Domain News

• ICANN advertises new TLDs in The Economist (Stephan van Gelder)
• Bido.com to restart auctions on February 2nd, 2009 (Conceptualist)

(c) 2008 DomainNameNews.com

DomainFest Global: January 28th to 30th in Hollywood California. Register by December 31st and save $100.

Original post by Frank Michlick

The 2008 Annual Report for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has been published online.

The report covers in detail the organization’s achievements and progress during 2008, including three major initiatives ICANN has undertaken this year: the process for introducing new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) to the Internet; the introduction for the first time of internationalized domain names (IDNs); and an extensive Improving Institutional Confidence consultation, to enable the conclusion of the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) with the United States government in September 2009.

Original post by Domain Name News, The Domain Industry News, ICANN News, Registry News, Domainer News

The Internet is the new medium for all kinds of knowledge people are searching for.
It has become a very indispensable tool for learning and
instruction for all kinds of subjects. With the success…

Original post by default@goarticles.com (Anna Hartman)

There should be many more people making it in MLM or Network Marketing. Forget about the 3 foot rule, your list, friends and family, hotel meetings, 3 way calling , and cold calling leads. Biz OPP lea…

Original post by default@goarticles.com (Ron Streed)

The National Internet Exchange of India, which operates the .IN ccTLD
Registry, is inviting proposals from interested individuals who wish to
apply as Arbitrators for the .IN Registry, and who have proven
expertise in this area as per the Eligibility Criteria. The positions
are for three years.

Original post by Domain Name News, The Domain Industry News, ICANN News, Registry News, Domainer News

In late December, CZ.NIC announced there were now 500,000 .cz domain
names registered. The registration of .cz domain names has risen
rapidly since October 2007, with the increase attributed to their then
new registration system called FRED with more than 200,000 domains have
been registered since its introduction.

Original post by Domain Name News, The Domain Industry News, ICANN News, Registry News, Domainer News

John Motson, the domainer behind DnXpert.com and the ebook Domaining Manifesto has concocted a new domain auction site with a twist that should get people talking. The recipe?  Take 1 high value domain, mix in a little Bido.com-type buzz, a dash of Million Dollar Home Page ingenuity and a dash of  entrepreneurial spirit and you get MysteryDomainAuction.com .

Motson’s Mystery Domain Auction is auctioning off one mystery domain name valued at $10,000 over the course of 100 days.  The mystery domain will be revealed on day 50.  Bidding starts at .01 and Motson has a goal to reach a total take of $1,00,000.

$1 million for a $10,000 domain ?  You heard me right.  The trick here is that the domain will sell to 1 person for $10,000 whatever the final price is on the last day, but everyone else having paid in their bids prior in an all-pay auction format means that the total sum will be $1 million before Motson even reaches a bid of $150.  Pretty smart.

The accumulating auction process is explained on the sites FAQ page:

. . .the auction bid amount is incremented by $0.01 every time a new bid is placed (*). Because this is an all pay auction, the bids accumulate into a bulk total which by the time bidding reaches $147 will have passed $1,000,000.

Below is a projection of the minimum value accumulated as a result of bids reaching various amounts.
High bid Minimum accumulated value
$0.10 -> $0.55
$1 -&gt $50.50
$10 -> $5005
$20 -&gt $20,010
$30 -> $45,015
$40 -> $80,020
$50 -> $125,025
$147 -> $1,080,523

Each bidder also receives a link on the site in the “past bids” section .  We tossed in .64 and by the time we got this written up the auction was at .85 .  By the looks of it the links can be used for any sort of promotion and current links appear to be targeted to just about anything except adult sites.  This is a great idea and John’s creativity will likely be greatly rewarded.  I predict a slew of copy-cats coming on the heels of this as well. Hopefully for John 100 days is a long enough lead on any potential competitors.

Good luck bidders !  Check it out at MysteryDomainAuciton.com

UPDATE : Just realized, if the auction reaches that $147 mark that means over 14,000 bids will have come in for the mystery name.  He’s got a long way to go.

(c) 2008 DomainNameNews.com

NameDrive is introducing 6 new innovative templates.

Original post by Adam Strong

Web based businesses rely highly on domain names. Domain names are actually the full names of the web sites they are associated with. Web sites are ranked by popularity on the world wide web by nu…

Original post by default@goarticles.com (Joel Hall)

Original post by Adam Strong

Many web developers, designers and now domainers are flocking like an army of little blue birds to Twitter, a social status service that allows you to share what you are doing in 140 characters or less. Over the Holidays, NameCheap.com ran a wildly successful trivia contest promotion which amassed them a huge number of followers. This is the story of their success on Twitter.

About how many Twitter followers did @NameCheap have before your contest began?

