Every Friday, DomainSherpa.com provides you with a hand-selected, editorially-based review of the weekly news. In this summary, you will find the latest articles and videos produced by DomainSherpa staff and contributors. You will also find links to the best news articles in the domain name industry – so you don’t have to spend your time searching for news or reading something that was not worth your time.
This Week’s Featured DomainSherpa Show
- DomainSherpa Review – Jul 7, 2014: Alicia.com, LithiumIonBatteries.com, Hats.net…
Get into the minds of the Sherpas with the DomainSherpa Review!
* An investor’s portfolio is reviewed and appraised: LithiumIonBatteries.com, GraniteTiles.com, EpoxyResin.com…
* Domain names going to auction at NameJet are valued: Alicia.com, PartyIdeas.com, Hats.net, FGW.com…
* Andrew Rosener takes the crown in this week’s “Name That Price” game
For each domain name portfolio, the Sherpas answer:
* Which domains are valuable, and in what way?
* What is the market value (both wholesale and retail) of the best domain names?
* Which domains are worthless and should be dropped?
* Which domain names may invite legal issues, such as a UDRP case or cybersquatting lawsuit?
* Which domains do our Sherpas want to make an offer on?
We’re joined by three Domain Sherpas: Adam Dicker, Andrew Rosener and Page Howe.
Watch/Listen/Read »
In Addition, Don’t Miss…
- DomainSherpa Discussion: $1.2B Payday; .RegistryReserved; Bitcoins.com…
This is the show where we discuss domain name industry news with a panel of veterans and thought leaders.
In this DomainSherpa Discussion:
* Castello Brothers looking for a $1.2B payday: Who isn’t. Are they crazy or are we ignorant?
* What new gTLDs did the Sherpas buy in the last week: .co.com, .gop, .blackfriday, .christmas, .services, .pub
* .co.com entered GA with “single digit thousands” of registrations. What do the Sherpas think about the long-term success of the registry as a business?
* Bitcoins.com is selling in the upcoming HA.com auction. What do the Sherpas think it will sell for? Is the plural awkward?
* Question from audience: Was Satoshi.com a good buy for $75k on Sedo or is it a long-shot?
* Question from audience: is building sites on new TLDs risky?
* And much more!
Watch/Listen/Read »
This Week’s News in Review
.co.com Launch Compares Well to New gTLDs – 10-Jul-14
The subdomain service .co.com, which is being managed more or less like a proper gTLD, reckons it outperformed every new gTLD earlier this week. CEO Ken Hansen and president Paul Goldstone made the claim in a couple of Facebook posts yesterday. Hansen clarified today that while the company is not releasing precise numbers, .co.com had…
New gTLD 1st Day Totals: .services 4,584 .pub 1,285 & .gop Zone’s File is Still Empty – 10-Jul-14
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…
Registrar’s .co.com Promo Misses The Point – 10-Jul-14
Promotion misses the point of getting the .com I’ve always wanted. The .co.com third level domain name launched in general availability this week. The company is using the tagline “Get the .com You’ve Always Wanted”, pitching you on getting a .co.com domain because the .com domain you want is already taken. Conceptually this makes sense…
.services Domain Name Up to 4,600 and .pub 1,300 After One Day – 10-Jul-14
.Services runs out of the gate, .pub is toast-worthy. Two new top level domain names launched yesterday and both had fairly good days. Donuts launched .services, its only domain name to come out of the Early Access phase this week. It added roughly 4,000 domain names on the first day to hit 4,584. The domain…
ICM Scraps Free .XXX Porn Star Offer, Starts New One – 10-Jul-14
ICM Registry has partnered with a company called Model Centro to offer free .xxx domain names to porn performers. Model Centro offers porn models a managed fan site and social networking service. It’s free to the models, with the company taking a 15% slice of whatever subscription fees are taken from their fans. The arrangement…
Slow Start for .christmas With Under 500 Sales – 10-Jul-14
Uniregistry’s latest new gTLDs .christmas and .blackfriday seem to have stumbled out of the gates, both amassing fewer than 500 registrations in their first full day of general availability. In today’s zone files, .christmas has 501 names and .blackfriday has 445. Those numbers include dozens of sunrise registrations. They both went to GA on Tuesday…
