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 23rd July 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Verisign Reports: Revenue adult 4.9%: 133.5 Million Registered .Com/.Net Domains - Financial Highlights Verisign ended the second quarter with cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities of $1.9 billion, an increase of $460 million as compared with year-end 2014. Cash flow from operations was $175 million for the second quarter of 2015, compared with $121 million for the same quarter in 2014. Deferred revenues on June 30, 2015, totaled $932 million, an increase of $41 million from year-end 2014. Capital expenditures were $9 million in the second quarter of 2015. During the ... read more ...
 
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.Bank Gets Over 5,500 Applications For a .Bank Domain At $1K+ Per Domain - fTLD Registry Services announced today that more than 5,500 .BANK applications have been received from members of the global banking community at a retail price of $1,000 + depending on the registrar. Unlike most domain names, .Bank is restricted so if you want to register a domain you have to fill out an application and provide proof that you qualify to own a .Bank domain Top locations for .BANK registrations have come from banking institutions across the United States, as well as countries including ... read more ...
 
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Casino.net, LB.com, Micronauts.com and More Domain Movers - Welcome to Domain Movers where we detect domain names being registered, purchased and more by large companies. These domain names are often early indicators of new advertising campaigns, new services, new products and potential other unknown movements. We rely heavily on the whois system to provide accurate data, so the majority of the following information is based on whois data, so please keep that in mind as it doesn’t always reveal what it appears but we try our best to provide accurate information ... read more ...
 
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Uniregistry Hosting 1st Southern CA Domainers Meetup Tomorrow W/ Frank Schilling - The first Southern California Domainers Meetup of the year will take place in tomorrow Friday July 24th at 7pm PST at the offices of Uniregistry. Frank Schilling will be in attendance. Drinks and appetizers will be served on the deck. The offices of Uniregistry are located at 12015 E. Waterfront Drive, Los Angeles, CA 70 people had already RSVP as of yesterday. To RSVP please click here. “Join us, lets talk about the future of .com and the new gTLD’s !” Sound like a cool event. Hope everyone ... read more ...
 
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Boston Globe Covers .Sucks & New gTLD's & Mucks It Up - The Boston Globe published a post on .Sucks and the new gTLD program and screwed up some basis information about .sucks and the new gTLD program itself. Here are some of the errors I found in the article. “Hundreds of these new domains have rolled out in the past couple of years, as supplements for the .com found in millions of Internet addresses” Nope just since January 2014. “”Vox Populi set a price of $2,499 for copyright holders who want to buy their versions of the .sucks address. Berard ... read more ...
 
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Record Setter: Bidding on Dropped Domain 358.com Reaches $430K With 2+ Days to Go - The domain name 358.com dropped yesterday and shortly after the closed auction started on Snapnames.com,  bidding reached $80,000. This morning the high bid on the domain name is $430,000. As you can see there are 7 bidders who bid $250,000 or more. While three number .Com domain names are extremely valuable,  I would hope at this level that SnapNames  has verified all of these accounts that are now bidding well into the six figures. Any sale in this area would break all records for any domain ... read more ...
 
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.NYC Portfolio of 111 Domains Closes on Flippa during $3,780 - A portfolio of 111 .NYC domains were auctioned on Flippa, and the auction closed on Wednesday selling at the buy it now of $3,780. There were 6 bidders who made 23 bids. Some of the names included: (Seller description provided) BusinessSchool.nyc     |      The best business schools are in NYC! List all of them and get advertisement from them. Or sell it to a business school. (LawSchool.nyc is owned by New York Law School!! ) Berk.nyc    |      Super brandable, short and easy to remember Billiard.nyc  ... read more ...
Wed 22nd July 2015
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UDRP Panel Returns Stolen Domain EHT.com To Owner: Privacy Creates Presumption Of Bad Faith - John Dilks represented by John Berryhill, just won control of the domain name EHT.com in a UDRP, which was stolen from Mr. Dilks account at Tucows. The UDRP panel of Houston Putnam Lowry, ordered the domain returned to the owner finding that “A domain holder cannot have legitimate interests in a domain name acquired by theft.” However the panel gives some disturbing language for those that use privacy on their domain name registrations and I’m not sure where the panelist gets the authority ... read more ...
 
