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 9th April 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
.Wedding Winds Up With 1,254 Domain Registrations After It's First Day Of General Availability - Minds + Machines launched .Wedding into general availability yesterday where domain names could be registered on a first come, first served basis. Including domain names registered by trademark holders in the Sunrise period, .Wedding ended its first day of GA with 1,254 registrations according to ntldstats.com 1and1.com and Godaddy.com were the top two domain name registrars where .Wedding domain names were registered. .Wedding has variable pricing on premium domain names. You can see the list of ... read more ...
 
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Facebook Acquires Single Letter i.org Domain Name - Facebook Inc. has acquired the single letter domain name i.org according to whois records! Facebook owns the domain name Internet.org and is leading the effort of connecting the 2/3’s of the world who do not have internet. It is unknown at this time if the newly acquired domain name I.org will be used with this effort. I.org was held by PIR registry and under the Project 94 which is: “Project94 is the allocation of 94 1-2 character .ORG domain names that have never been released for registration. ... read more ...
 
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Study of 10K People: 49% of Consumers Are Uncomfortable With Vising A Site Using A New gTLD - Global information assurance firm, NCC Group released the results of The New Internet Study, today of 10,000 people. NCC Group questioned 10,000 consumers across the US and UK regarding their attitudes to these new gTLDs. 49% of respondents said they felt uncomfortable visiting a web site using a new gTLD domain. 42% of web users reported feeling less secure online since their introduction while 35% feel just as secure. Other finding from the study: · 45% of those we surveyed said they would feel ... read more ...
 
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Nevada Would Like To Regulate Internet Traffic - Nevada wants to be the first state to regulate Internet traffic, in an article on USA TODAY, Anjeanette Damon, Reno (Nev.) Gazette-Journal gave the details. The one take away from the article was that critics and security experts believe the bill would actually aid what it is hoping to prevent. The bill is being pitched as a help with Cyber Security. From the article: Nevada could become the first state in the nation to mandate the physical route government data takes as it travels the Internet ... read more ...
Wed 8th April 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Pure Drop PDM.com sells for $30,470 on DropCatch - The domain name PDM.com actually dropped and was caught by DropCatch, the domain sold for $30,470. There were 125 bidders and 297 bids. There was a thread on Namepros that started before the auction when it was clear the name would drop, the majority picked DropCatch to catch the name. Some expressed their displeasure of the whole system and specific issues with DropCatch.com. ... read more ...
 
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FastCompany Covers The New gTLD's: Highlights Coffee.Club - Fast Company just gave some love to the new gTLD program with a using Coffee.club as one of the success stories “Instead of having only a few meaningless TLDs like .com, .net, .biz, and country codes like .ly, the organization agreed to usher in a more freeform system: Why not have more specific options like .dentist and .nyc? The proliferation of new domains opens up a world of new branding opportunities for companies. For a dentist who has long lived on page five of Google’s search results ... read more ...
Tue 7th April 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Sedo Weekly Sales Total $1.8 Million Led By Mercari.com during 100,000 Euros - Over the past week, 543 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1.8m. 59% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings.  Highlights of public sales are: Top .com: mercari.com at 100,000 EUR Top ccTLD: feedback.me at 10,000 USD Top “other” TLD: airwave.net at 10,000 EUR 7 of the top 11 sales were three letter .coms ... read more ...
 
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The Bitcoin Foundation is "effectively bankrupt" according to one house member - Ars Technica published an article that the Bitcoin Foundation according to one board member, is bankrupt. The organization was created a couple of years ago to bring some sense of official community face for users and investors of Bitcoin. It seems the wheels are coming off as some of the original members have not had a great go of it lately. Of course some have always held that the beauty of Bitcoin was anonymity and open with no central command so to speak. The flip side of the crypto coin is ... read more ...
 
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Google Removes Images To Avoid Being Banned in Turkey - According to BBC.com, Turkey had threatened to ban Google unless it removed links to images of a an Istanbul courthouse where a Turkish prosecutor was taken hostage. Google apparently has removed the image and therefore no ban took place. Other social networks were also required to remove the image and several networks saw brief outages. From the article: Turkey threatened to ban Google unless it removed links to images of a prosecutor being held at gunpoint. The images were taken last week in ... read more ...
 
