| ICANN releases new dotcom contract |
| 31 de enero de 2006 |
Internet overseeing body ICANN has released a revised contract for all dotcoms which it hopes will finally end a huge legal fight at the heart of the internet.
Significant changes have been made to the deal - which will hand control of all dotcom domains to current owner VeriSign until 2012 - following widespread criticism from the Internet industry.
The new agreement, hailed back in October as bringing in a "new era" for the Internet by ICANN head Paul Twomey,- contains several important alterations.
They are:
- Removal of a transaction fee that would have been charged to all companies selling a dotcom domain.
- A new direct contribution that VeriSign pays to ICANN direct.
- Some limits on VeriSign's price-rising powers.
- Reduced scope for VeriSign to sell personalised data to third-parties.
- Marginally increased control over VeriSign's ability to introduce changes to the existing dotcom business model. |
(Read More: The Register)
With that contract VeriSign may (and probably will) develope an auction service where all expired domains will be auctioned off to the highest bidder, and they could even let owners list their names during active status through that service. That would change the current model of domaining, and will affect drop cachers, brokers, and almost anyone who sells/buys domains. |
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| Go Daddy Partners with YesDirect |
| 31 de enero de 2006 |
Deal will allow Go Daddy to sell YesDirect's portfolio of 600,000 premium domain names on its domain auction house.
GoDaddy.com, an ICANN accredited registrar, today announced a partnership with YesDirect, a domain registration and web hosting company.
The deal will allow Go Daddy to sell YesDirect's portfolio of 600,000 premium domain names in The Domain Name Aftermarket, Go Daddy's domain auction house. The Domain Name Aftermarket provides customers a marketplace to either bid on a domain name or post a domain for sale. According to Jeffrey Bennett, YesDirect President and COO, YesDirect offers Go Daddy visitors the best opportunity to find the right name to establish an online presence. Working with Go Daddy is a natural extension of their intent to partner with industry leaders.
"Top-notch domain names will sell at an unbelievable premium," said Bob Parsons, GoDaddy.com Founder and President. "Some of these domains have the potential to fetch prices in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. By partnering with YesDirect, we have increased the value of our domain auction site, while our new partners have increased their exposure." |
(Source: WebHosting.info)
Probably that will increase chances for a sale for those who have their domains listed at BuyDomains.com.
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| Time Inc. buys Golf.com |
| 29 de enero de 2006 |
Magazine publisher Time Inc. on Monday said it has purchased the Golf.com Web site for an undisclosed price.
The site will be run by the company's Time4Media division, under Chris Wightman, the publisher of Time Inc.'s Golf Magazine.
Time Inc. said it purchased Golf.com owner SirenServ from a holding company owned by several owners that include General Electric's NBC Universal, the New York Times Co. and private investors.
Time Inc. is a division of global media conglomerate Time Warner Inc. |
(Source: Reuters.com)
The site, that will run by Golf Magazine publisher Chris Wightman, will join Time's existing portfolio of golf publications and web sites, including Golf Magazine, GolfOnline, Sports Illustrated's Golf Plus and SI.com.
It must have been sold for a great sum of money, at least in the 5-10 million dollar range. It's a developed site, with a very nice domain name, that gets an average of 1.3 million unique visitors monthly, in a growing market. |
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| Augusta city government forget to renew domain |
| 25 de enero de 2006 |
AUGUSTA - When is your name not your name? When it is a domain name on the Internet.
When a good portion of city commercial revenue relies on tourism, having the right information available to the public is crucial. Internet connections are a big part of many city and tourism communication systems. Losing that link can be devastating.
Augusta city government and tourism got a kick in the pants when people started calling about a problem with its Web site.
Web searchers were confused to find a bevy of generic business locations, not even in Kentucky, at the Internet address that had been the official Web site for the Kentucky town, www.augustakentucky.com. It had linked searchers with the Kentucky river town for the past two years.
City government offices eventually discovered the problem and immediately tried to correct it.
"We first noticed when our e-mail stopped working," said Augusta City Clerk Gretchen England. "When we called to find out what the problem was we found out that the domain name had expired."
With a little searching, the name was located at an on-line domain auction site.
"We were the only bidder, yet every time we bid it would immediately say we were out bid. Who else would want Augusta, Kentucky but us?" said England.