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SnapNames Catches The Dropping Domain 358.com & Bidding Is At $80,000 - The domain name 358.com dropped today and Snapnames.com won the lottery grabbing the domain where its currently in closed auction with 221 bidders. The high bid as of time of publication is $80,000 and the auction has almost 3 days left. I’m not sure the last time I saw a pure dropping three numbered domain (NNN.com) but its pretty rare and there is no vertical in the domain space hotter right now than three number domains (well two letter domains). We are going to open up the poll to see what ... read more ...
 
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Nat Cohen's Telepathy Settles Federal Lawsuit On SDT.com Getting a $50K Settlement - Back in November we told you that Nat Cohen’s Telepathy filed a Federal Lawsuit over the domain name SDT.com which he owned after a UDRP was filed. Nat has informed us that the case has now been settled and SDT paid $50,000 to settle it. After a UDRP was filed on SDT.com, Telepathy filed a federal lawsuit in federal court requesting statutory damages for Reverse Domain Name Hijacking, a statement that its ownership of SDT.com was lawful, and attorney’s fees. SDT was advised by represented by ... read more ...
 
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Neuron SA of Paris Guilty Of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking On 19 Yr Old Neurones.com - Luc Chammard of Nanterre, France, and the company Neuron SA of Paris, France, represented by Mr. Cohen, Lawyer, France was just found guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) on the domain name Neurones.com in a decision handed down by a three member WIPO UDRP panel The domain holder was represented by UDRP POLICE DBS, United Kingdom The three member panel consisted of Philippe Gilliéron, Richard G. Lyons and Christiane Feral-Schuhl. It should be noted that the decision was published in ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
DomainX Conference Crosses 700 Attendee Mark: Announces Awards & Additional Speakers - The organizers of the DomainX 2015 domain conference will be held August 7-8 at the Taj West End in Bangalore, India told Thedomains.com that they have over 700 attendees signed up and expect close to 1,000 attendees. DomainX is seeking nominations for the recognition of budding Indian Domain Name investor who will be awarded and recognized as the DomainX™ Rising Star 2015 for the Domain Name Magazine 2015 . The nominations for both awards are now open and can be submitted here: Domainxevents.com/conference/#awards DomainX ... read more ...
 
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Uniregistry Launches "Enhanced Account Balance" Allows Funding Of Account around Wire/CC/Paypal - Uniregistry launched our enhanced Account Balance service. Customers can now fund their Uniregistry account via Wire / CC / PayPal directly from within their Account. To add funds to an account: – Go to Account Settings – Click on Account Balance on the left hand side – Follow the Account Balance instructions Items to note: – Account email addresses must be verified to enable the account balance feature. – Customers must provide us with an address in the account balance section. – Funding ... read more ...
 
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Bloomberg Files UDRP To Gain Control Of The Domain That Caused The Twitter Stock Swing - Bloomberg filed a UDRP to take control of the domain name Bloomberg.Market the domain that caused shares of Twitter to rise 8% when it published a fake report that Twitter was being bought out. Bloomberg.Market which you can see a screenshot of here, was taken down by the Registry of .Market,  Rightside (NAME) a few hours after the Twitter story broke per their “normal operating procedures” By filing a UDRP rather than a URS Bloomberg seeks to take ownership of the domain rather than just keep ... read more ...
 
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Rightside Appoints Jason Silverstein as Vice President of Product and Engineering - “A veteran digital executive who has helped a number of teams create online products, services and experiences, Silverstein has worked at both venture-backed start-ups and top Internet companies. He comes to Rightside from American City Business Journals — a premier publisher of local business, sports and auto news — which employs 1,600 people in over 40 cities. As Senior Vice President for Digital Operations at American City Business Journals, Silverstein’s teams developed and supported ... read more ...
 
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Sedo Weekly Transactions Total $1million, led by Newy.com - Over the past week Sedo had 499 transactions take place on the marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1m. 54% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings.       Top .com: newy.com at 66,000 USD Top ccTLD: stier.de at 7,500 EUR Top “other” TLD: upl.org at 9,888 USD Only one new gtld sale this week Red.Blue for $999. .De and .Co dominated the country code sales. ... read more ...
Tue 21st July 2015
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Brand Blunders: Domino's Files UDRP To Get The Domain Dominos.Pizza: Wynn On Wynn.Vegas - Domino’s pizza has filed a UDRP to gain control of the new gTLD domain name Dominos .Pizza. For me its another huge brand failure to protect a brand, on a bang on new gTLD domain. Last week we saw what happened when Bloomberg allowed a third party to register Bloomberg.Market by failing to register the domain name in Sunrise which led to a huge swing in the price of Twitter when a story on that faked Bloomberg site caused shares to rise as much as 8%. As we have chatted about before while I can ... read more ...
 
