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 20th July 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Catch.com, RF.com and More Domain Movers - If this is your first visit to Domain Movers, it’s a series where we detect domain names that have been acquired, registered or are simply moving by mainly all very large companies. These detections often are an early indicator of something new. Maybe a new advertising campaign, a new product or service etc. We heavily rely on the whois database which doesn’t always present the whole story, so please keep that in mind but we try our best to provide accurate information. Here we go with the latest ... read more ...
 
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.CO Turns Five: With 1.8M Domains: 120 .CO Startups Raised $460M In Funding in 2015 - Neustar, Inc. (NYSE: NSR), sent out a press release today in celebration of the fifth birthday of the .CO web extension and there are released some pretty interesting stats: • Over 1.8 Million .CO domains under currently under management • 120 companies using the .Co domain name extension raised $460 million in funding in 2015 (1st half of year) • Over 55% of .CO registrants are from the United States • New York City is the top U.S. city with the most .CO domains registered • Twitter® ... read more ...
Sun 19th July 2015
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.XYZ's Daniel Negari Is So Done With .Com He Put His Own Last Name Up For Sale: Negari.com - It’s no secret that the Founder of .XYZ Daniel Negari has gone all in on being a new gTLD registry operator as he continues to shed his .Com holdings. Just to show how done Negari is with .Com he has put up his the. Com domain of his last name up for sale on Namejet.com at no reserve, Negari.com which is being forwarded to XYZ.com I reached out to Daniel when I saw the domain name in NameJet.com pre-release who confirmed it was his domain name and he did in fact put it up for sale, because he ... read more ...
Sat 18th July 2015
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Rick Schwartz Sells The Domain 9595.com for $180K: Highest Reported 4 Number Domain Sale - Rick Schwartz a/k/a the Domain King has done it again, setting yet another record selling the domain name 9595.com for $180,000. This is the highest reported four number (NNNN.com) domain sale of all time and only the 5th reported NNNN.com domain to sell in the six figures. Rick hand-registered the domain name in 1998 for $70. The only four number domain names  that sold in the six figures before this sale were: 0060.com sold for $120,000 in December 2014. 8788.com sold for $106,000 in February ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
.Love Winds Up Its 1st Day With 2,956 Domain Registrations -     The new gTLD .Love launched into general availability (GA) yesterday, where is could be registered on a first come, first served basis and wound up with a whole lot of .Love ending the day with 2,956 registrations. .Love only had 182 domain names after the Sunrise period, which was opened only to trademark holders and the landrush period where people paid an extra fee to registered a domain name early ahead of GA. Over 51% of all registrations were made through the China based registrar, West263.com ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
The Loser on a Thesis.com UDRP Give His Story - I brought up the trademark to Larry because even though I own the mark on thesis.com, it could be used for another business so long as it wasn’t a website software business. Automattic couldn’t use the mark unless they suddenly started selling tractors. There was more back and forth, and Larry revealed that Matt had allegedly offered $100,000 for the domain. I still thought this was phony and just intended to get me to agree to a deal, but at least I now knew thesis.com could be had for far less ... read more ...
Fri 17th July 2015
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UK Creative Ideas Limited; Wins Rights To .Art New gTLD - The new gTLD .Art has been settled by private auction. The string was schedule to go to an ICANN Last Resort later this month. UK Creative Ideas Limited has won the right to operate the .Art new gTLD, beating out 9 other applicants including Donuts, Minds + Machines, Uniregistry and Top Level Designs. The Board of Directors of the company are listed in the ICANN application as follows: Andrey Chuykov Elena Chinyaeva Sergei Shumsky Ulvi Kasimov The registry in its application said the total number ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Online Gambling Company 888.com Buys Bwin.Party For $1.4 Billion Dollars - According to The BBC,  Online gambling firm 888 said it buying  Bwin.party Digital Entertainment in a cash and stock deal valued at £898m or  $1.4 billion dollars. Bwin.Party website is bwinparty.com and the company’s name was created long before the new gTLD’s If you’re wondering, the new gTLD domain name Bwin.Party is owned by the company and is being forwarded to bwinparty.com. The offer is 104.09 pence per share which is at a 1.2 percent premium to Bwin.party’s close on Thursday ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
John Ferber's Bidtellect Raises $22.35 Million Dollars In Series B Funding - Bidtellect just raised $22.35 million in new capital to help the company build out its technology platform, product development, and sales and marketing teams. John Ferber formerly of Advertising.com and DomainHoldings.com is the Chairman of the company. The Series B funding round was led by new investors Blue Chip Venture Company and G20 Ventures and also included existing investor Valhalla Partners. Bidtellect, which was founded in 2011, previously raised $4.4 million in Series A funding in 2012. Bidtellect ... read more ...
 