Experiment Shows Up-to 60% of Direct Traffic is Really Organic Search – 09-Jul-14
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:…
Investing in New TLDs? Hope for Modest, Not Great, Success of Program – 09-Jul-14
Early investors in new top level domain names might get a better return if new TLDs as a whole are a mediocre success instead of a home run. Domain investors have registered a good chunk (the bulk?) of new TLD offerings to date. Is this a good investment? I’ve thought about the potential returns from…
Updated: Christmas in July? Not So Much; 1st Day Totals .christmas 422; Blackfriday 401 – 09-Jul-14
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…
Bitcoins.com Gives Heritage Auctions The Press It Has Been Looking for – 09-Jul-14
HA adds a press-worthy domain name to its July auction. One of the things Heritage Auctions is trying to do with domain name auctions is bring domain investing to the mainstream. By mainstream, I mean collectors and investors in coins, memorabilia and other items HA already auctions. It’s working the press angle, too. Yesterday the…
.XXX Sells More Premiums and Offers Free Domain Names Through Partnership – 09-Jul-14
Sales keep coming in for .xxx in its third year. .XXX continues to sell premium domain names for prices that new TLD operators would love to obtain. The company recently sold three more .xxx domain names, including extreme.xxx, for a total of over $150,000. .XXX registry ICM Registry also announced a partnership with ModelCentro for…
.GOP is Willing to Let You Call Them Crooks But It Will Cost You $250 – 09-Jul-14
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…
ICANN Selects Marrakesh, Morocco As The Site for ICANN 52 to Be Held in February 2015 – 09-Jul-14
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…
More 2-character Domain Requested for .xyz, .deals, .city, .college, .gop, .trade, .webcam, .bid, .healthcare, .world, .band – 09-Jul-14
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…
Cybersquatting: How to Win (or Lose) a Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) Domain Name Dispute – 08-Jul-14
The URS allows trademark owners to quickly tackle clear-cut cases of cybersquatting, but its high burden of proof is just one hurdle to overcome. David Weslow explains what we can learn from some of the early cases.
Founder of Mt. Gox to Sell Bitcoins.com in HA.com Domain Auction On July 24th – 08-Jul-14
The URL Bitcoins.com will hit the auction block on July 24, 2014, as Part of Heritage Auctions’ Domain Names & Intellectual Property Auction. The domain name is being sold by Mark Karpeles, the controversial founder of the failed Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, and is expected to bring more than $750,000. “We are hoping, with the…
.christmas & .blackfriday Just Launched & The Extensions Seem to Be Very Lightly Reserved – 08-Jul-14
Unregistry just launched .Christmas & .Blackfriday and the registry seems to have reserved a very small amount of domains. As usually we hunt and peck around for mostly every new extension either to register or to write about. I was actually surprised to see how few domain names seeemed to be reserved by the registry…
.co.com Exits Landrush With Thousands of Registrations – 08-Jul-14
Third level domain option enters general availability today. .Co.com.Co.com, a new third level domain name registration, enters general availability today with “single-digit thousands” of registrations already. The registry says that the greatest interest is coming from countries where third level domain names (e.g. something.com.au, something.co.uk and even something.com.co) are already commonplace. Some third level .co.com…
Texas License Plates Sound a Bit Like New TLDs – 08-Jul-14
A lot of niche license plates, just like niche domain names, might not make sense in the long run. The Dallas Morning News published a story this past weekend about specialized licensed plates and a lack of sales for niche plates. Like many states, Texas offers specialized plates for supporters of certain causes, alumni of…
Frank Schilling Beats IBM in Domain Dispute – 08-Jul-14