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Neustar Files Suit Against a FCC - Neustar (NSR) is suing the FCC over the loss of the Local Number Portability contract which it held for 18 years. Neustar which has watched the price of its stock drop close to 50% from August 2, 2013 when the shares were at $55.71, initiated a $150 million share buyback once the contract loss was official. Local Number portability refers to the ability of a “customer of record” of an existing fixed-line or mobile telephone number assigned by a local exchange carrier (LEC) to reassign the number ... read more ...
 
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EnCirca announces $39 Price For Matching .XXX, .Porn & .Adult Domains - The domain registrar EnCirca just published a press release with a very catchy title; “Here Comes More X-Rated Domains” EnCirca announced during the month of April, they are offering a $39 package covering one name in all three adult-related extensions: .XXX, .Porn and .Adult. This works out to be $13 per domain name in each extension. Considering they are currently selling stand alone .XXX domain registrations for $99 a year, that is quite a deal. The policies for .Porn and .Adult will be ... read more ...
 
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ICANN Publishes Its Tax Return; Spends $46M In Salaries; $17M In Travel; Has $300M In Cash/Stocks - ICANN just published its tax return, Form 990, for the year ending June 30, 2014. ICANN Revenue decreased from the year earlier to $127 Million from $236 Million. However salaries compensation rose from $32 Million to $46 Million. Total expenses in 2014 were $124 Million against last years  $150 Million. ICANN ended its fiscal year with $193 Million in net assets up from $168 Million in the prior year. The CEO of ICANN made $842K in reportable compensation and another $56K  from “other compensation” Akram ... read more ...
 
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Skechers Loses URS Bid To Have The Domain SKX.science Suspended - Skechers just lost its bid to have the domain name skx.science suspended in a Uniform Resolution Proceeding (URS) and the domain holder a Joel Williams did not even respond. Skechers was represented by Kleinberg Lerner, LLP of Los Angeles, CA, The examiner Luz Helena Villamil Jimenez, found although Skechers had a trademark in the term “SKX” it “did not submit any arguments to support the grounds of the Claim.” “Skechers simply did not submit one single argument to demonstrate why they ... read more ...
 
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SEO Benefits Between .Com and Everything Else - This will probably be a controversial post as the topic has certainly been controversial. SearchMetrics.com published an article that took a look at the SEO benefits of .com vs every other extension. Now Google has always said there is no difference and Matt Cutts has debunked the new gtld crowd that said they would have a benefit. Matt wrote on his Google + in May 2012: lsauer.com wrote: Technically, it is not sensible to a priori discredit certain domains based on their domain extension. So far ... read more ...
Mon 6th April 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Namejet Reports Over 640K in Domain Name Sales In Mar Led By vvv.com for $136K - Namejet.com reported its domain name sales that closed in March for those domains selling ofr $2,000 or more. All sales were led by the rare three letter .com repeater vvv.com which sold for $136,400. Total reported sales came to $641,557.00 The highest 7 sales of the month were all three letter .com domains as were 9 of the 1st 12 highest sales. Only three 4 numbered .com’s broke up the clean sweep of three letter .com’s in the top 12 sales of NameJet.com Here are the reported sales of $2,000 ... read more ...
 
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Dot Website Hits 50,000 Registrations - Dot Webstie hits the 50,000 registration mark Radix released some stats about one of their strings today, Dot Website went over 50,000 regs, they did actually give my OnlineCasino.website sale a mention. To be fair it was not for a huge amount but profit is profit (non premium registation of $14.99).  I have mentioned that .website was a generic string that I have speculated in, for full disclosure I do own one other .website domain. I think it was important for Radix to win .site so that they own ... read more ...
 
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Returns.com, PMG.com And More Domain Name Movers - Welcome to the latest round of company domain name movers. This series exclusively digs deep to find new acquired domain names, newly registered domain names and simply domain movers owned by some of the largest companies on the internet, plus more. Here we go with a huge list of domain movers! Betaworks Studio, LLC has registered the domain name VitePad.com Schroders plc and asset management company registered the domain name IncomeIQ.com on 12/12/2014 and is redirecting it to Schroders.com, has ... read more ...
 
