Not For Sale - Reuters.com, is reporting, despite some rumors in the domain space that the .XYZ registry is going to be bought by Google, after its purchase of abc.xyz, the CEO of the .XYZ registry said today its not for sale. The CEO of the .XYZ registry Daniel Negari was quoted by Reuters that his company is not for sale. “I believe I was put on the earth to do .xyz, and to bring it to the market. “My work is nowhere near done” Negari added the .XYZ registry has seen interest from large technology players ... read more ...
 
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BitcoinWallets.com is live - Back in February of 2014 BitcoinWallet.com sold for $250,000. Coin Desk reported on the story, Younts, who confirmed the sale to CoinDesk but declined to comment, also noted in the post that he is close to selling the domain BitcoinWallets.com for a similar asking price. The domain asset was a part of the NeverLoseVision.com investment portfolio, a seven-figure incubator portfolio with startup projects and investment domain assets. A search of the WHOIS domain record-keeping database revealed that ... read more ...
 
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Frank Schilling's North Sound Names Registers 23K Uniregistry .LOL Domains Now Up To 230K+ - Frank Schilling’s North Sound Names just registered 23K domain names in Uniregistry’s .LOL new gTLD domain name extension. We noted that .LOL which launched last week, had under 800 registrations after its first day of availability. On the following day, .LOL wound up with  23,779 registrations and now has 24,341 registered domains. North Sound Names which had just over 207K+ domain names registered until last week now has over 230,586 with the difference coming from .lol registrations last ... read more ...
 
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Donald Trump May Own Over 3K Domains But Doesn't Own Trump.org & Isn't Happy About It - Several mainstream websites recently wrote about how many domain names the Trump Organization owns, including BusinessInsider.com that said  the Trump Organization owns 3,153 domain names. boingboing, weighted in  with a story entitled “Donald Trump owns vast numbers of web addresses”. Suntimes.com, published a story entitled “Donald Trump probably already owns your anti-Trump domain name” Probably is right! One domain name that was not mentioned in any of these stories is the domain name ... read more ...
 
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THE Domain Conference Opens Up Nominations For 2015 Domain Industry Awards Today - The Organizers of THE Domain Conference announced this morning that Nominations are now open for the 2015 Domain Industry Awards “which will be presented to the winners in each category at THE Domain Conference Awards Luncheon on Tuesday, September 29, 2015 in the .CLUB Ballroom of the beautiful Hyatt Regency Pier 66 Hotel. Once the nominations are received, all balloting will be handled by Escrow.com. THE Domain Conference will be held on September 26th-29th 2015 at the Hyatt Regency Pier 66 ... read more ...
 
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U.K. advertisers Looking for a Universal clarification for Ad Fraud - With a recent study by Integral Ad Science, claiming bot traffic cost advertisers as much as £277m a year in the UK alone, with 12.2 per cent of all ad impressions there found to be fraudulent between April and June. Advertisers are looking to establish a common definition as to what constitutes ad fraud. TheDrum.com reported: Efforts are being led by blue-chip brands including Nationwide, Procter Gamble and Unilever, which aim to grapple with the thorny issue collectively through a specialist ... read more ...
Sun 16th August 2015
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Steve Kaziyev of City Partners and Your Brand Discusses .NYC Purchases. - Steven Kaziyev is a New York based domain investor who operates sites at CityPartners.com, YourBrand.com, and DomainCrunch.com (I do write at Domain Crunch). Steve recently won the auction for the 112 domain portfolio of .NYC domains on Flippa. The auction closed at $3,780 and you can see a list of the domains here. Steve told me he was really interested in about 30 of the names on the list, he currently holds closes to 500 .NYC domains. A name like MensWatches.nyc he said was one of interest. He ... read more ...
Sat 15th August 2015
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Frank Schilling Sells Domains Floid.com To Revlon, Tonix.com To Tonix Pharma Co - Frank Schilling, the owner of Name Administration Inc, Uniregistry continues to sell domain names to end users and the following three domain names proves it. Revlon Consumer Products Corporation acquired the domain name Floid.com from Frank Schilling. The domain name was listed for sale at Afternic with a $29,000 Buy Now price although the listing on Afternic remains. The domain name has been registered since February 4, 2004. FLOÏD as mentioned on TheColomerGroup.com with a “Revlon Professional ... read more ...
Fri 14th August 2015
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Centralnic passes Donuts as Backend Provider For New gTLD Domain Names - According to ntldsstats.com, CentralNic has passed Donuts in the number of domain names it is providing backend registry services for new gTLD domains. ntldstats.com is showing CentralNic having 1,426,647 new gTLD’s under its backend management while Donuts is sitting at 1,425,466 domain names, each representing about 20% of all new gTLD’s. However CentralNic is the backend provider for just 24 new gTLD’s at the moment while Donuts has 189 active new gTLD’s using its backend system. In layman’s ... read more ...