Ultimately, England found out that the domain name had a winning bid of $750.
"I do not know who ended up with it, but it wasn't us; we never bid that high." said England.
England recreated the history of the Web site domain name, as best she could recall.
Augusta's official Web site and domain name was created when Vicki Bogucki was in office as tourism director. A private credit card may have been used to establish the account for the domain name. For whatever reason, the information on continued payment to maintain the domain name was not directed to the city or tourism office, said England.
"Whatever the reason, we have a new domain name and everything should get back to normal shortly," said Phil Weber, director of Augusta Tourism.
Searching for information on Augusta, in Bracken County, now has to be all lower case and include the abbreviation for Kentucky, http://www.augustaky.com. |
(Source: NamePros, Maysville-online.com)
Repeat after me, Scarlett: "As God is my witness, I'll never lose a domain again" :P.
Hope that doesn't happen to me. I only have fifty-... domains (lol, I don't know the exact number, I can't even remember more than 20 of them), but I won't let them drop like that. |
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| GoDaddy Super Bowl commercial |
| 25 de enero de 2006 |
Controversy is a boon for domain seller GoDaddy.com. The Web company, which took heat for airing a racy commercial during last year?s Super Bowl, is battling ABC and the National Football League over its planned $2.6 million TV ad for this year's game Feb. 5.
ABC recently rejected the 10th version of the ad submitted by the company, though the company expects approval. This year the NFL wants to approve GoDaddy?s ad before it airs, the Scottsdale, AZ, company said. GoDaddy has not announced the content of this ad.
The league told Fox last year that it was disappointed with GoDaddy's Super Bowl ad spoofing the Janet Jackson debacle from two years ago. Fox then pulled the ad, which had been scheduled to run a second time during the game, because of the NFL's complaint. Pulling the paid-for ad prompted a lawsuit against Fox that was settled. |
Bob Parsons said the NFL intends to review any commercial from GoDaddy that ABC approves for broadcast during the Super Bowl. "To the best of my knowledge the NFL has never participated in the commercial approval process. So this could be another first for GoDaddy," Parson wrote.
Nice marketing efforts from GoDaddy, those commercials get a lot of media and consumer attention.
(Sources: DMNews.com, Bob Parsons' Blog) |
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| Sex.com sold for an estimated $14 million |
| 20 de enero de 2006 |
It has been reported by XBiz that Sex.com has officially been sold to Boston-based Escom LLC for the record sum of $14 million, almost double the price of business.com domain name which was sold in 1999 for $US7.5 million.
Sex.com owner Gary Kremen has expressed interest in getting out of the adult business and had been seeking a buyer for the web site over the past year.
Kremen had originally registered Sex.com in May 1994 but in October 1995 Stephen Cohen fraudulently transferred the domain to his name and built up a large pornographic empire. In 2000, after a long battle in the courts, Kremen won the case and ownership was restored to him, and Cohen was ordered to pay $US65m damages. Rather than pay, Cohen fled to Mexico, taking his money with him. He was finally caught in Tijuana in October. |
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| This week's top 20 domain name sales (III) |
| 18 de enero de 2006 |
| | Domain | Sold For | Where Sold |
| 1. | Registro.com | $38,000 | Pool |
| 2. | DenverHomes.com | $35,500 | SnapNames |
| 3. | CheapGames.com | $30,000 | Sedo |
| 4. | Jew.us | $29,500 | Sedo |
| 5. | Hoopla.com | $26,900 | Moniker/DomainSystems |
| 6. | Patients.com | $16,250 | SnapNames |
| 7. | BritishIsles.com | $15,500 | SnapNames |
| 8. | YAZ.com | $15,163 | Sedo |
| 9. | HomeTrader.com | $15,000 | Sedo |
| 10. | Cancionero.com | $13,900 | Sedo |
| 11. | eGay.co.uk | $12,130 | Sedo |
| 12. | AutomobileWorld.com | $12,011 | SnapNames |
| 13. | RoutePlanner.com | $12,000 | SnapNames |
| 14. | ApplianceRepairs.com | $11,911 | SnapNames |
| 15. | Motoring.co.uk | $11,504 | Sedo |
| 16. | Gase.de | $11,257 | Sedo |
| 17. | FinancialWeb.com | $10,600 | SnapNames |
