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 27th January 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
TechCrunch Covers TheDrop.Club: By Twitch/Exec co-founder and Y Combinator Partner Justin Kan - Techcrunch.com just covered TheDrop.club, what they describe as a “Digg/Reddit/Hacker News/Product Hunt for electronic dance music” The site is Thedrop.club and “Twitch/Exec co-founder and Y Combinator partner Justin Kan told TechCrunch: “I wanted something to create a constant stream of new electronic music tracks every day” TechCrunch.com goes on to describe the site: “Built on open-source curation interface Telescope and the SoundCloud API, The Drop.club lets you stream through a list ... read more ...
 
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Namecheap.com Jumps On #GodaddyPuppy Outrage With PUPPYLOVE $3.98 Transfer w/$1.50 To Humane Society - Wow Godaddy… Transfer yr domains to us for $3.98 using coupon code “PUPPYLOVE” we’ll donate to @HumaneSociety pic.twitter.com/04jU2bGysc — Namecheap.com (@Namecheap) January 27, 2015 Namecheap.com has jumped on the outrage from Godaddy’s Super Bowl commercial and is offering a $3.98 special using the transfer code of  PUPPYLOVE to anyone to transfer in any .com, .net .org or .info and Namecheap will contribute $1.50 to the Humane Society for each domain name transferred. As we noted ... read more ...
 
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Godaddy Looks Like They Have A Disaster On Its Hands; People REALLY Hate Their Super Bowl Ad - Its been less than an hour since we posted Godaddy’s new Super Bowl Ad and social media is already weighting in on what might go down as one of the worst marketing blunders of all time. Just go to Twitter and search for the hashtag #GoDaddyPuppy and you will see that the vast majority of people who are commenting, hate the commercial. I know hate is a strong word. But that is the word. Now we have a outcry against the commercial for promoting puppy mills with hash tags like #boycottGoDaddy #BanPuppyMills ... read more ...
 
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Here Is a Godaddy Super Bowl Commercial; Not Risque But Downright Risky - The Godaddy.com Super Bowl commercial has been released and as promised for the first time features a dog, name buddy, with a VERY brief appearance by Danica Patrick Although there are no sexy, barely clothed women, I would say this commercial is as risky a commercial as the company has ever run on the Super Bowl. Other Godaddy.com Super Bowl ads have been Risque, but I think this is just risky IMHO. When I say risky I think there maybe a lot of push back on this commercial from the public.  I also ... read more ...
 
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Donuts Win Another New gTLD .Express Beating Out Express.com: No ICANN Last Resort Auctions For January - Donuts has won yet another new gTLD string ahead winning .Express. The only other applicant was submitted by Express.com who has now withdrawn their application. This domain was scheduled for an ICANN Last Resort Auction. There are now 11 new gTLD scheduled to go to an ICANN in February and 19 more for March. As things have been going the vast majority of these will be settle ahead of time by private auction while some contention groups will ask and receive an extension. Several contention sets that ... read more ...
Mon 26th January 2015
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Washington Post Takes A demeanour during Flipping Websites on Flippa - The Washington Post ran a story a couple hours ago on flipping websites. Caitlin Dewey took a look at some people who have taken to Flippa to try to make something off a website they no longer have the time or passion for. From the article: It helps, of course, that Flippa has a precedent in real life. People who buy struggling or neglected Web sites in the marketplace generally want to improve them — a process pretty similar to, say, any given episode of HGTV’s “Flip or Flop.” “Essentially ... read more ...
 
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Poster Boy For Frivolous UDRP Cases: Booked.xyz Guilty Of RDNH: TM Filed 16 Yrs After Domain Was Registered - Booked Ltd of London which owns the domain Booked.xyz and Bookedxyz.com was just found guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking on the domain name Booked.com in one of the most baseless UDRP cases we have ever read. Its too bad there is not any penalties for those who bring frivolous UDRP cases other than a finding of Reverse Domain Name hijacking which the three member panel rightfully found. The domain owner represented himself in the UDRP which is just silly on its face. The domain Booked.com was ... read more ...
 
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Photo.com Saved In UDRP But No Reverse Domain Name Hijacking - Fotocom Société Anonyme of Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, just lost its bid to grab the generic domain Photo.com. Although the three member panel threw out the case out finding the Complainant failed on the first element of not proving trademark rights the panel refused to find Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH). Here are the highlights: Based in Belgium, Complainant describes itself as “a market leader in the online digital photo industry,” serving 186 countries. Complainant holds ... read more ...
 