Maybe 30. We set it up and used to to answer basic questions and offer specials, but it wasn’t something used regularly.  (NameCheap now has 4,221 followers!)

What has the response from contest participants been?

Overwhelmingly, they loved it. Many people asked for more contests. It was blogged about quite a bit as well, with some participants even showing how to answer the quickest. Even the CEO of Twitter, Evan Williams, mentioned how much he liked the idea.

What was the total amount of domain names that were won?

Over 600.

Who organized all the Christmas trivia questions? I’m sure they deserve some recognition.

Our Marketing Specialist Michelle Greer wrote them.

Have you seen a significant increase in new customers during the contest?

Our website got 47% more new visitors.

What are your future plans for the @NameCheap twitter account?

Possibly more contests. Definitely updates on our service and basic support.

I see NameCheap is on Facebook as well, how has your experience been with that network?

Good. It puts names and faces behind our customers.

How do you think social networking will affect domaining in 2009?

It allows us to offer more hands-on support with our customers and will help us understand how we can offer what our customers want. It will also help connect domainers with other domainers as well as potential buyers for their domains.

Thanks for answering these questions NameCheap! Be sure to follow @DotSauce and check out this List of Top Domainers on Twitter too!

This article is from DotSauce Magazine - The Domain Industry’s HOTTEST Publication!

Interview With @NameCheap: The Most Popular Registrar on Twitter

Original post by Mark Fulton

The purpose of this article is to provide a guide to publishing high quality content using the Squid platform, as a way to generate an income. It covers the Squid publishing platform in a step by step…

Original post by default@goarticles.com (BABA TarsemSingh)

Chris Dannen of FastCompany blogged his thoughts on the pending release of new TLDs . Dannen feels that the release of the new domain extension will spur a rebirth of cybersquatting.  Too bad Dannen, like many others, has bought in to the idea that cybersquatting equals buying and selling domain names or merely owning more than one domain.  He cites an example of an Iraq War veteran and friend of his who bought up and sold domain names to supplement his income. I’m not sure what this friend of his owns but the act of buying domain names and selling them is not really cybersquatting.  Cybersquatting is illegal. Speculating on domains is not. Owning thousands of domains is not. Selling domains is not.

Dannen also buys in to the message that seems to be one propelling the introduction of new TLDs forward “the Web is running out of memorable domain names.”  Highly unlikely given the number of TLDs we currently have, language variations and made up words and names that are created every day.  Even the name ipod, a name he uses in his piece, meant nothing a mere 7 years prior.

Cyber squatters will suddenly have billions of new domain names to purchase for only a few dollars — no longer will they have to rely on buying domains more expensively secondhand. Trademark infringement suits will balloon from tens or hundreds of domains to thousands and tens of thousands.

Jason Kincaid of TechCrunch follows up to the FastCompany piece, essentially stating that nobody really cares about all these new extensions.  Sure there will be squatters and speculators grabbing up a bunch of domains and it may keep the lawyers busy. We can however look at the history of the latest and greatest new TLD and see that this game is pretty much played out.  A new TLD needs an audience and type-ins and a reason for people to gravitate to it.

As Kincaid points out, people generally don’t navigate to these new TLDs through typeins contrary to what Dannen seems to be saying. The new TLDs are not recession proof in our opinion either.  How well are those .mobi aftermarket sales going right about now?  The Fortune article by Paul Sloan talking about domains as recession proof is clearly dated, given the downward trend that all in the domain space have been feeling.

(c) 2008 DomainNameNews.com

Buy Category Killer Domain Names for the best price possible.

Original post by Adam Strong

According to the Miami Herald, bodybuilder Steven Thiele, has been found liable of cyber-piracy and trademark dilution.  He was ordered to pay $3000 plus legal fees.  Thiele had previously demanded the Indian tribe pay $500,000 each for the domain names miccosukeetribeofindiansofflorida.com, miccosukeetribeofindians.com and billycypress.com. The tribe recently had won a default judgment when Thiele did not respond.

Thiele may wish to count his blessings in this case, considering Verizon was just recently awarded $50,000 each for the OnlineNic domain name squatting violations that were also default judgments.

(c) 2008 DomainNameNews.com

DomainFest Global: January 28th to 30th in Hollywood California. Register by December 31st and save $100.

Original post by Adam Strong

According to the Miami Herald, bodybuilder Steven Thiele, has been found liable of cyber-piracy and trademark dilution.  He was ordered to pay $3000 plus legal fees.  Thiele had previously demanded the Indian tribe pay $500,000 each for the domain names miccosukeetribeofindiansofflorida.com, miccosukeetribeofindians.com and billycypress.com. The tribe recently had won a default judgment when Thiele did not respond.

Thiele may wish to count his blessings in this case, considering Verizon was just recently awarded $50,000 each for the OnlineNic domain name squatting violations that were also default judgments.

