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.

Tue 3rd February 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Howard Neu Gets A CryptoCurrency Named After Him - Well the currency just shares the same last name as Howard, Tech Crunch is out today with an article on NeuCoin, a cryptocurrency that wants to specialize in micropayments. Speaking of Micro Payments, I had someone give me a tip on Twitter using a company called ChangeTip.com, I just had to connect my Twitter account and I received $3.50 in BTC. I need to do more research into the company as it seems kind of cool. From the article: Meet NeuCoin, a new cryptocurrency designed specifically to tip content ... read more ...
 
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Are New gTLDs More Memorable than Country Code Domains ? - Stuart Fuller, director, commercial operations at NetNames spoke with FE Brandwagon/FinancialExpress.com and gave his view why the new gtlds are more memorable and why brands can have more security if they take the time to get their own Dot Brand. NetNames also put together a couple of graphics on the topic. From the article: Could you elaborate on how the new domain system will change the internet landscape? I hope we see a safer environment, one where innovation is fostered and where brand holders ... read more ...
Mon 2nd February 2015
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Marketing Land: Super Bowl Commercials With Hashtags Slipped To 50% In 2015 - Marketing Land publised the results of their fourth annual Hashtag Bowl. Half of all commercials run during the Super Bowl carried a hashtag according to the article. Facebook was the most mentioned social media network edging out Twitter, 4 to 3. For those interested they listed every ad and the order in which they ran. From the article: Fifty percent of 2015 Super Bowl ads carried hashtags, a bit of a slip from the record 57% during the 2014 game. Facebook was the social network most mentioned, ... read more ...
 
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Record Setter: Porno.com Sale Is The Largest Single Domain Escrow.com Has Ever Handled - According to Brandon Abbey who has been the president of Escrow.com since 2004 the sale of Porno.com for $8,888,88 which we reported earlier today,  was the largest single domain sale they have ever handled. Although Escrow.com has handled over $2 Billion dollars in transactions, and bigger domain name transactions than the $8.9 Million sale of Porno.com those where for multiple domains inside one transaction. So Porno.com is now the official escrow.com record holder for a single domain name. Again ... read more ...
 
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Rick Schwartz Sells Porno.Com For $8,888,888: The 4th Highest Reported Domain Sale Of All Time - Rick Schwartz the Domain King, has just sold the domain name Porno.com for $8,888,888 in an all cash transaction handled by Escrow.com. The sale will rank as the 4th highest publicly reported, all cash, domain sale of all time, according to DNjournal.com. Porno.com becomes the highest reported domain name sale in five year, since of Sex.com resold in 2010 for $13 million dollars. Rick bought this domain in August of 1997 for $42,000 “from a college student that bought it the week before for $5,000” Since ... read more ...
 
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Frank Schilling's North Sound Names Registers Over 9,000 .Hosting Domains - Frank Schilling’s North Sound Names registered over 9,000 domain names in the new gTLD .Hosting on January 31th .Hosting which is owned by Frank Schilling’s Uniregistry had about 2,312 domain names registrations as of January 30th, now has over 11,600 registered domain names. Mr. Schilling has long said he would go ahead and register domain names he thought would be premium domain names after the new gTLD extension of Uniregistry has been available to the public. .Hosting has been available for ... read more ...
Sun 1st February 2015
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Compete.com Takes A demeanour during Football From an Online Traffic POV - Compete took a look at the popularity of Football from an online traffic viewpoint. I kind of think their findings make sense and its not really a surprise to see a downward trend going into January as most fans don’t have a horse in the race. There is more excitement for fans outside of the conference champions around which ad is going to be controversial and which will become a hit. The article goes on to look at which teams ranked the highest and which keywords rated high. From the article: For ... read more ...
 
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Is This The Domain With The Longest Registration Date? SMITHSONIAN.US Expires 2102 - Here is new one on me. A domain name that doesn’t expire until the next century. The domain name is Smithsonian.us and it is as you would expect owned by the Smithsonian Institution of Washington. The domain is not registered through a registrar, but instead is still showing as being registered through NeuStar the company that operates the .US registry under license of the United States Government. I didn’t know that a domain name could be registered without a domain name registrar, but that ... read more ...
Sat 31st January 2015
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New Dot Media, LLC launches TheNotComRevolution.Guide - A frequent commenter on TheDomains Tom Gilles is the founder of New Dot Media, LLC, his company published a press release relating to an educational website TheNotComRevolution.Guide. An educational website, http://TheNotcomRevolution.Guide, has been launched by New Dot Media, LLC to help internet users better understand and navigate the new “Not Com” Internet. The website provides insight and tips for consumers, businesses, parents, and professionals regarding the epic expansion of web domains. The ... read more ...
 