| 18. | Promotion.net | $10,255 | SnapNames |
| 19. | JapaneseCulture.com | $10,000 | SnapNames |
| 20. | BuilderSupply.com | $9,100 | SnapNames |
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(Source: DNJournal)
This week there were not 6 figure sales like last one, but the highest .us sale ever (Jew.us - $29,500) was reported (there are a few higher ones, but details are not public due to non-disclosure agreements). Last week only one non .com domain made the Top 20, but this time four ccTLD's and a .net did. |
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| Google's Most Popular TLDs |
| 18 de enero de 2006 |
| .com | Commercial | 4,860,000,000 |
| .org | Noncommercial | 1,950,000,000 |
| .edu | US accredited postsecondary institutions | 1,550,000,000 |
| .gov | United States Government | 1,060,000,000 |
| .uk | United Kingdom | 473,000,000 |
| .net | Network services | 206,000,000 |
| .ca | Canada | 165,000,000 |
| .de | Germany | 145,000,000 |
| .jp | Japan | 139,000,000 |
| .fr | France | 96,700,000 |
| .au | Australia | 91,000,000 |
| .us | United States | 68,300,000 |
| .ru | Russian Federation | 67,900,000 |
| .ch | Switzerland | 62,100,000 |
| .it | Italy | 55,200,000 |
| .nl | Netherlands | 45,700,000 |
| .se | Sweden | 39,000,000 |
| .no | Norway | 32,300,000 |
| .es | Spain | 31,000,000 |
| .mil | United States Military | 28,400,000 |
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(Source: SEO by the SEA)
The list has been generated searching for the number of results that appeared in Google, using the "site" search operator for those tlds (for example "site:.com"). The number of pages that appear in Google's index is a good indicator of how popular a certain TLD is.
It's curious that the .uk is the ccTLD with the most pages indexed of any ccTLD, it has three times as many as .de (and .de has almost double number of domain names registered that .uk.
It's also interesting to see that there are almost 10 times more .org pages than .net, I didn't know there was such a big difference between those two TLDs. |
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| ICANN to Launch PDP for Introduction of New gTLDs |
| 18 de enero de 2006 |
The GNSO Council has voted to launch a Policy Development Process (PDP) on new gTLDs and to establish a work program in consultation with the ICANN staff and the Board. As part of this process, the GNSO Council has extended the public comment process until January 31, 2006 (see announcement). In addition, in order to inform the recently launched Policy Development Process on new gTLDs, the GNSO is inviting organizations and individuals to submit substantive papers on the issue areas identified in the Terms of Reference for this PDP:
Policy Development for introduction of new gTLDs |
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| This week's top 20 domain name sales (II) |
| 14 de enero de 2006 |
This week there were 2 six figures sales, both brokered by Moniker/DomainSystems. 7 out of the top 20 reported domain name sales contained the word "world", all of them were left to expire and had been picked up by SnapNames.
1. FlashGames.com - $226,950 - Moniker/ DomainSystems
2. CancunHotels.com - $120,000 - Moniker/ DomainSystems
3. CheapGifts.com - $90,000 - Sedo
4. Gators.com - $55,000 - Afternic
5. Darts.com - $54,507 - Sedo
6. eGay.com - $49,999 - Sedo
7. Ich.de - $48,451 - Sedo
8. VacationWorld.com - $45,400 - SnapNames
9. DiscountWebhosting.com - $28,251 - SnapNames
10. FranchisesForSale.com - $26,000 - Afternic
11. ShoppingWorld.com - $25,500 - SnapNames
12. SAIGlobal.com - $25,000 - Sedo
13. Fold.com - $24,225 - Sedo
14. AdvertisingWorld.com - $21,000 - SnapNames
15. IPCPoker.com - $20,000 - Moniker/
Domain Systems
16. ReligionWorld.com - $18,250 - SnapNames
17. EntertainmentWorld.com - $17,750 - SnapNames
18. CandyWorld.com - $15,250 - SnapNames
18. ArtistWorld.com - $15,250 - SnapNames
20. Doktor.com - $15,141 - Sedo
(Source: DNJournal) |
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| CN domain name registration tops one million |
| 14 de enero de 2006 |
By the end of December 2005 registration of China's top-level Internet domain name CN has reached 1.09 million, securing the No.1 position in Asia and CN has become the first-choice domain name for Chinese Internet users, says news from China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).