(c) 2008 DomainNameNews.com

DomainFest Global: January 28th to 30th in Hollywood California. Register by December 31st and save $100.

Original post by Adam Strong

It was previously reported that LiveDeal.com sold YP.com to Yellowpages.com.  SEC filings by LiveDeal.com reveal that the recent sale of the YP.com website brought a sale price of $3.85 million.

Our divestiture of our Internet property “www.yp.com” could adversely impact our revenues.

On November 5, 2008, we entered into an agreement to sell our Internet domain name “www.yp.com” to YellowPages.com for a cash payment of $3,850,000.

While this sale is not specifically for a domain name, it does provide for interesting discussion and speculation on the value of the YP.com domain name.

(c) 2008 DomainNameNews.com

NameDrive is introducing 6 new innovative templates.

Original post by Adam Strong

Below are some viral marketing methods, using reports or e-books that people can use to generate more traffic to their websites. It is really important to reach the target audience in order to achieve…

Original post by default@goarticles.com (Sandeep)

Choosing an affordable Domain name: In order to start an internet activity the first thing you do is choose an appropriate domain name. Domain names can be found at several places one such place is on…

Original post by default@goarticles.com (Fana)

Government watchdog JudicialWatch posted an article today declaring the domain name Change.gov, the location of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama’s newest website may have been illegally granted.  According to the site, Obama’s team initially requested and was denied use of the domain name Change.gov, but the domain was later granted after pressure from his staff. 

Judicial Watch points out:

The agency specifically forbids political or campaign information on any “.gov” website as well as any tax-exempt, nonprofit organization that can engage in lobbying or political campaigning. Obama’s change site proudly features the Obama-Biden Transition Project, a 501c(4) organization that actively engages in lobbying and political campaigning. The website also uses Obama’s favorite invented term of Office of the President-Elect, which is definitely not an official government office.

It seemed to us that Judicial Watch was making a mountain of a mole hill here, so we looked a little harder at what was presented.

The US General Services Administration (GSA) is the government body which manages and allocates the use of the .gov domain name.  It makes sense that campaigning should be forbidden on government allocated domains, but DNN searched the GSA site to find where it forbids this and was unable to find the specific rule.  In fact the rules we did found, leave the allocation open for interpretation and flexible.

According to the GSA website the following entities are permitted use of a .gov domain name :

• At the federal level, U.S. governmental departments, agencies, programs, and commissions
• Cross-agency collaborative organizations
• Federally recognized Indian Tribes (for the -NSN.GOV domain)
• State government entities and programs
• Cities and townships represented by an elected body of officials
• Counties and parishes represented by an elected body of officials
• Some special exceptions and requests are permitted

It is likely that the Obama team was granted the waiver and use of this domain under the “special exceptions and requests” .  Page 6 of the documents on Judicial Watch (PDF) also point out that the Office of the President-elect is federally recognized and that the GSA is authorized to provide services for this “unique entity that is entitled to government support while retaining characteristics of a private ogranization.”

Granting the domain seems pretty cut and dry to us, but not illegal.  The use of the domain name moving forward may be one which raises some questions with government watch dog groups.  However, it was not clear to us where on the Change.gov website any campaigning or lobbying was being done.  If the domain is used inappropriately, clearly this should be fixed, but JudicialWatch really provided no concrete proof of any such claims.

The only interesting tidbit I found in all of this was the fact that the request to use Change.gov was made on October 20th, weeks before the election had been decided.  It appears that the campaign wanted to use the domain, and this may have been the reason for the original refusal. It appears that once he was elected, the domain name request was approved.

[Thanks to reader Tyger Gilbert of USAWebAdv.com for the tip.]
UPDATE :  A user on Digg points out that the letter requesting the domain  shows no sign of “demands” or “pressuring”, but merely states that they are requesting a waiver for the use.  He also points out that Judicial Watch is headed by Conservatives. No real surprise here.

Original post by Adam Strong

You have to let them know, IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY, that your web site is there.

This HAS to be part of any Internet marketing strategy you develop. This is actually a basic marketing principle. Cust…

Original post by default@goarticles.com (sagar)

As the topic of Ron Jackson’s newest cover story, Jackson discusses the precipitous plunge in parking revenue over the past year has left many domain owners looking for lifejackets and, more importantly, Warren Royal who has already successfully navigated the path that so many others now want to follow someone who, by their own example, could tell us what it takes to reach the next level by unlocking the vast potential inherent in every good domain name. Click here (http://www.dnjournal.com/cover/2008/december.htm) to read more.

Source: DNJournal by Ron Jackson — Reprinted with permission — December 29, 2008

Original post by Domain Name News, The Domain Industry News, ICANN News, Registry News, Domainer News