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Do Domain Extensions Matter ? One investigate says if it is .Com, You Betcha - Website Magazine asked the question: “Do Domain Extensions Matter ?” They went on to cite a recent study from Interbrand that stated 94 percent of consumers correctly recalled .COM while only 7 percent correctly recalled a new domain extension. From the article: In addition to memorability, Interbrand’s study sheds light on clickability. In fact, the data shows that 61 percent of consumers who were shown a search results page displaying similar Web addresses with different extensions still ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Gail.com Gets 5,000 Hits Per Day, No Ads and Not For Sale - First names in .com are some of the more valuable virtual real estate out there online, Susan.com sold for $34,000 at the 2015 NamesCon auction. Justin showed the world his life on Justin.tv. Some use modified or less popular versions of a first name to brand their business, Lynda.com is one popular example. Mike stumbled upon Gail.com and the FAQ on the site is rather interesting, the domain was a gift from a husband to a wife back in 1996 when most did not even understand domain names. Hello and ... read more ...
Sun 5th April 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
$7,500 For Easter.Sucks + 3K A Year, Or EasterSucks.com For $8 A Year? - The new gTLD program was supposed to in part  index the domain name by verticals, interests   and geographical areas. They jury is still out on whether a photographer named John Smith would be better off with John Smith.Photography or JohnSmith.com or JohnSmithPhotographer.com However when it comes to some extensions like .sucks where the selling point is the expression of free speech it gets a little more complicated. Consider someone who hates the once a year holiday of Easter. So if you have ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
8 Facts About Choosing The Right Domain Name from a Huffington Post - In an article titled “8 Facts About Choosing The Right Domain Name” Bradley Glonka used the words domainer and cybersquatter interchangeably, “In some cases, you may discover that the domain name you want is owned by someone called a “domainer” or “cybersquatter” – a person who registers tons of likely-to-be-desired domain names to sell them at a serious profit.” The above mentioned quote was apart of fact #7, the article discussed things like owning more than one domain, but not ... read more ...
Sat 4th April 2015
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NYPost.com: "Gotham’s ‘.nyc’ is fastest flourishing city domain on Internet" - Josh Kosman wrote a an article on Friday night with regards to .NYC and the rest of the new city gtlds. Kosman used data from Domain Punch that stipulated that 72,000 freebies should not be included in the totals for .Berlin, so with that technicality, .NYC is the leader in paid registrations. From the article: New York City is on the fast track to becoming the dot-com capital of the world. The rush to grab the city’s digital real estate — or addresses ending in .nyc — has made the Big Apple’s ... read more ...
 
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Registrar Promo Leads to 10,000 Paid .Link Registrations Per Frank Schilling Tweet -

Frank Schilling tweeted out late tonight that there were 10,000 new .link registrations combined as a outcome of a registrar promo.

Via: thedomains.com

Fri 3rd April 2015
Written by The Domains in EN
MyDogBuddy Rebrands To DogBuddy.com A Domain They Bought For $350 On Godaddy - Techcrunch covered,  merger of two pet sitting services in Europe. “MyDogBuddy, has merged with its Spanish rival Bibulu, to become what it claims is the largest offering of its kind, citing a combined 10,000 local dog sitters registered with the platform.” “The merger also sees a rebranding of the combined entity to the much simpler DogBuddy.com domain.” DogBuddy.com was purchased at a Godaddy.com Auction back in April 2012 for a whopping $350 According to the story, the company raised ... read more ...
 
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Google To Blacklist All Digital Certificates from CNNIC - ZDNet took a look at Google and their black listing all digital certificates issued by the organization that manages the .cn extension. The article goes on to discuss what steps Firefox may take with regards to CNNIC. From the article: A recent alarm over a mis-issued digital certificate for several Google domains has resulted in Google blacklisting China’s main certificate authority. Google is blacklisting all digital certificates from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the ... read more ...