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 17th July 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
New gTLD 1st Day Registration #: .Exchange 1,252; .Capital 909; .Moda 724; .Gripe 212; .Engineering 142 - 5 New gTLD went into their first day of general availability yesterday and combined the 5 new extension have a total of less than 2,500 registrations. After the first day of general availability, including any Sunrise registrations and registrations taken in the Early Access Program here are the totals: .Exchange 1,252 .Capital 909 .Moda 724 .Gripe 212 .Engineering 142 All stats are furnished by ntldstats.com, except for .Capital which RegistrarStats.com had totals for but ntldstats.com did not. With ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
New Stealthier Ads Are A Big Hit For Google - John Koetsier wrote a very interesting piece on Venture Beat on how the new look of Google ads is boosting click through rates. Back in March Computer World explained, Google is testing some changes to the way it displays search results, including a tweak to how it presents paid links that could throw off unsuspecting users. Paid links in Google’s search results are marked today with a yellow shaded background. Under the experimental layout, which is being widely tested with users, a small yellow ... read more ...
Wed 16th July 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Logics.com sells for $50,000 - Logics.com just crossed the Sedo sales feed for $50,000 The domain was registered in 1996 and was recently owned by Advanced Logics Inc. out of  Clearwater Florida. Here is a link to a look at the site back in 2002 The buyer looks to be a company called Intellirose out of Chicago,Illinois. There is a landing page up ... read more ...
 
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Crypto Currency Supporters Spend Some Serious Coin Registering .Exchange Domains - The new gTLD .Exchange moved into general availability today (you can register it now at most domain name registrars) and it appears some very good domain names were taken in Sunrise and during the Early Access Program (EAP) at premium prices, especially when it came to Crypto Currencies some of which were registered on day 1 of the EAP with prices of up to $12,500 (Plus Premium) and day 2 with prices over $3K plus premium price. Too bad no one applied for .Coin New gTLD, it looks like it would been ... read more ...
 
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TheFullStory.com Raises $1.2 Million After Buying The Domain In Dec for $2,477 - The domain name TheFullStory.com was sold on Godaddy.com/Afternic.com in December last year for $2,477. Today the company was covered by TechCrunch.com after raising $1.2 Million Dollars. According to TechCrunch, TheFullStory.com is “trying to minimize those endless hours spent on the phone by capturing everything a user does on a company’s product using a simple script. FullStory captures mouse movement, clicks, page transitions and more and allows for session playback for support teams to understand ... read more ...
 
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Pinterest Has Universal Rights On Word PIN? Files UDRP On PinSex.com and PinGay.com - Pinterest, Inc. filed a UDRP back in June against two domain name PinSex.com and PinGay.com Before you check out the two domains subject to the UDRP,  I should mention that you better be over 18 and have a strong tolerance for some serious adult material that appears immediately as soon as the sites load. The domain names are fully developed adult sites and  which are not commonly the types of domains that get hit with a UDRP: parked pages, sites which use adsense, gripe sites, domains that do ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
House Passes Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act - Grant Gross wrote a piece on PC World about the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act. There has been a ban on Internet access taxes for several years in most states. The ban has been extended three times. As I said some states had these taxes and there was a grandfather clause which allowed states like Texas to take in $350 million per year. From the article: The House, in a voice vote Tuesday, passed the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act, over the objections of some Democrats. In addition to permanently ... read more ...
Tue 15th July 2014
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Yahoo Reports: Paid Clicks Up 3%; Price Per Click Up 15% But Display Ads Are Down - Yahoo! Inc.(NASDAQ: YHOO) today reported results for the quarter ended June 30, 2014 after the market closed and missed on earning as revenues declined on display advertising. Earning were $270 million, or 26 cents per share, in the 2nd Quarter, down from $331 million, or 30 cents per share, in the same period a year earlier. Revenue fell 4% to $1.08 billion from $1.14 billion. After subtracting commissions paid to Yahoo’s ad partners, revenue totaled $1.04 million, down 3% from $1.07 billion ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Is SEO on a verge of annihilation ? - Where is SEO Headed ? Andrew Edwards wrote an article on Click Z asking the question, “Is SEO dead ?” Edwards seems to believe that Google taking away the keyword data makes SEO less valuable as a major support system has been taken away. Edwards points out that it is in the best interest of Google to try to undermine SEO, There is no good reason for Google to stop trying to stamp out SEO, because in effect, SEO damps the quality of search results for the user. Google is interested in the user ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
The Biggest Registrant of .Bar Domain Names So Far Is .Bar - Earlier today we published the 1st day results for .Bar and .Rest. Using ntldstats.com, we had .Bar with 2,464 while other domain blogs had the number just over 1,000. Well ntldstats.com has now updated again and they are showing a total of 2,836 .Bar domain names registered. However with the updated today its clear that the biggest registrant of .Bar domain names is the .Bar Registry. Out of the 2,836 .Bar domain names registered, 1,602 or over 56% were registered by the registry. The registry can ... read more ...
 