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Super Bowl Sunday and the impact on Online Sales - The Super Bowl and eCommerce Abbe Miller wrote a piece on Business2Community that looked at how big television events impact online sales both during and after the event. The article mentioned some stats from the previous two years culled from a couple different sources. Hashtags included  in ad spots jumped to 57%. Go Daddy decided to pull its puppy ad, Go Daddy has benefited greatly from Super Bowl ads in the past. According to PointRoll, the company saw a 45 percent increase in hosting and dot-com ... read more ...
 
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Jazz At Lincoln Center Acquires & Re-brands To Jazz.org & Some Fans Are Not Happy - Thejazzline.com, reports that the organization that operates Jazz at Lincoln Center, recently aand re-branded the organization to Jazz.org from it former address, jalc.org which is owned and operated under since it started in the early 2000’s Although the story does not say how much the organization paid for the domain, it says that the domain was recently  appraised for $40,000 (Estibot.com has the value at $43,000) Although the story says the organization recently acquired the domain Jazz.org, ... read more ...
 
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Would we have practical for a new GTLD if we knew what we know now ? - On the one year anniversary of the rollout of new gtlds to the public, our January poll question was, “Would you have applied for a new GTLD if you knew what you know now ?” We had 110 votes and 62 people voted no while 48 voted yes. This may have been a tricky question because a lot of participants may not have had the ability to embark on such an adventure due to the price. I think if you could have been one string registry, that secured its string uncontested it would be intriguing , something ... read more ...
 
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CNN: "Is this a Super Bowl's subsequent GoDaddy?" - CNN asked if Wix Is this the Super Bowl’s next GoDaddy? A company mostly unknown to the public that went public over a year ago, in the article they actually compare and contrast Wix to Apple. From the article: But while tech companies like Wix aren’t quite household names, they’ve been betting big on Super Bowl ads for decades. Most famously, Apple (AAPL, Tech30) did so with its 1984 Super Bowl Ad. “It was an insane success,” said Kelly O’Keefe, professor of brand strategy at the Virginia ... read more ...
Fri 30th January 2015
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Business Insider Interview With Bidtellect - Business Insider did an interview with Lon Otremba the CEO of Bidtellect an advertising company that was co founded by John Ferber of Domain Holdings. Bidtellect is the first open native ad exchange. Native advertising is becoming more popular, I have been playing around with some concepts for publications I own or co – manage. Native advertising can be less intrusive and also has shown to producing higher engagement numbers as opposed to display ads. From the article: How did native advertising ... read more ...
Thu 29th January 2015
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Disposable Email Services Product to be rolled out on Discard.Email - Appfield.net is a German technology services provider that is rolling out a new product, Discard.email. The product is a disposable email service that will let users use their own domain name if they wish. Of course it is hard business out there competing with the likes of Gmail and Yahoo. The service claims to be better at fighting spam and providing other features. “Users can use their own unused domains privately and anonymously on our email service. If someone wishes to provide a domain publicly ... read more ...
 
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Owner of Airlineonline.aero Files UDRP On Airlineonline.com -       The owner of the domain name airlineonline.com just got hit with a UDRP by the owner of the domain name Airlineonline.aero It doesn’t look like the ownership of the .com has changed since at least January 2013. Obviously in my opinion as generic a domain as you can get The Complainant was filed by Efzed Pty Ltd. Mr. Frank Zimmermann Simulate Pty Ltd. which owns the domain name Airlineonline.aero as well as simulate.aero. For the record the domain name airlineonline.aero doesn’t resolve ... read more ...
 
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Whoops: Mayor Of New York Fails To Register His Own .NYC Domain: Billdeblasio.NYC - This goes right to the you can’t make this stuff up file. Crainsnewyork.com,  published a post today chatting about how the the Mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, who has been touting “the new .nyc domain names as “a unique opportunity” for New Yorkers “to own who they are online,” did not buy what he was selling.” “Records show that billdeblasio.nyc was purchased by Thomas Anderson, a digital developer at Publishers Clearing House with no ties to the mayor. ” Mr. Anderson ... read more ...
 
