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 2nd June 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Famous Four Wins New gTLD Private Auctions For .Cricket and .Racing -       Famous Four Media, the registry operator for Domain Venture Partners, announced today that they were the winning bidders at the private new gTLD auctions for the domain nams.RACING and .CRICKET. Both domain extensions will be added to the portfolio of 17 registries in which Domain Venture Partners has ownership. The other applicants for .Cricket were Top Level Domain Holdings Limited (Minds + Machines) and Donuts. The other applicants for .Racing were Donuts and Uniregistry. There were ... read more ...
 
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One Scottish Company Wants to Redo The Internet - Business Insider covered MaidSafe a company out of Scotland that is looking to redo the Internet. The goal seems to build a decentralized Internet, kind of like a Bitcoin model. They want to do away with the need for servers and data centers and use the unused resources of every computer in the network. From the article: The founders of a Scottish company called MaidSafe had a wild idea. What if you were to give the internet a makeover, changing it so that it’s absolutely safe from hackers and ... read more ...
 
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Daniel Negari Predicts 1 Million .XYZ Registrations In First Year ; “Its My Gift To The World” - In a blog post tonight the founder and CEO of the .XYZ registry made a bold of a prediction I have seen from any registry saying that; There is no doubt in my mind that the growth rate of .xyz will surpass the growth rate of .com. It won’t take us 20 years to reach one million registrations. It will only take 1 year.” .XYZ go on sale with general availability through over 200 domain name registrars today at noon EST. Pricing for .XYZ like all domain registrations vary by registrar but a quick ... read more ...
Sun 1st June 2014
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Go Daddy Auctions Market Report May 2014 – Sales adult 7.96% led by SteamEngine.com - Go Daddy Auctions Market Report  May 2014 Go Daddy sales were up 7.96% in May over April as they sold 45,852 domains vs 42,480. The top sale for the month was SteamEngine.com at $38,000 followed by filmesonline.com at $28,000. Online was the top selling keyword, followed by home and blog. ... read more ...
 
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Counterfeiters Using Google Adwords is a Big Problem - Randy Pickard made a guest post on Search Engine Land that took a look at all the counterfeiters buying ads on Google that trick consumers into buying knock off goods. The article looked at a few categories, one being prom dresses. From the article: Among the websites buying AdWords sponsored ads for [prom dress] related terms, approximately half of these websites are filled with copyright-infringing photos of designer dresses. The prom and special-occasion dress product categories are target rich ... read more ...
 
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Yahoo Set To Launch Their Answer To You Tube - AdAge did an article on the launch of the Yahoo answer to You Tube. One of the selling points to publishers seems to be a revenue split higher than what Google offers You Tube publishers. Exclusivity will also not be required so content creators can be utilizing both sites. One point of contention centered on content ownership. In contracts presented to creators, Yahoo stipulated that Yahoo would be given a perpetual license to any videos that were shared to Tumblr. That would effectively transfer ... read more ...
Sat 31st May 2014
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Shocker: Rick Schwartz Now Owns More New gTLD’s Domains Than we Do - On the Live Domain Sherpa show from TRAFFIC in Las Vegas, Rick Schwartz let the world know that he went on a buying binge with regards to new gTLD domains the past few days and now actually owns more new gTLD domains than I do. As we sit today, my company Worldwide Media, Inc. owns 455 new gTLD domain names. Mr. Schwartz who is a fellow Domain Sherpa, told the attendees at TRAFFIC that he went on a buying binge of new gTLD’s while in Las Vegas this week and now has over 500 new gTLD domain registrations. Rick ... read more ...
 
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TechCrunch.com Covers One Applicant For .Art - We haven’t seen Techcrunch.com cover the new gTLD program very much but today they did and picked out a story surrounding one applicant for .Art, deviantART The TechCrunch article covers the letter sent to ICANN by deviantART’s as to why it deserves a “community designation” in the application process, saying: “We are on the cusp of an extraordinary opportunity with the simple use of a single word: a virtual place within the Internet for the arts and a virtual palace to the arts built ... read more ...
 