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Sedo Transactions Total $1.5 Million Highest Reportable .Com Sale Was $11K - Over the past week, 570 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1.5 million dollars 48% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings. There were only 5 .com sales of $10K or more and the highest was at $11K. 4 ccTLD domains sold for $10K or more Highlights of public sales are: · Top .coms: ching.com at 11,000 USD · Top ccTLD: pluralsight.in at 16,000 EUR · Top “other” TLD: vangogh.net at 10,000 USD Here are the reportable sales:   ... read more ...
 
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Largest Russian Search Engine Yandex Preparing To Launch .Yandex - According to a press release out today Russia’s largest search engine,  Yandex (NASDAQ: YNDX) announced it will be launching its new Brand gTLD .Yandex shortly on a closed basis except for trademark holders. “The ICANN has really approved the creation of a .Yandex domain zone, we are preparing to launch it. We are not ready to mention the exact date of the zone’s launch for the users,” the spokesperson said. “We do not plan to open a paid registry in the .yandex,” the spokesperson said, ... read more ...
 
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SeekingAlpha Issues Brutal Opinion On Demand Media/Rightside: “Titanic Will Hit The Iceberg” - SeekingAlpha.com published what can only be described as a brutal assessment on shares of Demand Media, Inc last yesterday after Demand said it would spin off its Rightside division into a separate public company on August 1st as well as on Rightside. The post entitled; Demand Media: Titanic Will Hit The Iceberg Here is are the conclusions from the article: “eHow.com and Livestrong.com continue to decline in page views and will have lower EBITDA in Q2 2014. Rightside reported negative EBITDA in ... read more ...
 
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.Bar Ends 1st Day Of General Avalibity With 2,464; .Rest 307 - According to ntldstats.com, .Bar had a respectable showing ended its first day of General Availability,  with 2,464 .Rest not so much ending with 307 domain names. Remember .Bar is priced on the high side at $99,95 on Godaddy. .Bar is now the 100th most registered mew gTLD, while .Rest lands in the 153rd most registered new gTLD’s or the 6th worse new gTLD that is in GA. Both totals  included Sunrise domain registrations. It seemed like .Bar reserved a lot of domain names,I had a list of about ... read more ...
 
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USPTO Refuses Apple Trademark Application on Touch ID - Patently Apple posted a piece about the USPTO refusing the trademark application of Apple  for the term “Touch ID.” Apparently the application was denied over likelihood of confusion. The domain name TouchId.com is registered to a company in the Cayman Islands (Not Name Administration), it was registered 13 years ago. The domain is parked. From the article: Today, the US Patent Trademark Office published an official letter that was sent to Apple regarding their trademark application for “Touch ... read more ...
 