Reserved three letter .link domains won’t be suspended. Frank Schilling’s North Sound Names, the company under which he registers premium domains in his new TLDs, has defended two such domain names from a URS filed by IBM. IBM filed a Uniform Rapid Suspension case against the domain names DB2.link and AIX.link. North Sound, with the…
Pinyin to Beat IDN? .wang Ready to Overtake .在线 – 08-Jul-14
The .wang gTLD has seen great success, relatively, in its first week of general availability, crossing the 30,000 mark yesterday and entering the top 10 new gTLDs by registration volume. At its current rate of growth, the Zodiac Holdings domain is going to overtake .在线, the highest-ranking Chinese gTLD so far, this week. .wang went…
Almost Half of Registrars “Deficient” in Compliance Audit – 08-Jul-14
Almost half of accredited domain name registrars were found “deficient” during a recent ICANN compliance survey. Results of an audit published today show that 146 of 322 registrars (45%) picked at random for the September 2013 to May 2014 study had to carry out some form of remediation in order to comply with their contracts…
.gop Registry/Registrar is Live at Join.gop & Domains are $20.16 – 07-Jul-14
I just checked on the .GOP registry and both the registry and registrar are operational. To register a .GOP domain name visit Join.GOP Domain names are priced at $20.16 Of course there are reserved and restricted domains but there is a form on the site if you are interested on buying one of those. It…
ICANN Updates New gTLD Collision Auction Schedule; Here is The New 2014 Schedule – 07-Jul-14
ICANN has published an updated schedule of the ICANN Last Resort Auction for those new gTLD in Collision. ICANN will hold a Last Resort Auction for new gTLD strings that had more than one application and which have not settled the contention through private auctions or otherwise…
Will This Domain Portfolio Owned By The Castello’s Be The 1st to Sell for Over $1 Billion? – 07-Jul-14
Last week I received a tweet to @thedomains, asking the question: “Is any domain name portfolio worth over $1 Billion Dollars? We are about to find out.” The link in the Tweet goes to this site, which says: “The portfolio consists of 40 hyper names (and hundreds of others) that will ensure…
Salesforce.com Sells Do.com Domain Name to Startup – 07-Jul-14
After shutting down service that used Do.com, company sells domain name to startup. It appears Salesforce.com has sold the domain name Do.com to Redo, Inc., parent company of meeting productive application DoMeetings.com. If you go to DoMeetings.com today, it will forward to Do.com where you can sign up for a beta of the service. It…
Tmz.com: Lil Wayne Spent $600,000 to Buy The Domain YounGMoney.com & is in Default – 07-Jul-14
According to TMZ.com, hip hop artist Lil Wayne purchased the domain name YoungMoney.com which matches the name of his record label which has signed artists like Drake and Nicki Minaj for $600,000 in 2011. In a lawsuit filed by the company that sold the domain name, Wayne’s company hasn’t paid the $250K balance…
Napster.fm Hit With a UDRP By Rhapsody – 07-Jul-14
A name from the past is back in the news, this time the second coming of Napster located at Napster.Fm was hit with a UDRP by online subscription service Rhapsody International, Inc. Rhapsody owns Napster.com and purchased the company a few years back. Napster.FM has been registered since March of 2012 by Napster.fm LLC. The…
CentralNic Launches Buydomains.london, Domain & Website Included for £39.00 a Year – 07-Jul-14
CentralNic announced today that they have launched the BuyDomains.London A “website for Small SMEs to obtain their .London domain names” taking aim “at the “75% of London’s 841,000 SMEs that will fail to register for a .London domain name before the 31 July deadline”. For only £39.00 per year, Londoners and London-based…
After 2 Years .sex, .porn & .adult Become “Sensitive Strings” to The New gTLD Committee – 04-Jul-14
After 2 year years The New gTLD Program Committee (NGPC) has decided that .Sex, .Porn and .Adult are Sensitive Strings according to the minutes of the new gTLD committee to ICANN which are dated July 1st. Interestingly before the application period closed it was wildly speculated by many including myself that the Government Advisory Council…