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Google Answers The Question Of How Will It Rank New gTLD's: .Brands Get No Extra Weight - Google published a post today on how will Google rank new gTLD’s. “”With the coming of many new generic top level domains (gTLDs), we’d like to give some insight into how these are handled in Google’s search. We’ve heard and seen questions and misconceptions about the way we treat new top level domains (TLDs), like .guru, .how, or any of the .BRAND gTLDs, for example: Q: How will new gTLDs affect search? Is Google changing the search algorithm to favor these TLDs? How important are they ... read more ...
 
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Owner of e-renter.com Found Guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking on erenter.com - E-Renter USA Ltd. of Bellingham, Washington, represented by Brownlie Evans Wolf Lee, LLP, was just found guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) on the domain name erenter.com which is owned by Vertical Axis Inc.and was represented by ESQwire.com The three member UDRP panel of Nicholas Smith, Debra J. Stanek and The Hon Neil Brown Q.C. found that since the domain name registrations are first come, first served and this erenter.com was registered in 2003 and the corporation that owns e-renter.com ... read more ...
 
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.Sucks Tops 6,000 Registrations: Will It Be The Most Profitable New gTLD? - .Sucks has now passed  6,000 registered domain names. According to ntldstats.com .Sucks has 6,153 domain name registered. We know that around 3,400 domain names were registered in Sunrise for up to $2,000 wholesale. That is almost $7 Million dollars if they were all at $2K, which they should be since the Sunrise period was only opened to those in the Trademark Clearinghouse (THCH) and all those in the TMCH had their domains priced at the premium $2K figure (wholesale). Since Sunrise closed, there ... read more ...
 
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Google May Offer Custom Gmail Addresses for as low as $2 A Month - Kishalaya Kundu wrote on AndroidHeadlines.com that Google may start offering custom Gmail addresses for as low as $2 a month. Kundu referenced a report from GSM Arena who actually got screenshots before Google removed the information. From the article: Google is seemingly prepping to offer custom email addresses to Gmail users for as low as $2 per month, if a new report on GSMArena is to be believed. The website claims that Google is going to offer a whole new plan for $2 alongside its existing ... read more ...
Mon 20th July 2015
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XR.com Hits The Auction Block on NameJet - On the heels of the biggest auction ever on NameJet, SX.com, XR.com will now be hitting the aution block. The domain has been registered since 1999 and the most recent screenshot shot showed an asking price of $749,900. XR.COM NameJet just recently had our biggest auction ever with sale of SX.COM at $555,050! Now we have in our inventory another unique and extremely valuable domain name, XR.COM! These 2 letter names have great liquidity, are highly sought after and are very rare. There are only 2 ... read more ...
 
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Want TO Be The Next CEO Of ICANN? Here's How To Apply - ICANN just published details regarding how to apply to become the next CEO of ICANN. The CEO of ICANN is currently making close to $900K in Salary and Bonus plus gets to travel at least 3 times a year to ICANN meetings which are usually held in some nice locations. The deadline to submit an application is September 20, 2015 Here is the info: Following the announcement by ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé, that he will be departing ICANN after the ICANN Public Meeting in March 2016, the ICANN Board of Directors ... read more ...
 
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UDRP's and Fan Sites: Outcome is a Roll of a Dice - Like with most gambling, Bally Gaming, Inc. just won a few and lost a couple in a UDRP it filed over 8 gambling related domain names winning the rights to: caribbean-stud-poker-online.com crazy4pokeronline.com let-it-ride-online.com mississippi-stud.com texas-holdem-bonus.com ultimate-texas-holdem-online.com And losing the UDRP on: 3‑cardpokeronline.com 4-cardpokeronline.com The decision goes on to a detailed explanation of the varying views of Fan Sites and UDRP panels which makes for an interesting ... read more ...
 
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Las Vegas Sun Covers .Vegas In A Largely Negative Story On "Lagging Numbers" - The LasVegasSun.com just covered the new gTLD .Vegas in what is largely a negative story on the new gTLD which is “lagging” behind other City new gTLD’s The Sun quotes Platinum Web Marketing founder Anthony Carlitto who blasted .Vegas: “”Platinum Web Marketing founder Anthony Carlitto, believes the .Vegas domain is a bad bet and doesn’t advise his clients to buy a .Vegas domain. Not only are alternative domains unfamiliar to the public, he said, they do nothing to improve a website’s ... read more ...