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.Love Launches & Is Giving Away 2,015 Free.Love Domains -     .Love launched into General Availability today where it can be registered on a first come, first served basis, making .Love, I believe, to be the first new gTLD to launch on a Friday. The Dot Love Registry announced it will be giving away 2,015 Free.Love domain names this year to couples “Newly Engaged or married couples”, thereby completing with .Wedding and .Wed. Here is from the announcement: In celebration of the year of .LOVE launch, we are giving away 2,015 free .LOVE domain names ... read more ...
 
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UDRP Panel Rejects "Renewal Of A Domain Resets Bad Faith Clock": BabyBanana.com Saved - Live-Right, LLC has just lost its attempt to grab the domain name BabyBanana.com which is owned by Vertical Axis Inc. which was represented as usual by represented by Esqwire.com. I believe is a particularly important win for domain owners. The decision affirms the business of investing and reselling domain names is legitimate use under the policy/ More importantly, the panel emphatically rejected the Playland Decision which, found quite dangerously and incorrectly for every domain holder, under ... read more ...
 
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Last Day To Enter - Today is the last day to enter to win an Apple Watch Tell us which .site domain you are watching out for and would love to buy, and get a chance to win an Apple Watch! Featured in the top three “most valued TLDs” by SEDO, .site is one of the most awaited new gTLDs. Having received 100,000+ expressions of interest already, it’s poised to become the next big TLD and definitely one of the best namespaces to invest in. If you could have any .site domain, which one would it be? Share it with us ... read more ...
Thu 16th July 2015
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Google adult large in After Hours after violence expectations - Google reports better than expected earnings Google posted second-quarter net income of $3.93 billion, or $6.43 per Class C share, up from $3.35 billion, or $ 4.88 per Class C share, a year earlier. Excluding certain costs, the company had earnings of $6.99 a share in the latest quarter; analysts had projected earnings of $6.70 per share on that basis, according to Thomson Reuters. Revenue rose 11% to $17.73 billion. Excluding traffic-acquisition costs–the revenue Google shares with other companies ... read more ...
 
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Dot London Releases Great Video With Real Life Success Stories Using a .London Domain - A great video has been posted by the the Dot London registry that features interviews with real registrants of .London domain names talking about why they generally traded in their .com or .co.uk domain name for a .London domain and how its helped their businesses. Many of the people interviewed chat about how a .London address helped their business get a higher ranking on Google. The Video is entitled Your City.  Your Domain. It’s a video that any Geographic new gTLD registry could use to show ... read more ...
 
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Bill Hartzer Releases "Top 20 Best New gTLDs Based on Quality" - Bill Hartzer who frequently write on domain names and SEO issues has published a list of the Top 20 Best New gTLDs Based on Quality. “As a part of Globe Runner’s New gTLD SEO Power Rankings Index, we gathered data from over 20,000 websites that have been actually built–or developed, on New gTLD domain names. From that list of over 20,000 websites, we have studied these websites’ qualities, and pulled a lot of other interested data. We were able to find the best New gTLDs based on quality. Globe ... read more ...
 
