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 11th March 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Rightside to Release 20K+ Two Character New gTLD Domain Names On Mar 18th - Rightside (Nasdaq:NAME), announced that it will release certain two-character domains for each of the Top Level Domains (TLDs) in its portfolio, which includes such popular extensions as .SOCIAL and .ATTORNEY. on March 18 These two-character domain names, such as 2b.social, 21.rocks, and A1.lawyer, offer more than 20,000 new URL options for businesses and consumers to share their identities, interests, and brand personalities with short, memorable web addresses. Rightside included the following ... read more ...
 
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Hollywood seeking a assistance of Domain Registrars in a conflict opposite piracy - Jeremy Malcom and Maira Sutton wrote an article on the Electronic Frontier Foundation website that deals with Hollywood trying to influence domain registrars. The article is well written and gives a peek into the behind the scenes battles taking place on the IP front. Domain registrars actually became what was called a “New Issue Focus” by the United States Trade Representative (USTR). It looks like industry groups would like the registrars to be on their side in the fight against piracy. From ... read more ...
Tue 10th March 2015
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Sedo Sales Total $1.4Million, led by Generational.com during $70,000 -

Over a past week, 602 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and around SedoMLS, totaling $1.4m. 52% of sum sales were a outcome of Buy Now listings.  

Highlights of open sales are:

  • Top .com: generational.com at 70,000 USD
  • Top ccTLD: expekt.gr at 20,000 EUR
  • Top “other” TLD: egb.net at 9,888 USD

Via: thedomains.com

 
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Two Letter Domain Lost In UDRP "Bought As Part Of A $1M Domain Portfolio Purchase in 2014" - In an interesting  UDRP decision today  the domain holder Futurename of Paris said they purchased a 1,000 domain name portfolio for  $1,000,000 in August  2014. Some of the domain names purchased according to Futurename have the following values:  colis.com USD 7,600, though.com, USD 59,000, monnaie.fr – EUR 10,000, bons.com – USD 12,000, milkshake.net – USD 4,000. The domain at issue in the UDRP is VW.qa The complainant Volkswagen said the price paid for the portfolio was “not credible” ... read more ...
 
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Owner of TechGuruit.com sues Owner of TechGuru.com For Trademark Infringement on Tech Guru - A. Preliminarily and permanently enjoining and restraining the Defendants and Defendants’ directors, officers, agents, servants, employees, subsidiaries, affiliates, and all persons in active concert or participation with, through, or under Defendants: From using in any way the trademarks TECHGURU or TECH GURU, or any other marks, words or names confusingly similar to Plaintiff’s mark, as the name or mark for any of Defendants’ services; From committing any acts of unfair competition and from ... read more ...
Mon 9th March 2015
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How Colin Campbell (Dot Club) Raised $7million in 30 Days - Colin Campbell wrote a very interesting article on StartUpBeat.com, he went into detail on how he raised $7million in 30 days for Dot Club. Colin gives the timeline that led from start to finish and is a very good read imo. From the article: I had a problem. A problem that almost every startup faces: Raising money. I had to raise $7 million fast for a concept that hadn’t yet generated any revenue, but I had to do it in 30 days, all without a broker, and all on my own. In 2013 I had applied for ... read more ...
 
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The New gTLD .HIV Auction on Sedo May Go Without a Sale - 58 .HIV new gTLD’s are at auction at Sedo.com in a themed auction which ends tomorrow. I believe all of the domain names are owned by the .HIV registry, however the registries whois does not seem to be working, even resolving for that matter. As of publication only 4 domain names have bids and none are close to meeting reserve. Test.Hiv not surprising leads the list with a $500 bid but the reserve range is $10,000-$25,000 The other 3 bids are all at the $99 minimum but the reserve ranges start ... read more ...
 
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.Sucks Releases Pricing With "Premiums" For Trademark Holders Up To $2,499 A Year -         Vox Populi Registry Ltd. the owner of the new gTLD .Sucks, made headlines last year when as one of several applicants for .Sucks announced pricing of up to $25,000 per domain, per year. Now that Vox won the private auction to operate .Sucks their site went live on Friday with suggested pricing with 5 price and qualification classes ranging from $9.95 to $2,499 per domain, per year (prices are suggested retail, but each registrar can set their own price). I had a chance to chat with John ... read more ...
 
