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.

Wed 8th July 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Verisign Announces $30K Winner of #InternetOfficial Contest: KidsCookDinner.com - Verisign the registry for the .com registry has announced the Grand Prize Winner of it’s #InternetOfficial contest. It’s KidsCookDinner.com, registered through Network Solutions. I was one of the five judges selected by Verisign to judge the contest however the Grand Prize winner was selected by the public. Here is the announcement: “”New York-based Kate K. submitted the most descriptive, memorable and original new .COM domain name that resonated with our five judges and received the most ... read more ...
 
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BlackBerry Limited Registers Android Domain Names - BlackBerry Limited registered two domain names that are interesting: AndroidSecured.com |.net This is interesting because it was recently rumored that a new BlackBerry phone would run the Android operating system. Since “Android” is a registered trademark of Google Inc. this may be a solid clue that BlackBerry and Google have come to terms for a BlackBerry phone to run Android? An article on Fut-Science.com plays out that the phone will be called BlackBerry Venice and the article resembles that ... read more ...
 
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Paul Allen Decides To Go With .Fish instead of shopping a .com from Most Wanted Domains - Jay Westerdal blogged on Tuesday about Microsoft co – founder and billionaire Paul Allen going with a .Fish domain. Allen chose to go with SmartCatch.fish instead of purchasing SmartCatch.com. Allen registered the domain at the end of March and regged it out til 2020. The interesting thing about this story for us here at TheDomains.com, Mike Berkens and his company Worldwide Media Inc. owns SmartCatch.com, registered in 2004. If Mike starts getting offers I think the price quote will be pretty ... read more ...
 
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A demeanour during Dot Luxury One Year Into The Process - Tony Kirsch of ARI Registry Services posted an interview with Monica Kirchner of Dot Luxury. Tony was looking to get some perspective on how things are going one year into the process. Dot Luxury names are not cheap, checking out a few registrars: TheDomains.Luxury $780 101Domain TheDomains.Luxury $724.99 Name.com TheDomains.Luxury $799.99 Go Daddy According to ntldstats.com there are 1,186 registrations. From the article: What was one of the key challenges you faced and how did you overcome this? Monica: ... read more ...
Tue 7th July 2015
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Google Hates ICANN's Attempt to Eliminate Whois Privacy Calling it "Impractical & Ineffective -   Google filed it’s comment on the whois privacy issue with ICANN today. Google  seems to hate the proposal of the ICANN working group to prohibit  commercial domain registrants from using proxy or privacy services calling it unfair to small businesses and individuals. Google even cites it’s own Charleston Road Registry an example of how big companies will still be able to use shell companies to hide ownership of domain names,  something small businesses and individuals will not be able ... read more ...
 
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From CBS to CNN To Fox To Google: New gTLD .News Has Almost 500 Sunrise Registrations - The new gTLD .News enters the Early Access Program (EAP) for Rightside Tomorrow, Wednesday July 8th with the highest number of Sunrise domain registrations the registry has had in any of its new domain name extensions, just short of 500. Matt Overman of Rightside told TheDomains.com, “out of our entire portfolio of 36 active TLDs, .NEWS had the greatest number of Sunrise registrations, clocking in at 498.” “We placed an estimated 75% of our premium .NEWS domain on a special list of non-premium-priced ... read more ...
 
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Sedo Transactions Total $1m for a week led by Vigia.com - There were 501 transactions on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1m. 52% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings.     Highlights of public sales are: Top .com: vigia.com at 25,000 USD Top ccTLD: charge.it at 7,000 EUR Top “other” TLD: grandstand.net at 6,800 USD New gtld sales: one.vacations    5,500    USD kazino.casino    5,000    EUR   ... read more ...
 
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NetNames files Complaint w/ European Competition Commission on Vox Populi’s .SUCKS Pricing - NetNames.com has filed a  complaint to European Competition Commission on Vox Populi’s .SUCKS pricing strategy that had Brand owners charged $1,999 each year (wholesale) for a .SUCKS domain name compared to others that are charged just $10 According to NetNames.com which is a brand protection company representing many trademark holders, Vox Populi created an uneven pricing structure that effectively charges brands a premium fee irrespective of when they applied to register a .SUCKS new gTLD domain ... read more ...
 