A series of favorable policies and public opinion support in 2005 have created an opportune policy and application environment for the surging development of CN domain names. The website of the National People's Congress, Central Government and xinhuanet.com.cn all adopt CN domain name as their primary domain name. These moves have brought about collective adoption of CN domain names by Internet firms and top 500 state-owned enterprises.
The move by many businesses to adopt CN domain names to protect their brands has become the driving force for surging CN domain name registration. Since last year well-known companies like Samsung have been registering CN domain names in batches and even resorted to arbitration and buyout in order to obtain them.
By People's Daily Online |
That represents an increase of 150% compared with the same period last year. CN domain extensions are the most popular among country extensions in Asia and number six in the world. At the beginning of 2005, CN domain extensions ranked number 13 among the world's country extensions. |
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| Spammer must pay $11 billion fine to ISP |
| 9 de enero de 2006 |
A US-based ISP has been awarded $11.2bn (6.38bn) in a judgement against a Florida spammer who sent millions of unsolicited emails to its users.
The damages were awarded to CIS Internet Services, according to a the report by Associated Press.
Robert Kramer, the owner of CIS, filed a lawsuit against James McCalla and other defendants in 2003 claiming that more than 280 million spam email messages were sent to CIS email accounts. The emails advertised mortgages, debt consolidation services, pornographic and gambling Web sites.
The judgement, given by US District Judge Charles R. Wolle on 23 December, 2005, also prohibits McCalla from accessing the Internet for three years. |
(Source: ZDNet UK)
Glad to see someone is fighting spam ;) |
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| This week's top 20 domain name sales |
| 6 de enero de 2006 |
This week there was 3 huge six-figure sales (being one of them Earth.com sold for $800,000, the 3rd biggest sale of 2005). This is the list of Top 20 (reported) domain name sales:
1. Earth.com - $800,000 - Pvt Sale
2. Annuity.com - $600,000 - Sedo
3. Sharks.com - $140,000 - Pvt Sale
4. Redmond.com - $62,999 - Pool
5. AdultMeet.com - $50,000 - Pvt Sale
6. Simple.co.uk - $35,000 - Sedo
7. ConsolidateDebts.com - $30,255 - SnapNames
8. PracticePartner.com - $25,375 - Sedo
9. RedWines.com - $19,500 - Sedo
10. StockPhotographs.com - $17,000 - Pool
11. CarsAuction.com - $13,850 - SnapNames
12. SVT.com - $13,500 - NamePros
13. GreatJob.com - $12,750 - SnapNames
14. Ardent.com - $10,000 - SnapNames
15. UsedClothing.com - $9,988 - SnapNames
16. Commentaries.com - $9,100 - SnapNames
17. Hyenas.com - $9,000 - Pool
17. HughesNet.net - $9,000 - Sedo
19. Garammasala.com - $8,100 - SnapNames
20. Trader.us - $7,704 - Sedo
(Source: DNJournal) |
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| Nominet wins battle against domain scammers |
| 4 de enero de 2006 |
Two scam artists who duped victims with bogus demands for domain name registration have been fined AU$2.3m (£980,000) by an Australian court.
Brad Norrish and Chesley Rafferty copied personal information from the Whois listings of Nominet, the dot-uk domain registrar. They then contacted around 50,000 domain owners and told them they must pay a fee or risk losing their domain.
The pair were found guilty of "flagrant" disregard for Nominet's copyright and ordered to pay AU$1.3m in damages to the registrar, after it was forced to close down its Whois database. They were also hit with AU$1m in costs.
Lesley Cowley, chief executive of Nominet, said the company takes "protection of our intellectual property and copyright ownership very seriously".
Cowley said in a statement the need to protect its customers is also paramount and praised the international co-operation which had secured the conviction.
He said: "By fighting, and winning, this case we are very clearly showing that scamming is a serious industry issue which will not be tolerated." |
(Source: ZDNet UK) |
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| Overture Keyword Selector Tool Updated |
| 3 de enero de 2006 |
The Overture Keyword Selector Tool has been updated with results for November. When choosing keywords, it is important to research the amounts of searches for any given keyword. This tool tells the number of times a term was searched on the Overtures pay per click network on last month, so it can give an idea of how often a certain keyword is searched, and also suggest what other terms could be targeted. |
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