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Donuts Makes Lotsof.Money in Early Access: .Money Has 327 Registrations, Launches Wed - Donuts seems to have made lots of money In the Early Access Program (EAP) grabbing 327 registrations including a handful of trademark registrations made in  Sunrise. In the EAP people pay extra.money to gain early access to register domain names ahead of general availability. .Money launches into general availability on Wednesday Here are some of the registrations that stood out to us: accident.money accounting.money add.money ads.money advance.money affiliate.money app.money apps.money atm.money auction.money autos.money bank.money best.money bet.money betting.money big.money bingo.money bond.money bonus.money borrow.money borrowing.money budget.money budgeting.money capital.money cars.money cash.money casino.money change.money chicago.money chinese.money click.money cloud.money coin.money coins.money collect.money converter.money crazy.money crowd.money crowdfunding.money crypto.money currency.money deposit.money dirty.money donate.money earning.money email.money escrow.money estate.money euro.money exchange.money extra.money family.money find.money for.money forex.money fundraising.money gambling.money give.money gold.money good.money great.money hard.money iam.money immediate.money ineed.money intelligent.money internet.money investing.money investment.money investor.money invests.money jet.money kids.money lease.money lend.money lending.money loan.money loaning.money loans.money london.money lost.money lotsof.money love.money mad.money makeextra.money makemore.money makes.money making.money manage.money mega.money micro.money mint.money missing.money more.money need.money news.money newyork.money next.money nyc.money old.money onthe.money pay.money play.money poker.money private.money raise.money raising.money receive.money reit.money russian.money saudi.money save.money saved.money saving.money send.money smart.money startup.money stockmarket.money super.money the.money trade.money transfer.money travel.money unclaimed.money usa.money use.money vegas.money wire.money xxx.money young.money ... read more ...
 
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TheRegister.co.uk Reports: Enom Suffers Huge DNS Outage, Taking Down Sites - TheRegister.co.uk,  is reporting that Domain Name registrar enom appears to be having a huge DNS outage citing quite a few tweets from people who say service has been down for hours. The story says: “”Domain name registrar eNom appears to have gone titsup worldwide since the early hours of this morning, according to reports from furious customers who – at time of publication – were yet to get a response from the Washington-based firm.”” The story goes on to say: “Some customers reported ... read more ...
Sun 8th March 2015
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Will The Namespace Be Shaken Up By Live Registry Buys ? - Kieren Mc Carthy wrote an article on TheRegister.co.uk relating to Donuts winning the rights to .reise. Now .reise is already live, so Donuts picked up a registry with existing registrations and websites. Mc Carthy ponders what these types of deals could mean in the future ? One registry buying another and then raising prices. I think that is the important question moving forward, will this shake up the future of the namespace ? Will Donuts eventually buy out a string in a niche they otherwise control, ... read more ...
Sat 7th March 2015
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Donuts Wins Three Sports New gTLD's; .Soccer Beating Out MLS & Wins .Hockey & .Run Too - Donuts has won the right to three sports related new gTLD’s. Donuts won the right to operate the .Hockey and .Run new domain extensions, beating the only other applicant in both cases Famous Four Media. Separately Donuts won the rights to what many consider the world’s the most popular sport .Soccer, beating out Soccer United Marketing, LLC better known as Major League Soccer, which is the Professional Soccer Language in the United States as well as Famous Four Media and Minds + Machines. The ... read more ...
 
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Donuts Beats Coupons.com to a new gTLD .Coupons - Donuts has won yet another new gTLD beatings Coupons.com to the new gTLD .Coupons The new gTLD was scheduled to go to an ICANN Last Resort Auction later this month. If your wondering, yes there is also a .Coupon new gTLD Amazon beat out Minds + Machines in a private auction held around June of 2014, for the .Coupon extension. Based on how Coupons.com described itself in its application with ICANN, you really have to wonder how much the bidding got up to for Coupons.com to drop out. Coupons.com described ... read more ...
 
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I pronounced it before Canada is not messing around when it comes to Spam - Back in September of 2014 I wrote an article on DomainCrunch.com that Canada was not playing around when it comes to spam. A Canadian law that targets spam email could have a big impact on Boston-area companies that use email marketing. Starting July 1, the law makes sending commercial messages to a Canadian resident without their express consent very costly. According to the legislation, the maximum penalty per violation for an individual is $1 million per violation, and for a business, it is $10 ... read more ...
Fri 6th March 2015
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Who Has a Most Valuable Search Traffic ? - Matt Southern wrote an article on Search Engine Journal that included an infographic on who has the most valuable search traffic. His takeaway from the data was: It’s interesting to note that the site with the most valuable search traffic, Wikipedia, is one that does not attempt to generate a profit from its traffic. Besides that one outlier, the results are more or less what you would expect for each vertical. Some other surprises to me was the value of Yellow Pages’ search traffic, and the ... read more ...
Thu 5th March 2015
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Facebook Warns Page Owners Their Number of Likes May Drop on Mar 12 - Venture Beat post an article that Facebook will be removing inactive accounts from a Facebook pages’ like stats and that page owners will see a dip in the number of likes on their page. From the article: In a blog post this morning, Facebook said, “To make audience data even more meaningful for businesses, we’re updating the way Page likes are counted by removing memorialized and voluntarily deactivated accounts from Pages’ like counts.” Facebook said there are two main reasons why it ... read more ...
 
