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.

Mon 13th October 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Mobile Corporation Acquires Mobile.Ph - Back on August 8, 2014 we spoke with Jeffrey Peterson of Mobile Corporation Mobile Corporation just completed the purchase of Mobile.co for $239,000. Our readers may recall that there was an interesting story behind this transaction. The start up based out of Cambridge,Massachusetts has raised $5 million in funding. Jeffrey Peterson the CEO of Mobile Corporation was kind enough to get on the phone and give me an interview about the company and their strategy. Mobile Corporation announced over the ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ICANN Updates Agreement With PowerAuctions for Indirect New gTLD Contention Sets & Pays $120K More - ICANN announced tonight that it was updating its agreement with Power Auctions LLC, the company ICANN contracted with to operate auctions of Last Resort for new gTLD’s that received more than one application and were not able to settle the contention amongst themselves. ICANN announced today that it has Updated its agreement today with Power Auctions to provide for Indirect Contention Sets for which PowerAuctions will get paid another $120,000 We wrote about ICANN agreement with Power Auctions, ... read more ...
Sun 12th October 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
fTLD Registry Announces It Has Resolved Contension & Is Going To Operate .Insurance + .Bank - The fTLD Registry announced on Twitter today that it has settle contention with Donuts and Radix the only other applicants for the new gTLD .Insurance and will be operating the very valuable string. The fTLD Registry also announced that On September 25, 2014,  “fTLD registry was granted the right to operate the new gTLD .Bank”,  although the application from the other applicant Radix has not yet been withdrawn fTLD is planning on operating .insurance with a lot of restrictions Here is some ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Cruise.Discount and Cruises.Discount Sells For $10,000 - The new gTLD’s Cruise.Discount and Cruises.Discount just sold in an auction on the site FreeMarket.com The pair of new gTLD domain names were sold together in one lot for $10,005. Here is how the description on the auction listing read: “Cruise.Discount Cruises.Discount I don’t have to tell you on how profitable the Cruise Industry is and how much Companies love Cruise Domains. Every time I was looking into booking a cruise, probably like anyone else, they searched around for a discount. Provide ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Name.Space is looking for your assistance to take on ICANN - NAME.SPACE is suing the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The future of the Internet is at stake – you can make a difference. http://www.thevillager.com/?p=8176 If you don’t like an Internet controlled by a few large corporations that own our data, and place profit and power before liberty and community, support NAME.SPACE v. ICANN. NAME.SPACE began in 1996, originating and operating over 500 generic top-level domains (gTLDs) sourced from the crowd. Our startup introduced ... read more ...
Sat 11th October 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Bob Olea: “Any Domain Seized, Not Owned By Defendant Will Be Returned” - Good news for anyone who had domain names seized by Verisign as part of an ongoing case who are not related to the defendant in that case. The court appointed receiver Bob Olea sent me an email yesterday to the effect that domain that were not owned by the defendant of the case will be returned to their owners. We wrote about around 5,000 domain names that we seized by Verisign related to a dispute under a sealed court order back on October 9th. Since then TechDirt.com wrote a story about the case, ... read more ...
Fri 10th October 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
FC Barcelona Loses Attempt To Grab The Domain Name: FCB.email - FC Barcelona just lost its attempt to score the domain name FCB.email away from Joerg Lindemer of Neuenburg, Germany in a Uniform Rapid Suspension proceeding (URS). The Football Association Premier League Limited did much better winning a UDRP on the new gTLD premierleague.club, (here is the link to that case) Here are the highlights of the FC Barcelona case in which the Examiner was Piotr Nowaczyk: The Complainant is a Spanish football club. It has won many national and international football titles ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
