.XXX Domain Pricing From $75 - One year registrations will likely start at about $75; DomainMonster releases pricing. When .xxx domain names get past the sunrise and landrush period, you can expect general availability pricing to run from about $75 a year, just above the wholesale pricing from ICM Registry. Today DomainMonster announced its pricing. For general availability a .xxx domain will cost you $99.99, but bulk customers who register 25 or more “years” at once (e.g. 13 domains for 2 ... read more ...

Teen Domainer Wins $10,000 Go Daddy Scholarship - Domain blogger wins $10,000 scholarship from Go Daddy. Brian Diener, who writes the domain blog TeenDomainer.com, has been selected as one of the winners of the Go Daddy .Me Scholarship Program. Go Daddy will pay $10,000 toward Diener’s education at Emory University next fall. On his blog today Diener wrote: I was on godaddy one day buying a domain name when I saw the ad for the scholarship on the bottom of the page, and thought that it was a perfect scholarship ... read more ...

New Bob Parsons Video Surfaces - A new Bob Parsons travel video is now online…but no animals lose their lives. A new Bob Parsons travel video has surfaced, but this one won’t be as controversial as his Zimbabwe ones. Parsons traveled to Haiti with his wife Renee to see how the $1 million he has donated since the earthquake was being used. The money was donated to Hope for Haiti, an efficient charity that spends 95% of its money directly to support those in need. Parsons posted the video on his ... read more ...

GoDaddy’s Home Page Through a Years - Go Daddy home page past and present. I was doing some research on DomainTools recently when I came across thumbnails of the GoDaddy.com home page going back to 2004. It tells and interesting story; seeing the thumbnails right next to each other shows how the site became incredibly cluttered from 2005-2009 before “opening” up again. As a point of reference, here’s GoDaddy.com a few weeks ago: Here’s the home page at the height of cluttered-ness in 2005-2006: Yikes! In ... read more ...

Monte Cahn Sues Oversee.net Over $13 Million Incentive Plan [Updated] - Moniker founder files suit against acquirer. [Story updated with Moniker statement at end.] Moniker founder Monte Cahn has sued Oversee.net along with its current CEO Jeff Kupietzky and founder Lawrence Ng over a $13 million inventive plan. Cahn sold his Moniker domain name registrar and related businesses to Seevast in 2005. In 2007 Oversee.net approached Seevast and Moniker about buying the business, according to the complaint. It agreed to a purchase price of ... read more ...

Osama bin Laden Domain Registrations by The Numbers - Over 100 Osama bin Laden domains registered per hour. Yesterday I wrote about how people were snapping up domain names related to Osama bin Laden and then trying to sell them on eBay. Although VeriSign’s Domain Tag Cloud showed that people were certainly registering a lot of them, I now have some concrete numbers. GoDaddy, which registers about half of all new domain name registrations these days, registered 1,517 domain names related to Osama bin Laden in the ... read more ...

Moniker.com Is On Pace To Slip To Number 9, As They Lose 100,000 Registrations Over The Last 6 Weeks - Moniker.com appears to be on Pace to drop another spot to the 9th largest registrar in the next month. Just a few months ago Moniker.com was the 7th largest registrar. According to WebHosting.info, over the past 6 weeks Moniker.com has lost about 100,000 registration Consider that the 9th largest registrar, Resellersclub.com is one of the fastest growing registrars gaining some 25K registrations a week. Resellersclub.com on the week ending April 11, 2011 is only about 80,000 domain behind Moniker.com So ... read more ...

Total Damage To Godaddy From Parsons Elephant Shooting? About 100,000 Domains - I’ve been tracking the weekly registrar report on Godaddy since the Parsons Elephant Shooting story broke on March 31. According to Webhosting.info it seems that the damage to Godaddy.com has been minimal and also seem to have been short lived. In all what I’m seeing is a loss of about 100,000 domains. So as you can see from the chart on the week ending 4.4.11 Godaddy only gained 19,864 domains for the week about 100,000 less than the week before. The next week, the one ending just days ago ... read more ...

Beware this GoDaddy Phishing Scheme - New phishing email tries to get Go Daddy customers to give away account details. I received a phishing email today that I haven’t seen before. Titled “Notice about GODADDY account activation”, it won’t fool most internet users. But it could certainly dupe some people. The message reads: Dear Godaddy User: This notification is generated automatically as a service to you because you subscribe to DomainAlert. Because of the Comprehensive upgrade of the website ... read more ...

How to Shoot Elephants Without Shooting Yourself in a Foot - To me, Bob Parsons’ response to elephant controversy is more damaging than the original video. Bob Parsons is no stranger to controversy. He doesn’t shy away from it. He embraces it. During his DOMAINfest keynote earlier this year he said you want to tee up your detractors. They make a lot of noise and drive publicity to your company. But has Go Daddy passed the point in which “all publicity is good publicity” is a truism? A number of people say Parsons ... read more ...

