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.

Sun 13th July 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
State of Bitcoin Q2 2014 - Coin Desk put together a very nice presentation that took a look at the year over year growth of Bitcoin From the article: In April we announced that CoinDesk would be publishing State of Bitcoin updates on a quarterly basis. Given the positive response we have received since 2014’s first report, we are pleased to release our latest update. This State of Bitcoin Q2 report focuses on data and events in the second quarter of 2014 through to the present day. Here are some of the highlights. They ... read more ...
Sat 12th July 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
From A UDRP to a $238,000 Sale, Mobile.Co Has Apparently Sold - Mike wrote yesterday about the owner of Mobile.pro losing its UDRP attempt for the domain Mobile.co. Mobile.co was purchased back in 2010 for $15,000 and today the buyer of that domain has supposedly sold the domain for $238,000. Chadi Ghaith posted the sale on his Facebook page. It will be interesting to see if the Mobile.pro owner was the buyer of the domain. The previous dealing for the domain was rather odd as mentioned in the UDRP: Complainant negotiated with Ghaith for purchase of the disputed ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
New gTLD Domain Registrations Pass 1.5 Million - The total number of new gTLD registrations just passed 1.5 Million according to ntldstats.com The official count is 1,510,985. .XYZ is still leading with almost 300,000 registrations. While Network Solutions is still responsible for the vast majority of domain name registrations of .XYZ,,  Netsol share of .XYZ total registrations have fallen below 80%.  Discounting all Network Solutions registrations, .XYZ still has around 65,000 registrations which would put it a virtual tie with .Guru. .Berlin ... read more ...
Fri 11th July 2014
Written by The Domains in EN
RapGenius.com Upgrades & Rebrand To Genius.com -                     The website RapGenius.com announced today that they acquired and were re-branding to the killer domain name Genius.com The domain name Genius.com was previously owned by Genius.com, Inc. of San Mateo California. In June 2014 the whois record changed for a short time to Tony Wong of Callidus Software. According to BusinessInsider.com,one of the investors in Rap Genius is actually Dan Gilbert, owner of Quicken Loans and the Cleveland Cavaliers who with signing Lebron ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Godaddy Changing Domain Auction Rules On Time Extension Starting Monday - I just received an email from Godaddy.com that they are making a change to the closing rules on the Godaddy.com domain auction platform, which is to take place on Monday, 7/14/2014. “As it stands now, any bid that is placed in the last 5 minutes of an auction auto-extends the auction by 5 minutes.” “This will change to auto-extend to only 1 minute, and a maximum time of 5 minutes 59 seconds (5:59).” “For example, if you place a bid on an auction that has 4:30 left, it will auto-extend this ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Owner of Mobile.Pro Loses UDRP Bid To Grab Mobile.Co - Inter123 Corporation lost its bid to grab the domain name mobile.co who was represented by David D. Lin of Lewis Lin LLC, New York. The Complainant launched its website in March 2013 at mobile.pro, to provide an online community for mobile communications industry professionals and filed a trademark on the term Mobile.co on March 20, 2014. Its a pretty interesting case in terms of dealing between the parties but pretty disappointing in terms of the result for the reader as they panel found the complainant ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Google Wants Your Opinion On How They Should Implement “Right To Be Forgotten” - Google’s Advisory Council is asking the public on how they should implement the EU court required “Right to be Forgotten” The question Google is asking is: “How should one person’s right to be forgotten be balanced with the public’s right to know?” “”A recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union found that European law gives people the right to ask search engines like Google to remove results for queries that include their name. Since then, we’ve received removal ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Company Holding Webinar On New gTLDs PR Is Full Of Errors: Google Owns .Home? - CMSWire and ICF International are holding a one hour Webinar on Tuesday, July 22nd at 10:30am PDT/1:30pm EDT and put out a Press Release to get people to sign up for it. The problem is the PR is full of statements which are simply wrong The headline of the PR reads: “Google Enters Domain Market with .home, .blog and .hotel” Well as those that follow new gTLD’s know all applications for .home were killed off almost a year ago on the basis of the name collision issue. Strike 1 As far as the ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Bitcoin Domain-Name Prices Defy Drop in Virtual Currency’s Value - Mike Robertson of Domain Guardians was quoted in an article out today on Bloomberg. The article written by Olga Kharif looks at the demand for Bitcoin related domains while the value of Bitcoins have actually declined substantially from their highs. The article quotes a number of sources involved with both crypto currencies and domain names, well worth the read. From the article: Bitcoin’s 46 percent decline in the value since its December peak hasn’t damped a surge in prices for Internet domain ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Go Daddy Acquires Smart Calendar App Canary - Go Daddy Acquires Smart Calendar App Canary Vator.tv reported on Go Daddy acquiring smart calendar app Canary, no price tag on the deal . From the article: Web-hosting and domain registration giant GoDaddy has purchased smart calendar app Canary, it was revealed via a post on on Canary’s website on Thursday. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed, but Canary did reveal that the purchase was an acqui-hire. Not only will the Canary team be coming to work at GoDaddy, but the Canary app ... read more ...