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OpenDNS Working On A System To Quickly Detect Cyber Crime - Interesting article on ComputerWorld.com about a new system for detecting domain names and websites used for cyber crime. The company OpenDNS has been around since 2005 and has created something they call Natural Processing Language. From the article: A security system undergoing testing by a San-Francisco-based company aims to speed up the detection of websites and domains used for cybercrime. The technology is being developed by OpenDNS, which specializes in performing DNS (Domain Name System) ... read more ...
 
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Domain Sales Data Website SimilarSales.com Launches - Rudin Web Solutions out of Switzerland has a new site up on SimilarSales.com. The site provides historical sales data and I don’t know if they are just using NameBio.com to collect their data or if they have their own proprietary system for gathering sales data. The site is not as up to date yet as NameBio as the recent sales data was not showing anything for 3/3 or 3/4. They are incorporating data from BuyDomains and NetFleet.com.au along with Flippa, 4.cn and Park.io. One of the problems with ... read more ...
Wed 4th March 2015
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Forbes Chats About Google's New gTLD's & Mucks It All Up - Forbes just published a post about Google’s new gTLD initiative and well basically mucked it all up. The story covered Google’s acquisition of .App for $25 Million but a quick read through the 1st paragraph of the story and you can see the author hasn’t really kept up with developments of the new gTLD program or Google’s applications Here is the 1st paragraph of the story: “Buying “.app” for almost four-times the previous record for a gTLD not only raised eyebrows, but questions about ... read more ...
 
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Daniel Tosh Sparks A Domain Regging Frenzy - I watch the Tosh.o show every Tuesday on Comedy Central, last night was the third new episode for this season. Daniel ended the show on a note that domain investors would take an interest in. Daniel promised to make domain recommendations that would help you get rich. Daniel recommended some hilarious domains and the power of having a following got them all registered. LadyPresidents.com Analbeeds.com Misspelling FreeDanielTosh.com SexyAsiansAtTheBusStop.com HotGirlInMyDaughtersClass.com BlackPeopleMeetWhiteWomen.com FamousAnuses.com Illuminati.org JasonIsAPedophile.com For ... read more ...
 
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Worst gTLD Like Ever, Ever: .Whoswho Has 21 Registrations 2 Days After Launch -       .Whoswho a new gTLD went into general availability on March 2nd. Today on March 4th. According to ntldstats.com there are a whopping 21 registrations two days into GA, including any domain names registered by trademark holders in the Sunrise period. A .whoswho domain name registration is priced at $90 at 101domain.com and $99 at encirca.com The new gTLD is not being carried by any of the top 10 domain name registrars. Like any other new gTLD the applicant paid $185,000 for to ICANN for ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Loser.com Owner Has a Problem With Kanye West - Sometimes owners of short, generic .coms use those domains for a different purpose. The domain name Loser.com currently redirects to the Wikipedia page for rapper/entertainer Kanye West. The story is getting plenty of coverage even though it is a simple redirect with not much else going on. USA Today Which pointed out that Kanye did dis Beck at the Grammys, Beck famously wrote a hit song called Loser HollywoodReporter.com noted he did apologize to Beck: West has been on a bit of a make-good mission ... read more ...
 
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InternetTraffic.com & Parked Pages Down? - I got a couple of emails overnight from people that have domain names parked at  InternetTraffic.com that says both their parked pages and IT are down since early last night I just checked some of my domain names and they appear to be down as well. I’ve been in contact with InternetTraffic.com who tells me they are now looking into the issues, based off my my report but from there side they are not seeing issues, but clearly there are issues. If you have a domain parked at IT please try one that ... read more ...
 
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UDRP losses count as damage in TM Dispute - Rebecca Tushnet wrote on her blog about a case that included UDRP expenses being counted as injury in a recent TM case between Migliore Associates, LLC v. Kentuckiana Reporters, LLC. From the article: Intro: “The court reporter game is a tough racket. It’s tougher still when a competitor registers an internet domain name that is confusingly similar to your business name then links it to its own website.” Migliore’s website is at miglioreassociates.com. “Searches on popular internet search ... read more ...
Tue 3rd March 2015
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Sedo Sales Total $1.4 million for a week, led by Ezpr.com -

Over a past week, 581 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and around SedoMLS, totaling $1.4m. 50% of sum sales were a outcome of Buy Now listings.   

 Highlights of open sales are:

  • Top .com: ezpr.com at 14,500 USD
  • Top ccTLD: moon.co at 6,000 GBP
  • Top “other” TLD: legend.net at 13,000 USD

 

Via: thedomains.com