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Andee Hill Joins Donuts As Director of Business Development - Andee Hill has joined Donuts,as Director of Business Development with specific responsibility for relationships with the domain investor community. Andee is a longtime participant in the domain name industry, most recently with her EscrowHill.com business and also formerly of Escrow.com. EscrowHill.com was recently sold. “”As Donuts has long believed, domain investors are a critical element of the industry, one deserving of an emphasis in time and resources. Andee’s leadership will be critical ... read more ...
 
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Carlsberg Group joins Minds + Machines Pioneer Program For .Beer; Gets 150 Domains - Minds + Machines, (LSE:MMX), announced today that Carlsberg, “the world-renowned brewery group, will participate in its .beer Pioneer program“. Carlsberg has secured over 150 .beer domains, in a portfolio that includes their most popular brands such as baltika.beer, tuborg.beer, holsten.beer and kronenbourg.beer, as well as a variety of generic premium .beer names for use in future marketing projects and campaigns. Niels Lund-Johansen, Carlsberg Group IP Director, is quoted as saying: “As one ... read more ...
 
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Radix and .Site Want To Give we a possibility to win a giveaway Apple Watch - EAP starts tomorrow for .Site, EAP starts on the 8th of July at 1600 UTC and the GA starts on the 15th of July. So with the launch of one of the more highly anticipated strings, we worked with Radix (an advertiser on TheDomains) and came up with a contest idea to get people enthused about the Dot Site extension. 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 ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Amazon's Prime Day Is Jul 15th But The Domain PrimeDay.com May Sell Today - Amazon announced yesterday that its “Prime Day” sale using the hashtag #PrimeDay on July 15th in celebration of  Amazon’s 20th birthday will “Bury Black Friday” by comparison. We noticed that the domain name PrimeDay.com was not owned by Amazon. It seems we weren’t the only one that noticed the domain name PrimeDay.com, was registered way back in 2005 and would most likely receive a lot of traffic and wasn’t owned by Amazon. According to a posting on Facebook by a well-known Domain ... read more ...
Mon 6th July 2015
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European Domain Centre Looks during Companies Ditching .com for a new gtld - Christopher Hofman Laursen published a pretty extensive post today on EuropeanDomainCentre.com. The post titled, “Why these 50+ businesses dumped their .com for a new top level domain” takes a look at several businesses that have ditched their .com or country code in favor of a new gtld. AnimalHealthAssociates.org switched to AHA.vet, I get that one a short easy to remember name where the extension represents your profession. AHA.com would not be attainable so this is not bad imo. Bresse.Fr switched ... read more ...
 
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Kansas City's Lead Bank To Switch From .Com To .Bank -       According to the Kansas City Business Journal,  Lead Bank is switching their domain name from LeadBankOnline.com to Lead.Bank. Lead Bank will become one of the first banks to switch their domain from a .com to a .bank. According to the story: “Lead Bank will be one of the first banks with a presence in the Kansas City area to make the switch away from “.com” and onto a new “.bank” domain. On May 14, the new “.bank” domain became available for financial institutions. The ... read more ...
 
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Domain Movers: Nen.com, Helium.com, Plaza.com And More Domains - In today’s installment of Domain Movers where I detect domain names that have been newly registered, acquired or simply moving for one reason or another, mainly all by large companies. As always, these are often very early detections and can lead into future brands, products, services, advertising campaigns and much more. We heavily rely on the whois system to provide accurate data but we can not always tell everything simply based on whois records. Please keep that in mind. A currently unknown ... read more ...
Sun 5th July 2015
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Architelos Latest State of Abuse Report Shows .Science leads New G's when it comes to spam - Architelos puts out a State of Abuse report that looks at which domain extensions are being used the most for things like spam and phishing. Their latest report shows data from May, Ten New gTLDs comprised 77% of the 143 new phishing reports in May 2015. This equates to 24 phishing reports per million new gTLD domains under management. The .xyz TLD had the highest number of phishing reports with 42 followed by .science with 22 and .club with 9. When it comes to spam .Science leads the way, not a ... read more ...
Sat 4th July 2015
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NameJet.com Reports Over $700K In Sales In Jun Led By Ringtones.com At $105K -

Namejet.com usually reported $723,500 in domain name sales for a month of Jun 2015