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1st Day New gTLD Totals .Space 1,784; .Band 776: .Rip 348; .How 250; .Ryukyu 143 - Five new gTLD’s had their first day of general availability (GA) yesterday. Here the total number of domain registrations after the first day. These total include all domains registered in Sunrise by trademark holders as well as any domains registered during an Early Access Program or Landrush where people paid extra money to get early access to domain registrations: .Space 1,784 .Band 776 .Rip 348 .How 250 .Ryukyu 143 The purpose of .ryukyu is to promote Okinawa and spread to the world Okinawa ... read more ...
 
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Want Your Baby To Have A Unique Name ? Do we have an additional $31,000 fibbing around to compensate for it ? - Huffington Post did a story on Erfolgwelle a firm that focuses on giving your baby a unique name. They do all this for $31,000. The article lays out the process and who they bring to the table as far as their staff. From the article: Erfolgswelle is firm devoted entirely to generating unique baby names. With 14 naming experts, four historians, and 12 translators on hand — not to mention two trademark attorneys to ensure names don’t conflict with companies and products — the staff at Erfolgswelle ... read more ...
Wed 28th January 2015
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Good.com Files Federal Lawsuit For Trademark Infringement Against Good.co - Good Technology Corporation and Good Technology Software, Inc. (collectively, “Good”) which operates Good.com, filed a federal lawsuit against Good.Co, Inc. in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California yesterday for trademark infringement and volition of the ACPA. Here are the highlights: Good was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. Since its founding, Good has established itself as a pioneer in mobile technology software and as the leader ... read more ...
 
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Estibot Values RightoftheDot.com Extended Namescon Auction At Over $13 Million Dollars - The RightoftheDot.com extended auction from the Namescon conference is ongoing on Snapnames.com and ends on February 5th which is a week from tomorrow. I ran the list of the domain names included in the extended auction through Estibot and the total value of the inventory came to over $13 Million dollars All domains were led by Investment.com which makes sense since invest.com recently sold for over $5 Million and investing.com sold a couple of years ago for $2.5 Million Auctions which is certainly ... read more ...
 
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Vanity.com Loses Bid To Grab VanityShops.com from Vertical Axis - Vanity Shop which just acquired the domain name Vanity.com last year after another UDRP and a federal lawsuit of its own, just lost its bid to grab the domain name vanityshop.com from it’s owner Vertical Axis Inc. which was represented by Ari Goldberger of Esqwire.com. The three member panel of the The Hon. Nelson A. Diaz, the Hon. Neil Brown Q.C., and David E. Sorkin found that the term Vanity Shop was generic as was Vanity and that the domain holder did not acquire the domain with the trademark ... read more ...
 
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.Global Puts Up Site With Over 3,500 Domains/ Many Previous Premiums Available For Registration - The .Global registry has put up a site to highlight over 3,500 domain names that are available for immediate registration many of which were formally on the reserved/restricted list. Domain names registered through January 31st are also eligible for the $25 per domain rebate for those that register 10 or more domains. Each listed domain name is click-able from the site, which will tell you if they are still available (some have been taken) and gives you some suggested registrars where the domain ... read more ...
Tue 27th January 2015
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Dogs Win: Godaddy Follows Our Advice & Pulls The #Godaddypuppy Super Bowl Ad - It was just 8 hours ago when we posted the Godaddy Super Bowl Ad known as the #Godaddypuppy which went tragically wrong. Now the CEO of Godaddy has given in to the overwhelming condemnation of the ad and announced the commercial will not air during the Super Bowl. Had they reached out to anyone in the industry before hand like myself, we would have told them there we;re heading down the wrong path, but after investing what is probably million of dollars towards this campaign GoDaddy wisely followed ... read more ...
 
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Sedo Transactions Total $1.2 Million, Led By One of Ours SuperSeats.com For $48,888 - 559 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS last week totaling $1.2 Million Dollars All sales this week were led by one of our domain names,  SuperSeats.com which sold for $48,888 53% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings. Highlights of public sales are: · Top .com: superseats.com at 48,888 USD · Top ccTLD: autoteile.eu at 7,000 EUR · Top “other” TLD: mouser.net at 6,000 USD Here are all the reportable sales: ... read more ...