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One Site Owner Wants to Trade His .Com for a .Link - Switching from a .com to a .link Jean Guillon runs newsgtlds.com and he wrote about wanting to change to a .link on gtld.club. From the article: Prior to the first new domain name launchings, I had created a website entitled NEWSgTLDs.com to inform about new generic Top-Level Domains. New domain names didn’t exist yet so I had to find a domain name and .COM came to my mind. I considered .INFO too but let’s make it simple : you don’t launch a website with a .INFO domain name if you don’t ... read more ...
Fri 30th May 2014
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15 Year Old Generic Kaleidoscope.com Hit With A UDRP -             The domain name Kaleidoscope.com,  about a generic as a term as  you can get,  was just hit with a UDRP. The domain is owned by Xedoc Holding SA.,  who has owned the domain since at least 2001 and maybe as far back as 1999 Of course the term has its own Wikipedia entry. The company who filed the complaint is not yet listed. With just a quick search of just the United States Trademark office I found 20 live trademarks just on the generic term plus many more which includes ... read more ...
 
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Las Vegas Review Journal Covers .Vegas; The City Is Getting $4 a Domain & Expects $250K In Revenue A Year - .Vegas gets a big boost up in A story published by the Las Vegas Review Journal entitled “New .vegas domain could transform online marketing.” Interestedly in the article, Bill Arent the Director of the Las Vegas Office of Economic and Urban Development” is quoted as saying: “”Las Vegas will reap financial rewards from that pioneer status. Dot Vegas will share 10 percent of all .Vegas registration revenue with the city of Las Vegas, or nearly $4 on a $39.95 domain fee and estimates .Vegas ... read more ...
 
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Scroogle.org Closes during $17,100 on Go Daddy Auctions, 2 Years After Website Closed - Scroogle.org closed today on Go Daddy Auctions at $17,100. The site and its owner Daniel Brandt had not seen eye to eye with the search engine giant. He closed the site in 2012 due to Google throttling the site and ddos attacks. The site had a lot of press back in the day. It will be interesting to see who bought the domain. Tech Republic covered the site back in 2011 with the headline, “Scroogle: Adding privacy to Google Search” Michael Kassner did a very thorough article on the site. From the ... read more ...
Thu 29th May 2014
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The Internet Commerce Association’s Website Gets A Big Makeover -     The Internet Commerce Association’s (ICA) Website has undergone a massive redesign. The ICA has a new, sharp-looking website at InternetCommerce.org. The ICA wants to thank Michael Castello for leading the initiative to update the ICA site and for providing the mock-up, and Michael Sumner for creating the new site. The site just relaunched and now contains information on members, news and issues of importance to domain holders, mission statements along with all of the ICA’s blog post. Founded ... read more ...
 
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Uniregisty Wins Private Auctions For .Help and .Diet; Famous Four Participates In Its 1st Private Auction -         At the TRAFFIC show today, Sevan Derderian, Director of Sales of Uniregistry announced at the TRAFFIC conference being held in Las Vegas, that Uniregistry won the private auction for the new gTLD’s .Help and .Diet this week. There were two other applicants for .Help;  Dot Tech LLC of Kansas, and Donuts. There were two other applicants for .Diet;  Famous Four Media and Donuts. For Famous Four Media, Inc, this marks the first time they have participated in a private auction to resolve ... read more ...
 
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How one Google Algorithm Change Can Damage A Business - There was an article over at Motley Fool yesterday by Adam Levy that took a look at how one Google algorithm changed can ruin a business. The article discussed the recent Panda change and the effect on RetailMeNot. From the article: Last week, shares of RetailMeNot (NASDAQ: SALE  ) slid over 20% over the course of two days after a report from SearchMetrics found that the website’s visibility had fallen 33% on Google’s search engine. The decline came after Google released an update to its search ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Two Letter .Com; QM.com Hits The Market For 1st Time & Already Has a High Bid of $260K - RightoftheDot.com is exclusively brokering the two letter .com domain QM.com which is on the market for the first time. The domain is corporate owned not domainer owned. The owner is looking for offers of $500,000  or more. ROTD has a current high offer of $260,000 and just started brokering the domain less than two weeks ago. There are only 676 two letter .com domains For some well known meanings for the term QM you can check out Wikipedia.org which includes; Quality management Quantum mechanics, ... read more ...
 
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.Ninja Wins The Week With 5,200 Registrations; .Rentals 5K+; .immobilien 4.5K; .Vacations 1,600 - Yesterday marked the first day of General Availability for several new domain extensions (new gTLD’s)  and .Ninja led the way ending with 5,200 registrations. Closely behind .Ninja was .Rentals which is sitting at 5,044 domains. .immobilien which translates into “real estate” closed it first day with 4,500 registrations. After those three  new extensions it was a large drop off to .Vacations which had  1,581 domains registered after it first day of GA .Flights came in with just 822 registrations ... read more ...
 