Thu 10th July 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Namejet Announces “Its Best Featured Auction To Date” Featuring Over 200 Domains - We just received this press release from NameJet.com on a domain auction of more than 200 premium domains which they are calling “likely our best featured auction to date!” “This is the fifth time that FindYourDomain has partnered to offer a portfolio of premium domains names with NameJet. The domain Auctions will be spread out between now and 9/4/2014. Matt Overman, General Manager of NameJet is quoted as saying “Never before have we offered so many premiums, the majority of which are listed ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Super Premium .CLUB Domains In Heritage (HA.om) Domain Auction Including Bitcoin.Club -       A handful of Premium .CLUB Domain Names are being auctioned off in Heritage Auctions’ Domain Names Intellectual Property Auction that also includes notable .com’s, including Bitcoins.com which is being offered by Bitcoin entrepreneur Mark Karpeles to provide some relief to the people impacted by once dominant, now bankrupt bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox. Here is a  press release we received from the .Club Registry: .CLUB is currently the number one selling new gTLD, having sold more than ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
NameJet.com Reports $368K In Sales in Jun Led BY XCW.com for $30K -       Namejet.com just reported $368,421 in domain name sales in June. Only those domains that sold for $2,000 or more are included in the report: All sales were led by a three letter .com XCX.com Gedtesting.com maybe a problem as GED is a test and the company behind that has filed a good number of UDRP and URS this year enforcing trademark. ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
New gTLD 1st Day Totals: .Services 4,584 .Pub 1,285 & .GOP Zone’s File is Still Empty - The new gTLD extension  .Services had the best first 1st day registrations numbers in a month, Including the 565 Sunrise Registrations .Services total after the first day of General Availability is 4,584. Two domain name Registrars, United-Domains and 1and1com sold the biggest amount of .Services about 37% of all .Services registrations Godaddy.com sold the third most .Services domain getting more than 10% of all registrations. .Pub’s has 1,285 domain names registration after its first day of ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Yelp Joins The List of Companies Looking to Undo Google – European Union Antitrust Settlement - Yelp would like to see the antitrust settlement between Google and the European Union have a complete overhaul. Yelp has had many things to say about Google over the years and even rebuffed a buyout attempt a few years ago. Greg Sterling wrote a piece on Search Engine Land about Yelp joining others in wanting to see a harsher settlement for Google with the E.U. From the article: Yelp has been an increasingly vocal critic of Google for several years. Now it has joined a group of companies opposing ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
After Just 12 Short Years Discover Finally Files A UDRP ON DiscoverCards.com -   The credit card company Discover Financial Services, Inc. filed a UDRP on the domain names DiscoverCards.com and DiscoverCredit.com. Discover uses two main domain names to access it services and promote its credit cards Discover and its Discover It. They own the domain name Discover.com, as well as the domain DiscoverCard.com Discover is paying Google on a Pay Per Click basis to be on top of the term “Discover” and “Discover Card” and the site that is being advertised is DiscoverCard.com It’s ... read more ...