CENTR – Myth & Fact: New gTLDs, Registries & Registrars - The Council of European National Top Level Domain Registries (CENTR) commissioned a study to look at the impact of new gtlds in the sales and the registar- registry relationships. Introduction: In August of 2014, CENTR commissioned Architelos to conduct a study documenting the new gTLD sales channel and registry-registrar dynamic. The goal of the study was to review the most prevalent beliefs and predictions prior to the launch of new gTLDs and determine what if any had thus far proven to be accurate, ... read more ...
Thu 9th October 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
1st Official New gTLD Registry Purchase As Radix Acquires .Tech - Radix a new gTLD registry announce today that is has acquire the new gTLD .Tech The ICANN auction for .Tech was held last month with the winning bid of $6,760,000 being placed by dot Tech LLC,  which is owned by the same principals of the company  the operate the .UNO registry. The other applicants for .Tech were  Donuts, Uniregistry, Top Level Domain Holdings (Minds + Machines) and Google . Radix either bought the registry post auction or pre-auction Either way its a great win for Radix. The ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
.Lawyer: Lots Of End Users Including National Law Firms: Here’s Our Picks For The Best - We looked into the zone file for the .Lawyer new gTLD and saw a good number of end users registering domain names including a lot of national law firms. I assume we would see the same thing for .Attorney but honestly its pretty time consuming to go through these zone files. Of course for the domainer community we are looking for Generic’s that were registered and a good number of premium domain name including super premium domains sold. By the way guys, I’m not the greatest speller in the world, ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
CentralNic Joins SedoMLS “to Distribute New and Premium Internet Domain Names” - In a press release out this morning, described as a “First-of-its-Kind Partnership Enables Premium Registry Reserve Domain Names to be Quickly Listed and Sold through Hundreds of Partners, Including Top Registrars, Sedo announced that , a leading backend registry provider, CentralNic, joined the SedoMS to sell premium domain names “For the first time, this partnership will give Registry Operators the ability to sell premium registry reserve names through a network of hundreds of sales partners, ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
1st New gTLD Totals .NYC 26,858; .Lawyer 3,240; .Attorney 2,156 - Yesterday we saw the launch of three new gTLD’s Once of the most anticipated new gTLD, .NYC for New York City finished its first day of general availability (GA) with .NYC domain registrations with a total of 28,858 registrations. .NYC had some 6,000 landrush and Sunrise registrations already on the books before GA. Meaning that .NYC gained some 20,000 domain name registrations in its first day of GA. AdAge.com published a story in which it wrote that over 100,000 people participated in Landrush, ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
China.info Sells in Hexonet Drop Auction For $12K - A few days ago noted that the domain name China.info dropped. The domain name was owned by Chinese nic the registry for the China .cn ccTLD. We wrote that the domain name was not caught by any of the big drop catchers but by the domain name registrar hexonet.net. I was informed today by Hexonet.net that the auction between 16 bidders ended today with the winning bid hitting 12,005.00 USD. Nice domain Congrats to the buyer   ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
.Attorney & .Lawyer New gTLD Priced as High as $60K per year, Yes some sold - A Few weeks ago we wrote about the highest priced premium domain names we have seen in the new gTLD launch those for the super premiums of .Attorney and .Lawyer, that carry an registration and annual renewal fee up to $60,000 a year and today it appears some of them sold in the first day of general availability . Accident.Attorney and injury.lawyer are two domain names that had a registration and annual renewal fee of up to $60,000 per year that are now registered. Of course prices can vary widely ... read more ...
Wed 8th October 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
NameJet.com Reports Reports Over $460K in Sales In September -