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Mt.Gox looking to sell Bitcoin Trademark, Can anyone indeed use it ? - The parent company of bankrupt Mt.Gox is looking to sell the trademark and bitcoins.com to raise some funds to repay creditors of Mt. Gox. Several publications covered the story, we looked at three. The interesting part that Coin Desk covered was whether or not a trademark could actually hold up. The Telegraph reported on the story The company overseeing bankruptcy proceedings for the collapsed exchange Mt. Gox hopes to sell the “Bitcoin” trademark and the bitcoins.com domain name in a bundle ... read more ...
Wed 28th May 2014
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ExoClick Hits 4 Billion Daily Ad Impressions - ExoClick is now the fifth largest ad network in the world, today they put out a release claiming to have reached a record 4 billion daily ad impressions. ExoClick has seen rapid growth due to its access to the world’s top 1 million websites and the company’s aggressive expansion into mobile which now accounts for 27% of all ExoClick ad impressions, a significant jump from 19.3% back in August 2013 when the company announced it had reached 3 billion daily impressions. ExoClick sees mobile is ... read more ...
 
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Donuts Pulled Back & Reserved Luxury.Villas During EAP After Orders Were Placed - Yesterday we wrote about how Godaddy.com didn’t award us the domain name Luxury.Villas which we ordered last week for registration on the 5th day of the   Early Access Program (EAP) OnlineDomain.com wrote about this domain as being priced at $13,500 for year of registration and renewal just three days ago while the EAP program was already going. Now it seems the domain was reserved by the registry during the EAP period while there were pending orders Here is the Whois on the domain name: “This ... read more ...
 
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.XYZ Is Out of Sunrise and into Landrush “With The Most Domainer-Friendly Policies of any TLD” - .XYZ just exited it Sunrise period and is today in Land Rush “with the most domainer-friendly policies of any TLD” “”.xyz’s domainer-friendly policies include: – virtually every domain is available – less than 3,000 names have been reserved (as compared to tens and hundreds of thousands for other gTLDs) – all .xyz domains are available for the standard registration fee – no premium pricing – all .xyz landrush domains renew at the standard renewal rate, making it affordable to ... read more ...
 
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.Wiki Tops 3,000 Domain Registrations After Its 1st Day Of GA; .Club Tops 60K - .Wiki which went into general availability yesterday Tuesday May 27th, is has a total of  3,169 domain registered. .Wiki after its first day is number 67 on the list of new gTLD’s with the most domain registrations. .Club become the first new gTLD to top 60,000 registrations, now with 60,412 registrations. There are now 7 new gTLD’s that have more than 30,000 registrations, 15 with 15,000 or more registrations and Today marks the first day that seven other new gTLD’s go into general availability ... read more ...
 
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After Not Spending $20 To Register His Domains, Attorney Sues WordPress, Google and Web.com - Jeffrey Wilens D/B/A Lakeshore Law Center filed a federal lawsuit today against Google, the parent company of Word Press Automatic, Inc, and the registrar TLDS L.L.C. which appears to be owned by Web.com for trademark infringement and violation of the ACPA on his common law marks of Jeffrey Wilens and Lakeshore Law Center along with a bunch of registrants referred to as “Does” The eight page complaint is in my opinion less than impressive. We will quote from the Complaint below but basically ... read more ...
Tue 27th May 2014
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Sedo Domain Name Transactions Total $1.1MM For The Week - Over the past week, 591 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1.1 Million dollars. 54% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings. Highlights of public sales are: · Top .coms: zapping.com at 28,000 USD · Top ccTLD: kaffee.de at 100,000 EUR (= “coffee” in German) · Top “other” TLD: password.org at 10,000 EUR Below is the complete report: ... read more ...
 
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Afternic/GoDaddy Sells $1.61 Million In Domain Names -

Afternic/GoDaddy expelled a sales news for a week of 5/19/14 – 5/25/14.

All sales for a week totalled $1,618,097.

The tip .com sale was lead by StandardInsurance.com for $25,000 followed by AppDay.com for $20,000.

The tip non-com sale lead by Awesome.de for $10,000.

Below is a finish report:

Via: thedomains.com