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1st Day New gTLD Totals: .Site 9,788; .News 9,122; .Cafe 1,727; .Express 916 - Four new gTLD’s had their first day of general availability (GA) yesterday, where domain names could be registered on a first come, first served basis, and as expected both .Site and .News had big days. Including the domain name registered in the Sunrise period by trademark holders, those that paid additional fees to register domain names ahead of GA in the Early Access Period, here are the total number of domain names registered after day 1 of GA: .Site 9,788 .News 9,122 .Cafe 1,727 .Express 916 In ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
PingIt.com, FareOff.com, OJG.com And More Domain Movers - In today’s latest Domain Movers we detect a lot of newly purchased domain names by some of the largest companies in the world. These “new” domain names can be used in future marketing campaigns, future brands and bunch more. Not only do we detect newly purchased domains that were owned by somebody prior, we present newly registered domain names by large companies and also domains that are just on the move in some fashion for one reason or another. Lets get started: CooperVision has registered ... read more ...
Wed 15th July 2015
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One of The Most Applied For The New gTLD .Art is Settled By Private Auction - The new gTLD .Art appears to have been settled by private auction. The new gTLD string was set for an ICANN auction on July, 29th 2015 but several applications were withdrawn today indicating that .Art was settled privately. In all there were 10 applicants for .Art and as of publication 5 applications have been withdrawn Since there are 5 applications still pending we cannot say who the winner of .Art is, but since several applications for .Art were all withdrawn today it seems certain the extension ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Better Buy for $20,500 VapeClub.com or MovieQuotes.com? - Two domain names just crossed the Sedo.com sales wire info in the last hour, with both selling for the same price of $20,500, VapeClub.com and  MovieQuotes.com So the question is what is the better buy? In the case of VapeClub there is an alternative Vape.club The domain name Vape.club is for sale at DomainNameSales.com The Vape industry is huge and hot and seems to be getting hotter but is subject to changes by federal law. MovieQuotes.com is an obviously a high search term but with no product ... read more ...
 
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Twitter and Facebook Gaining in Popularity when it comes to News - Twitter and Facebook are becoming go to sources for news An article published today on Marketing Land looked at a recent survey that showed Facebook and Twitter gaining credibility when it comes to getting news. I would say the one cautionary note about all this is the millions of spoof accounts out there, or sites that say they are parody and users still overlook that disclaimer, and treat the news as real. From the article: Americans increasingly see Twitter and Facebook as meaningful sources for ... read more ...
 
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Bodis To Offer Bitcoin as a remuneration option - Popular parking service Bodis will now allow customers to be paid in Bitcoin if they like. Matt wrote you can find the option in payment settings and the minimum payout will be just $10. From the Bodis Blog: Starting today, you may choose Bitcoin as a payment method for your domain parking earnings. As the first domain parking company to offer this feature, we hope to please a range of users that would prefer to receive future payments to their Bitcoin wallet. Payments will be converted from the ... read more ...
Tue 14th July 2015
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Rightside Publishes Post On Taking Down The Bloomberg.Market Website - Rightside (NAME) just published a post about the new gTLD domain name Bloomberg.Market which as we wrote earlier today which led to a huge rally in shares of Twitter and more than 50 million shares being traded today which is more than double its average three-month volume. Within a few hours of our post Rightside shut the domain name down. Rightside,  which is the registry for the new gTLD .Market, issued a statement on its company blog about the events of today: “”Earlier today, we learned ... read more ...
 
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Sedo Transactions Total $1.5 Million Led by SexShows.com At $40K -

Over a past week, 480 exchange took place on Sedo’s marketplace and around SedoMLS, totaling $1.5 Million.

52% of sum sales were a outcome of Buy Now listings.

Highlights of open sales are:

· Top .com: sexshows.com during 40,000 USD
· Top ccTLD: i.la during 19,900 USD
· Top “other” TLD: accomplice.net during 7,500 USD

There was usually 1 new gTLD sale and it was a .club

Here are a reportable transactions:

 

 

Via: thedomains.com

 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Fake Story on New gTLD Domain, Bloomberg.Market Sends Twitter Shares Up Over 5% -   According to several sources, a fake news story appearing on a new gTLD domain name Bloomberg.Market sent shares of Twitter up over 5% today when they reported Twitter was going to be bought for $31 Billion dollars to over $38 a share. The domain is  Bloomberg.market, not Bloomberg.com but its made to look like Bloomberg.com   We have chatted on many occasions that trademark holders haveonly lightly  participated in the Sunrise periods for each new gTLD rollout with the exception of .porn, ... read more ...
 
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CSC Publishes July's NewgTLD.Report: 3,945 New gTLD's in Alexa Top 1 Million - The brand protection company Corporate Service Company (CSC) published its bi-monthly New gTLD Utilization Report (newgtld.report) yesterday “with expanded metrics and analysis around dot brands” In the July Report CSC saw a significant increase in .Brand new gTLD’s registrations. There are now over 2,050 registrations under .Brand (and closed) top-level domains, up 55% since the May report” According to the report, the number of new gTLDs in the Alexa Top 1 Million is 3,945 up 4% from the ... read more ...