Namejet.com only released a sales news for Sep 2014 stating $460,000.

Only sales of $2,000 or some-more are reported,

Here is a list:

 

Via: thedomains.com

 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ICA Changes Membership Structure, Add New Board Position & Voting Procedures For Board - The Internet Commerce Association (ICA) announced today that it passed a resolution (Here is the full Resolution) which changes its membership structure, adds a new Board Positions changes the voting procedures for members of its Board. Under the resolution the new levels of membership are as follows: Platinum members are for those individuals and/or corporations that contribute $25K or more per year Gold Members are those that contribute between $10,000-$24,999 per year Silver members are for ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
.NYC Says Over 10K Landrush Applications Were Received For Domain Names - AdAge.com just published a post covering today’s .NYC launch into general availability.  Its just one of many publications that have covered New York City big day but a quote from the story caught my eye. AdAge updated their story for a correction: CORRECTION: A previous version of this story said more than 100,000 people signed up for a .nyc domain. More than 10,000 people signed up. In total there are about 50 founders representing a diverse group of people and organizations across the city. ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Why Shouldn’t ICANN Terminate Registrars That Have A History of Domain Thefts? - ICANN has terminated domain name registrars accreditation in the past for several issues, many related to non-payment of  minimal fees due to ICANN,  and record keeping requirements ICANN has sent out a lot more Notices  Of  Breach  Of  the Registrar  Accreditation  Agreement to registrars for such conduct which got cured by the registrar which basically means the registrars fixed some paperwork and paid past due fees. Now we are seeing a rash of domain name thefts out of domain holders accounts ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Overstock Looking To Democratize Wall Street With New Bitcoin Related Project - Overstock is looking to change things on Wall Street In an article on Wired.com it seems that Overstock is straying from their core business and working on a side project that hopes to democratize Wall Street. Building on top of the existing Bitcoin protocol. If the project is successful there is a plan to spin the business off as a separate company. Overstock has certainly been one of the ecommerce companies that has been at the forefront of exploring opportunities with Bitcoin. It will be interesting ... read more ...
Tue 7th October 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Sedo Transactions Totals $1.2 Million -

Over a past week, 443 exchange took place on Sedo’s marketplace and around SedoMLS, totaling $1.2 million

51% of sum sales were a outcome of Buy Now listings.

Highlights of open sales are:

· Top .coms: athlon.com during 100,000 USD
· Top ccTLD: netbet.ca during 13,500 USD
· Top “other” TLD: tdsc.org during 5,500 USD

 

Via: thedomains.com

 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
1 Day After Launch, Namejet’s “Premium” .Desi New gTLD Auction Is Live - Yesterday .Desi launched into general availability with 324 registrations. Today Namejet.com announced it’s holding a Premium .Desi domain auction with 30 “premium” .Desi domain names. According to Namejet.com .Desi is  “a global term to refer to the culture, people and products originating from the Indian sub-continent (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka). It evokes a sense of identity among 1.7 billion people around the world. Get found by billions of desis with a domain name ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
20 Year Old NUVO.Com Saved in A One Member Panel UDRP & Domain Holder Didn’t Respond - SiTV, Inc. of Glendale, California, just lost its bid to grab the domain name Nuvo.com in a UDRP. The one member panel decision of Michael A. Albert rejected the claim even though the domain holder, which is now a Bankruptcy Trustee, did not file a formal response. The opinion did not mention the registration date of the domain or any change in ownership. The domain name Nuvo.com has a original registration date of August 24, 1994 Here are the highlights: Complainant has a United States Patent and ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
.NYC Landrush Auctions To Start On Oct 23rd & SnapNames.com Will Handle Them - According to an email we received from a domain investor, The .NYC  landrush collision auctions will be managed by SnapNames, the .nyc Auction Provider. A landrush collision occurs when more than 1 landrush application was submitted for the same .NYC domain name “Auctions will be held on three different dates to best suit bidders with multiple applications for .nyc domains. Auction dates have been determined by the first letter of the applied for .nyc domain application. If your .nyc application ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Vern Jurovich Is Back As Chief Operating Officer of Uniregistry -

Michael Berkens, Esq. is a owner and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also a co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. that owns over 75,000 domain names and whose sell site is during MostWantedDomains.com. Michael is also a Director of RightoftheDot.com that is a consultant in a new gTLD space and a attorney of super reward domains.

Via: thedomains.com

 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
New Domain Name Registrar Offers At Cost Registrations: DomainCostClub.com - According to a press release out today boosts that “DomainCostClub.com  Becomes the First Domain Registrar in the World to Offer At-Cost Pricing The “ICANN Accredited registrar starts a new club to provide domains at wholesale price to its members, starting from October 2014, Domain Cost Club will accept new members.” “Domain Cost Club provides its members with domain name registration, renewal and transfers at the same price that it costs to them, this results from 20% to 300% savings ... read more ...