Wed 9th July 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Experiment Shows Up to 60 % of Direct Traffic is Really Organic Search - Gene McKenna wrote an interesting article on Search Engine Land, that referenced an experiment that showed up to 60 % of direct traffic was actually organic search. In testing with default browser settings, they found differences based on whether someone performed a search at Google directly vs. in a browser’s search box. From the article: Everyone knows that browsers don’t always report where visitors came from when they arrive at a website. When they don’t report where they were in the Hypertext ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
.Global NameJet.com Auction Closes in 3 Hours; Invest.global Is Leading The Pack @ $1,400 - The .Global premium domain auction starts to close at 3PM EST on NameJet.com The domains in this auction are domain names that were in the live auction that was held in London during ICANN a couple of weeks ago and produced over $63,000 in sales Many of these domains received bids in the live auction but failed to reach reserve, however the registry agreed to lower the reserves on a lot of these domain names for the Namejet.com auction. As of publication invest.global is the highest domain with the ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Updated: Christmas In July? Not So Much; 1st Day Totals .Christmas 422; BlackFriday 401 - Two of Uniregistry new gTLD strings had their first day of general availability yesterday and put up pretty horrible numbers according to ntldstats.com. Including Sunrise registrations .Christmas ended its first day with just 422 registrations, 18 of them were registered by Uniregistry itself. Here are some of the domain name Uniregistry registered: Always.christmas behomefor.christmas Boycott.christmas Camera.christmas Cameras.christmas Cayman.christmas egift.christmas Flyaway.christmas Gift4.christmas Girls.christmas Grandcayman.christmas Offers.christmas Santaclaus.christmas Secretsanta.christmas Skivacations.christmas Stockingstuffers.christmas Many ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
.GOP Is Willing To Let You Call Them Crooks But It Will Cost You $250 -             The .GOP is apparently willing to let opponents and haters to call it all sorts of unflattering names but only if they pay enough. Unlike the .Democrat  and .Republican registry which is being operated by a for profit public company, Demand Media (DMD), the. GOP extension is being run by an arm of the Republican party itself. According to its website “.GOP is the preferred domain name for all Republicans and conservatives online. As the only web ending run by a political party, ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Xbiz.com Asks Google To Reverse Ban On Advertising For Adult Websites -         Alec Helmy President Publisher of the adult industry publication xBiz.com sent a letter to Google yesterday asking the company to reconsider its “recent decision to no longer accept ads from adult oriented websites” We reported a week ago that Google new policy on advertising for explicit adult terms went into effect which Google announced in early June. Mr. Helmy writes: “Not surprisingly, an organization founded on imposing its idea of morality on lawful material has taken credit ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ICANN Selects Marrakesh, Morocco As The Site for ICANN 52 To Be Held In Feb 2015 -                 The ICANN Board has selected Marrakesh, Morocco as the site for ICANN 52 to be held February 8th-12th, 2015. In the Preliminary Report of the Regular Meeting of the ICANN Board released last night, This meeting will be in the Africa region This is an Organizational Administrative Function that does not require public comment. For more information about Marrakesh you can click here. ICANN 51 is being held in Los Angeles, from October 12th-16th, 2014. ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
More 2-Character Domain Requested for .XYZ, .DEALS, .CITY, .COLLEGE, .GOP, .TRADE, .WEBCAM, .BID, .HEALTHCARE, .WORLD, .BAND -                 ICANN has opened up another comment period for 12 more new gTLD which have applied to have the right to allocated 2 charter domain names. The new gTLD string are: .XYZ, .DEALS, .CITY, .COLLEGE, .GOP, .TRADE, .WEBCAM, .BID, .HEALTHCARE, .WORLD, .BAND and the IDN XN–FJQ720A. “”To obtain community input on the proposed amendments to the Registry Agreements of several registry operators. The proposed Amendments are to implement a new registry service that would permit the ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Forbes: Company That Runs Formula 1 Racing Paid $8.5 Million For Formula1.com In 2002 - According to an Article in Forbes Today, the company that runs Formula 1 Racing, Formula One Management (FOM) is going public on the Singapore Stock Exchange and stuck in the 498 page Prospectus it is reveled that the company Paid $8.5 Million dollars for their domain name Formula1.com back in 2002. Its another one of those big money sales that we never heard about. According to the Forbes story the company has $1.6 billion in annual revenue making the $8.5 looks like the literal drop in the bucket. Here ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
With 565 Domains Taken In Sunrise & EAP .Services Appears To Be A Winner - The new gTLD .Services launches tomorrow. Taking into account all Sunrise applications and Early Access Program Registrations, there are 565 domain names registered. We have chatted about the last few weeks that no new gTLD produced any big 1st day registration numbers,  but based on the activity I’m seeing in the Zone file it looks like .Services will be pretty successful. Consider that last weeks total after the 1st day of general availability which also included Sunrise and Early Access/Landrush ... read more ...