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To Celebrate The 30th Anniversary Of .Com Verisign Is Giving Away Over $100K In Cash Prizes - 2015 marks the 30th anniversary of .Com and I’m proud have been asked to  judge Verisign’s  #InternetOfficial .Com Domain Name Contest which will be awarding over $100,000 in cash prizes. Here are some details: Make your idea #InternetOfficial. Come up with the most descriptive, memorable and original .COM domain name(s) you can imagine—and register it! Submit your registered .COM domain name(s) with a brief explanation of why yours is the greatest thing since sliced e-bread Here is where ... read more ...
 
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Vertical Axis Loses UDRP On ElectricFootball.com; Acquired When Complainant Let it Drop - A three member UDRP panel has awarded the domain name ElectricFootball.com to Tudor Games, Inc. of Sammamish, Washington which owned the domain name until 1997 when they “unintentionally” let it expire and that is when Vertical Axis Inc. who was represented by ESQwire.com Law Firm, acquired the domain on the drop. The Complaintant did not apply for the trademark with the USPTO until 1999 but found the term was not a true generic but related to a particular type of game the kind currently featured ... read more ...
Sun 25th January 2015
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Coinbase Receives Approval to Launch Regulated U.S. Bitcoin Exchange - Coinbase to launch regulated Bitcoin exchange Monday Coin Desk reported that Coinbase will be rolling out a regulated Bitcoin exchange that has been approved by half of the nation’s state regulators. The Winklevoss  Twins announced on Friday that they plan to start a regulated Bitcoin exchange called Gemini, which they are financing out of their own pockets. They will only be dealing with American banks. From the article: Coinbase has until now acted largely as a brokerage for bitcoin users. By ... read more ...
 
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.Co names seems to be behind adult and using only fine - Dot Co was having some problems yesterday it was affecting some Twitter links. The Next Web reported on the issue with the .co extension which now seems to have gotten fixed. If you are still having a problem, they posted Update: Some are reporting that .co domains are beginning to work again. Flushing your DNS cache may fix the problem. Here’s how on Mac or PC. From the article: Noticed that none of the links on Twitter are working today? It’s not just you! It looks like there’s a very serious ... read more ...
 
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ICANN CEO Fadi Bites The Hand That Feeds It Calling out Those "Hogging" Domains" - Fadi Chehade, CEO of ICANN, in a story published by the HuffingtonPost.com, which also contains a video interview with Fadi at World Economic Forum in Davos, explaining how we “went from twenty-something” top domain names to hundreds” throws large domain investors under the bus and then backs up the bus and rolls over them again calling them Cybersquatters. In respond to a questions regarding “land grabs” in the new domain extension Fadi said: “The reality is, the more there are names ... read more ...
 
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Donuts Wins The Rights To Operate The New gTLD .Cafe Beating Out Co. That Runs .Bar/.Rest - Donuts has picked up another new gTLD extension winning the rights to .Cafe, beating out Punto 2012 the registry that runs .Bar and .Rest. The new gTLD string .Cafe was scheduled to go to the ICANN Last Resort auction later this Month. Other new gTLD’s that touch .cafe include .Restaurant, which is operated by Donuts .Eat was applied for by Google .Food is in contention by three parties .Rest one of the two strings owned by Punto 2012 and is meant to be a shortener for .Restaurant   ... read more ...
 
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NameJet Sells 941 domains for $5,984,520 -

namejet

NameJet sole tighten to 1000 domains during $2,000 or some-more (941) in 2014, these sales totaled $5,984,520 USD.

41 LLL.coms sole on a list, with a tip sale being a altogether tip sale Liu.com during $155,688.

6 Numeric domains done a list led by 472.com during $43,700.

Here are a 5 and 6 figure sales:

Via: thedomains.com

Sat 24th January 2015
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Jeff Dunham's New Wife is Suing His Old Wife Over Domain Names - Here is one you don’t see everyday Jeff Dunham the famous ventriloquist who shows up every other weekend on Comedy Central in three hour blocks of programming, has an interesting situation going on in real life. It seems that the ex-wife of Mr. Dunham, Paige Dunham decided to play the domain game and register the names of his future wife under privacy. Then the ex-wife looked to sell those names to the new wife for a substantial sum. The Washington Post covered the story: [Audrey] Dunham v. [Paige] ... read more ...
 