Bob Parsons Threatens Copyright Infringement Over Elephant Hunting Videos - Go Daddy founder sends infringement notices to web sites hosting stills of his video. Video of Bob Parsons’ elephant hunting trip in Zimbabwe has made the rounds on the internet over the past week, with many people posting screenshots from it on their web site. Now Parsons is sending infringement notices to sites that are displaying stills from his video. Below is a partial copy of an email sent to alleged infringers. I have verified with BayTSP that it is working ... read more ...

Elephant Shooting Kerfuffle Doesn’t Hurt Go Daddy’s Business - Controversy doesn’t have noticeable affect on domain registrar’s business. Was Bob Parson’s elephant hunting video a stealth PR move? Maybe a little bit, but given that he posted a similar video last year and nary an elephant lover noticed, I’m not sure how he could have predicted a different result this year. But one thing’s for sure: it hasn’t had a significant negative impact on Go Daddy’s business. I’m been tracking DailyChanges.com over the past ... read more ...

Go Daddy Suspended 150,000 Websites in 2010 - Go Daddy took down 150,000 sites last year for illegal or malicious activity. In February Go Daddy told a congressional committee that it took down a whopping 36,000 rogue pharamcy websites last year. Today in a hearing on “Promoting Investment and Protecting Commerce Online: Legitimate Sites v. Parasites, Part II”” Go Daddy general counsel Christine Jones will testify that the company suspended 150,000 websites in 2010 that were “found to be engaged in illegal ... read more ...

Top 10 .Mobi Registrars and What It Says About New TLDs - Half of all .mobi registrations are at one domain registrar. I was just looking through tallies of total domain names per registrar by TLD as of the end of 2010. This graph of .mobi registrations at the end of December is telling: There’s only one thing to notice on this graph: Go Daddy. The domain registrar manages 49% of the total base of .mobi. This is in line with the registrar’s claim that it registers about half of all new domain names, since .mobi is ... read more ...

Bob Parsons Updates Elephant Shooting Video - Edits shine more positive light on Bob Parsons hunting trip. Bob Parsons has defended himself in several interviews since he posted a video of him shooting an elephant in Zimbabwe. But he made a tacit admission that his video could have been less offensive by editing it. The new video loses the AC/DC soundtrack, omits the pictures of Parsons standing next to the dead elephant holding his gun, omits a picture of a bunch of villagers surrounding him with Go Daddy ... read more ...

Bob Parsons Stars On Extra & CNN’s Piers Morgan & Is Unapologetic On Elephant Hunting: “It Was A Wonderful Thing To Be Doing” - Bob Parsons CEO of Godaddy made the rounds on National TV today appearing on the syndicated television show Extra as well as debating a PETA spokesman and the host of the CNN Piers Morgan Show. On both shows Parsons was unapologetic for his elephant kill and the video he made of it. On CNN, there was a back and forth discussion that went on for about 10 minutes between Piers Morgan (host of the show that replaced Larry King), and Bob Parsons Here are the highlights: Piers: “Mr. Parsons it wasn’t ... read more ...

PETA Names Godaddy.com Bob Parsons With “First-Ever Scummiest CEO of a Year Award” - According to TMZ.com, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has just named the CEO of Godaddy.com with the First-Ever “Scummiest CEO of the Year Award”. Bob Parsons triggered the controversy after posting an Internet video chronicling his elephant slaying during a trip to Zimbabwe“. In a copy of a letter that TMZ obtained from PETA sent to Parsons, they “presenting him with its “first-ever Scummiest CEO of the Year Award (Your certificate is on the way)” PETA “Will be ... read more ...

PETA Moves Domains from Go Daddy to Register.com - Animal rights group moves domain names to competitor. Making good on its promise, PETA has moved its domains (well at least peta.org) away from Go Daddy. The domain name is now registered at Register.com. This whole elephant shooting video is obviously a hotly debated subject. Some are arguing this is a different type of controversy than Go Daddy’s commercials. I’m not so sure, and we’ll see how this plays out. But I’m reminded of Bob Parsons’ keynote ... read more ...

LogicBoxes Passes 5 Million Domain Mark - LogicBoxes a Directi company, announced this week that its now power over 5 million domain names. LogicBoxes powers the back end of many registrars and resellers.  “Over 20% of the world’s ICANN Accredited Registrars have been accredited through our consultancy service” Bhavin Turakhia, CEO Founder of Directi said in its press release that: “I am proud of the fact that Logicboxes now powers 5.46% of the total domain names on the internet. “In a short span of time we have been able ... read more ...