Namejet.com usually reports sales of $2,000 or some-more and for usually those that were paid for by a finish of a month

All sales were led by Ringtones.com that sole for $105,000

5 of a tip 10 sales were 3 minute .com’s

Here are a sales:

Via: thedomains.com

 
Written by The Domains in EN
Happy Fourth Of July - Happy Fourth of July to all our readers celebrating in the U.S. and to all our other readers may you have less competition on the various domain auction houses. A look at domain names around the July Fourth holiday. July4.com – Registered in 1996 – Reflex Publishing owns the domain and forwards it to CyberFinder.com. The net/org/biz/info and .us are regged. FourthofJuly.com– Registered in 1997 – Versimedia.com owns the domain and has Go Daddy nameservers, no website. The net/org/info and ... read more ...
Fri 3rd July 2015
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Could Apple Surpass Google in Search One Day ? - There was an interesting article on of all places LearnBonds.com with regards to Apple going after Google in search. The article discussed the fact that Applebot has been crawling the web for close to a year and that back in May, Apple made that clear. The article also delves into why Apple cannot collect as much data as Google does due to their differing policy when it comes to privacy. From the article: Apple sticks its head into search Applebot has been crawling webpages for the better part ... read more ...
Thu 2nd July 2015
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.Org Wholesale Price To Top $9 At The End of July - I just received a notice from enom.com informing me that the wholesale cost of that the Public Interest Registry (PIR), the Registry Operator for the .ORG domain, will be increasing its annual registration price by $0.80 USD. As a result of this, eNom will raise pricing for the .ORG domain name extension by $0.80 USD on July 31st. The last price increase by the .Org registry was in 2013 to $8.25. Therefore with this increase the wholesale cost of a .Org domain name will rise to $9.05. The wholesale ... read more ...
 
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Walmart Files UDRP For Walmart.vodka & Walmart.beer; Beyonce For BeyonceShop.com & Beyonceshopping.com - A bunch of UDRP have been filed in the last couple of days Walmart which previously filed and won a UDRP on the domain name Walmart.horse just filed  a UDRP on the domain name Walmart.beer and Walmart.vodka. Google filed a UDRP on the 11-year-old domain name GoogleArt.com Beyonce filed two separate UDRP for the domain names BeyonceShop.com which was registered in 2009 and Beyonceshopping.com which was registered last year. Beyonce.com does own Beyonce.com. Elizabeth Arden filed a UDRP on the domain ... read more ...
 
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Projects.com Sells for $87,550 On SnapNames.com - The expired domain name auction for Projects.com just ended at Snapnames with  the domain name selling for $87,550. The winner bidder has the ID of: qursan There were 5 bidders at $80,000 or more including the winning bidder. We wrote about the auction when it started on Monday. There were 196 bidders in the domain auction.     ... read more ...
 
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Presidential Candidate & Governor Of Wisc Scott Walker Gets SW.Gop Domain - The Republican Presidential Candidate Governor Of Wisconsin,  Scott Walker has gotten a new gTLD domain name SW.Gop. The domain name is currently resolving to the Governor’s instagram account. The Governor already owns the domain name ScottWalker.com so it will be interesting to see what he does with SW.gop. According to the Governor’s Twitter account @ScottWalker  the site on the domain is due to launch today at 5:59PM CT. We will let you know what the SW.Gop site is carrying later today. We ... read more ...
 
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Domain Movers: Poker.net, Benders.com And More Domains - Domain Movers is a series where I detect recent domain name movements, mainly all by large companies. These include domain name registrations, domain name acquisitions and domain names simply moving for one reason or another. My main source is the whois database on these changes and whois doesn’t always reveal the exact or whole story so I try to back things up with other means but whois information are the main factor of information stated below, so keep that in mind! Here we go with the latest ... read more ...
 
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Time To Look during Online Education names as University of Phoenix Sees Drop off - The University of Phoenix is owned by Apollo Education Group which trades publicly under the symbol of APOL. The company reported dismal earnings and is now laying off 900 employees. The company has watched half of their enrollment drop in 5 years. Online Education, Classes and Degree have always been high paying keywords, back in 2011 WordStream released the 20 highest paying keywords for Google AdWords. They recently did a list for Bing where education did not make the top 20. From 2011 Google ... read more ...