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Argentina and France Looking to Require Identity Verification for Bitcoin Users - There was an interesing article on Coin Buzz written by Andrew Moran, the article is about governments looking to find new ways and rules to regulate Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Argentina and France will both be requiring identity verification. This may make an alt crypto currency like Dark Coin more desirable going forward. Dark Coin has stressed the need for an anonymous digital currency. We engineered Darkcoin to be a digital version of cash. When sending Darkcoin, you choose whether ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Secret.ly Bought For $3,500 On Sedo 9 Months Ago Raises $25 Million At $100M Valuation -         It was just back in March that the New York Times chatted about, what was at that time, a 5 week old app called Secret which uses the domain name Secret.ly Today the company announced it has raised an additional $25 Million dollars, on top of the $8.6 million the company announced it raised in March from a number of well-known investors, including Alexis Ohanian, a founder of Reddit, and Bing Gordon of Kleiner Perkins Caulfield Byers.” “Secret connects people anonymously through ... read more ...
Mon 14th July 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ItsMillerTime.Bar; JackDaniels.Bar; Skyy.Bar: Best of .Bar Sunrise Domain Registrations - Today .Bar went into general availability. Although we have noted before that brand holder by in large are not participating in new gTLD Sunrise periods it is interesting to see who is. Generally there were not a ton of Sunrise applications for .Bar. According to ntldstats.com, there are some 110 Sunrise domain registrations. In general it was mostly few liquor brands that applied during Sunrise but only one beer brand, Miller. As far as brick and mortar “bars” the Wynn hotel protected a few ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Minds + Machines Issues 740K Shares + $138K To Antony Van Couvering - Minds + Machines Group Limited (AIM:MMX), announced today that it has issued 738,299 new ordinary shares to Antony Van Couvering and made a payment of US$138,062 in respect of the cancellation of options held by him over in aggregate 9,626,347 ordinary shares. “Antony Van Couvering held options to subscribe for 2,626,347 new ordinary shares at an exercise price of 4p and 7,000,000 new ordinary shares at an exercise price of 9p, which he had been restricted from exercising at each time of relevant ... read more ...
 
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BleachStain.com Loses Bid To Grab 8 Year Old Bleachstains.com In UDRP Without A Trademark - Jerry G. Roper of Payson, of Utah just lost his attempt to grab two domain names about a generic as they get; Bleachstains.com and Carpetbleachstains.com BleachStains.com was registered in 2006 The domain owner was Dave Chretien and Color Spot Carpet of Torrance, California, US. The Complainant which didn’t have a trademark but a patent In October 2000, Complainant began selling a system for repairing permanent stains either caused by carpet color loss or from additional color added. Complainant ... read more ...
 
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Nylonmag.com Upgrades To NYLON.com For $225,000 -                               NYLON Media Inc. which was founded in 1999 and was using Nylonmag.com,announced today it acquired and switched its website to NYLON.com after purchasing the domain name for $225,000 According to a press release out today, “Owning NYLON.com is the first step in a series of digital innovations we plan to introduce to evolve our growing online, social and mobile presence,” said NYLON Media EVP of Digital, Daniel Saynt. “NYLON is what’s new, what’s ... read more ...
 
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.Bar & .Rest Are Live: Priced At $99.99 & $49.99 At Godaddy - .REST (dot-rest) and .BAR (dot-bar) “a new global online neighborhood designed specifically for restaurants and bars have gone live into General Availability today. Godaddy.com is charging $49.99 for a .Rest domain and $99.99 for a .Bar domain registration. We received a press release on these two new extensions and here is a part of it: “.BAR, a domain designed for bars and nightclubs, and .REST, the abbreviation for “restaurant” in almost 30 languages and in more than 50 countries, are ... read more ...
 
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.GOP Has About 1,900 Registrations; ClayAiken.GOP; SaraPalin.Gop; Trump.GOP - The zone file for new .GOP domain extension finally had domains added it to today and we some 1.900 domain names. Some of the domain included are part of the 100 that each registry can register to promote or use in operation of the registry but many of the domains in the zone file are registered to Minds and Machines Limited (Ireland) even domains we obtained in landrush and almost all of the registrations have the same servers join.gop making it difficult to see which ones are owned or reserved ... read more ...
 
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Cin.com purchased for $55,000 has been around a creation this year - CIN.com The domain name CIN.com was acquired by Booth.com. Booth.com acquired this generic, three-letter .com domain with a view to development. If you are interested in purchasing CIN.com, you can make an offer by clicking here. Our asking price is $125,000. To learn more about domain names and their values, click here. On 5/1/14 the domain left Go Daddy and moved to Internet.BS, the domain was now under privacy in Panama. Fundacion Private Whois Aptds. 0850-00056 Zona 15, Panamà Republica de ... read more ...
Sun 13th July 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
.XYZ Debuts on RegstrarStats.com As The 8th Most Registered Top Level Domain Extension -     .XYZ has become the 8th most registered Top Level Domain according to RegistrarStats.com. .XYZ domain registrations are only surpassed by .Com, .Net, .Org, .Info, .Biz, .US and .Mobi (actually .US is a ccTLD not a TLD) This is the first day I have seen .XYZ stats picked up by RegistrarStats.com which shows .XYZ picking up over 4,000 registrations and the only one of the now top 8 to pick up net registrations (of course .XYZ does not have deletions yet) Years before there was ntldstats.com, ... read more ...