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Afilias Wins The .Bet new gTLD Beating Donuts, Famous Four & UK Gambling Co. Ladbrokes - The new gTLD .Bet has been settled in what we can only guess was a private auction won by Afilias. Afilias won the rights to operate the new Top Level Domain beating out two big portfolio applicants Donuts and Famous Four Media as well as Ladbrokes a publicly traded  British based gaming company. According to Afilias  application with ICANN they expect to have 21K .Bet domain registrations by the end of year three. .Bet was set to be resolved later this month in the ICANN Last Resort Auction. Here ... read more ...
 
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Flippa Weekly Sales led by Coolant.com during $8,500 - Flippa released its sales from the past week, Coolant.com led the list at $8,500. The name was listed as exclusive to Flippa and sold at the buy it now. In new gtld sales, there was a package of 3 one letter .domains sold. A.domains,M.domains and U.domains sold for $701. The seller listed the premium at $77.88. In the comments he said ” My account shows $77.88 per year for each domain.” That was at Dynadot. Notable Flippa Domain Sales from This Past Week Coolant.com  @ $8,500  (Flippa Exclusive ... read more ...
Fri 23rd January 2015
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.Global Registry Offering A $25 Cash Back Rebate, But only for 8 Days - The .Global new gTLD registry just launched a cash back program to give people who register 10 or more .Global Domain names a cash back bonus of $25 per domain. “This is a limited time offer only available between Friday 23th of January and Saturday 31st of January.” For details on how to apply for the cashback, please click here. It doesn’t matter which registrar that sells .global registrations you use to get the cash back bonus. The $25 per domain will be sent by the registry to your paypal ... read more ...
Thu 22nd January 2015
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Verisign Reports 3Q 2014 Closed With 284 Million Domains Up 6.8% - Verisign issued its Domain Name Industry Brief for the Third Quarter of 2014. The third quarter of 2014 closed with a base of 284 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs), an increase of four million domain names, or 1.6% over the second quarter of 2014. Registrations have grown by 18.1 million, or 6.8 percent, year over year. The base of country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) was 132.1 million domain names, a 2.5% increase quarter over quarter, and a 10.7% increase ... read more ...
 
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Trademark Clearinghouse Releases New Numbers: 34,400 Trademarks Registered - The Trademark Clearinghouse release some new numbers today. There are now 34,400 trademark submitted to the trademark clearinghouse. Just over 50% were submitted for more than one year for a total of almost 86,000 trademark years. Over 128,000 claim notice have been sent out to trademark holders notifying them of a registered new gTLD covered by their marks. Its seems just less than 5% of all submitted marks did not meet the requirements and were not verified. Here is the infographic published today:   ... read more ...
 
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Braintree now lets all U.S. merchants accept Bitcoin - Braintree will now make it possible for all merchants in the U.S. to accept Bitcoin. Venture Beat is out with an article that Braintree after making partnerships earlies in the year with Coinbase and Pay Pal will make it possible for all merchants in the U.S. to accept Bitcoin. I guess for those not that savvy when it comes to Bitcoin but still want to seem modern and cool, this will be an attractive feature. From the article: Today, Braintree announced that merchants in the U.S. can now accept ... read more ...
 
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Forbes Asks "Why, Even After A Year, There's Still No Land Grab For New Internet Domains" - Forbes just published an article on the new gTLD”s and its less than glowing. Here are some of the highlights of the piece written by Roger Kay: “It’s been nearly a year since a whole set of spanking new Internet domain names first came to market. These names —which in technical circles are called “generic top-level domains” or gTLDs — were just becoming available in January 2014…fresh extensions — snazzy end-tags like .apple, .guru, .pizza, .bike, and .singles — which were added ... read more ...
 
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My Opinion: Donuts Is Not Helping Itself By Attacking .Com - Raymond Hackney just published a story on the Thedomains.com based on a blog post published on Donuts.co corporate site, which you can read here. I have written about Donuts attacking .Com to sell their own new gTLD’s before and even discussed it in our 2014 year recap. I think its a bad move. First of all its false. In 2014 .Com grew by some 3.3 million domains  which is slightly less than the total number of new gTLD registration but is more than the number of paid third party new gTLD registrations. .Com ... read more ...
 
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Donuts " after such a prolonged run, it’s about time to palm .COM a bullion watch" - Donuts posted a blog post yesterday about looking to the future and that .com is that old stodgy utility that is staid but it is unremarkable. Yet Microsoft had plenty of options for example to register Hololens.newgtld but they still paid to buy the .com and handregister the .us. The article is worth a read, especially for those all in with the new gtlds. The leave a comment link does nothing  and there is no possibility to leave a comment on the post. I believe that .com will lead the future ... read more ...