UDRP Panel is Not On Nationwide’s Side Denying Bid to Grab 3 Domains – 04-Jul-14
A one member UDRP panel refused Nationwide Insurance Company bid to grab three domain names containing the word “nationwide” The three domains at issues were; The Respondent registered the disputed domain name nationwideautolending.com on January 5, 2006, nationwideautoapproval.com on April 3, 2006, and nationwideautocredit.com on November 18, 2010. Two of the three domains resolve to…
ICANN Puts Porn gTLDs On Hold for No Good Reason? – 04-Jul-14
In a decision that seems to have come out of nowhere, ICANN has effectively put bids for three porn-themed new gTLDs on hold. In a June 21 meeting, the board’s New gTLD Program Committee discussed .adult, .sex and .porn, calling them “sensitive strings”. While it passed no resolution, I understand that ICANN legal staff is…
Google Adult Ad Ban Now in Effect – 03-Jul-14
CNBC is reporting that the Google Advertising Ban on Adult domain names is now in effect. We reported earlier this month that Google was going to impose new restrictions on adult advertising, which some believed amounted almost to a ban on advertising. Today CNBC is reporting that “Google is getting out of the porn advertising…
Minds + Machines Files Patent for “Domain Name Registration and Resale” – 03-Jul-14
Patent describes system similar to AfternicDLS and SedoMLS but at the registry level. Minds + Machines Chairman Fred Krueger has filed a patent application (pdf) for the resale of domain names, titled “Domain Name Registration and Resale”. Here’s part of the description: Internet registries operate in the primary market for domain names and not in…
GoDaddy Wants to Patent Way of Onboarding New TLDs – 03-Jul-14
GoDaddy files four patents related to adding new TLD options to a registrar. GoDaddy has filed four patent applications describing methods for adding new top level domain names to a registrar’s offerings. Each top level domain name a registrar offers comes with its own restrictions, GoDaddy explains: A large part of the difficulty in adding…
.xyz Becomes 1st New gTLD to Pass 250,000 Registrations – 03-Jul-14
.XYZ has become the first new gTLD to pass 250,000 registrations. The official count according to ntldstats.com, 250,731 domain names. Of that amount 217, 752. are registered at Network Solutions representing over 86% of all registrations. As we always note, the vast majority of these .XYZ registrations at Netsol are free and being pushed into…
Shoebuy.com’s UDRP Record Drops to 3-4 – 03-Jul-14
Company loses a UDRP for the fourth time in just 7 tries. Online shoe retailer ShoeBuy.com might need to re-read the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Policy. It just lost its fourth UDRP. It’s only won three times. This latest loss comes courtesy of typosquatting recovery firm CitizenHawk, which helped ShoeBuy.com go after ShowBuy.com. Yes, w…
2nd Level .UK Domain Name Registrations Top 100,000 – 03-Jul-14
A strong sales month for .UK. Over 100,000 second level domain names under .uk have been registered since they became available for registration last month, .uk registry Nominet announced today. About two-thirds have been registered by people who have matching third level .uk domain names. They are given first rights to the second level domain…
Another Poor 1st Day for This Weeks New gTLDs: .vision 905; .report 845; .fish 542 – 03-Jul-14
Three new gTLD’s went into their first day of general availability yesterday and it was another underwhelming week. The totals include Sunrise registration and those domains registered in the Early Access Program .Vision 905 .Report 845 .Fish 542 A total of less than 2,500 for the three strings However especially in .vision there were quite…
U.S. Winemakers Rebel Against Their Government – 03-Jul-14
Groups representing thousands of US winemakers have come out against .wine and .vin, bringing their government’s position on the two proposed new gTLDs into question. Seven regional associations, representing close to 2,000 wineries, issued a statement last night raising “strong objections” to the gTLDs with “non-existent to grossly insufficient safeguards”. The joint statement says: If…
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