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HAPPY
NEW YEAR! Our office will be closed for the holiday
weekend Saturday, Dec. 30 through New Year's Day (Monday,
Jan. 1). We'll be back Tuesday, January 2 with new daily
updates!
The
boom in the domain business and the entire range of
new Internet ventures often referred to as Web 2.0 has
some questioning whether or not we might be in a new bubble,
similar to the one that burst after the first Internet wave a
few years ago. The Wall
Street Journal Online tackled the subject this
week with an article featuring a debate between venture
capitalists Todd Dagres and David Hornik who are
on opposite sides of the issue. You can read the article and
come to your own conclusions, but we tend to agree with Mr.
Hornik who said, "I was recently asked by an entrepreneur
what I thought would be the next great technology in the
coming year. I told him I thought it would be the Internet.
We have just started scratching the surface of the enabling
power of the Internet. Whether it is called "Web
2.0" or "New Media" or "Enterprise
2.0," Internet services are going to drive the world's
economies for the foreseeable future. To me that doesn't spell
bubble, that spells opportunity.
Posted Dec. 29, 2006
The
Mercanti Group, an investment bank based in Minneapolis,
has issued a new
report that is very enthusiastic about the
prospects for the domain business. The opening paragraph of
the report states "Just as open land led settlers
expanding westward in great numbers, “virtual
land” on the Internet continues to
proliferate and increase in value as consumers and businesses
embrace the medium and transfer more of their daily activities
online...Forward-thinking investors and companies that analyze
this shift in behavior and emerging landscape and develop
competencies as brokers, owners and marketers of virtual land
will be handsomely rewarded."
Posted Dec. 28, 2006
Yahoo!
is counting on its upcoming Panama ad monetization service
to help reverse the company's flagging fortunes in 2007, but
an article released at BusinessWeek.com
yesterday questions whether Panama will be enough to turn the
search giant around. Writer Catherine Holahan said
"While the company has concentrated on search advertising, rivals have gained ground by focusing on other methods of delivering targeted ads and brand experiences to online consumers. The competition also has been working hard to sell advertising on the social-networking and user-generated content pages that have exploded on the Web in the past two years, seemingly eclipsing the amount of more specialized editorial content around which Yahoo sells much of its most expensive advertising."
Holahan added " If Yahoo doesn't figure out how to make
significant money off its social media and user-generated
content pages, it risks widening the ad revenue gap with Google,
which has begun expanding beyond search ads into Yahoo's
specialty—online branded advertising (the term given to ads
intended to promote brands and cultivate an image of a product
rather than simply make a sale). Yahoo already has quite a way
to go to match Google in overall ad revenue. Google took in
roughly $7.32 billion in ad revenues during the first
nine months of 2006. Yahoo made just $4.14 billion
during the same period."
Posted Dec. 27, 2006
Statistics
on the Christmas shopping season are already coming
in and while retail stores made a lackluster showing overall -
business online set new records. This article
from the Associated Press today said "Online
spending from Nov. 1 through Wednesday reached $21.68
billion, a 26% increase compared with 2005,
according to ComScore Networks, an Internet research
company. That was better than the 24% rise that ComScore had
expected. Amazon.com reported yesterday that the season
finished as its "best ever," with the busiest
day being Dec. 11. Yahoo! Shopping reported
yesterday that its holiday season beat internal forecasts. It
said that the number of shoppers to the site rose 24%
in December compared to the year-earlier period. Traffic to
merchants rose 30% in the past month, compared to the
year-earlier period."
Posted Dec. 26, 2006
Organizers
of a new domain conference to be held in London,
England February 2, 2007 say the event, dubbed Domain
Channel, is the first globally marketed
conference dedicated entirely to the UK domain market. The
one-day show will be staged at the Park Plaza Hotel in
Central London, just a short walk away from Victoria
Station. David Brayshaw is organizing the
conference with major sponsorship support from NameDrive.com.
Brayshaw said Google, Yahoo!, Nominet, Miva and Trade Doubler
are also among the companies supporting the event. The early
bird registration fee will be £89 until January
10th. The price rises to £150 after that date. The
fee includes entrance to a full day of speeches and panels,
lunch, refreshments, evening drinks and admission to the
after-show party at a venue in central London.
Posted Dec. 23, 2006
The
first big domain conference of the New Year, DOMAINfest
Global is coming up Jan. 31 - Feb. 3
at the Renaissance
Hotel in Hollywood, California. The show is
being produced by DomainSponsor.com. We got the the
inside scoop on what will be going on at the conference from
DomainSponsor's Director of Business Development, Ron
Sheridan. The complete transcript of our interview with
him is available in our December
Newsletter.
Posted Dec. 22, 2006
Rebel.com has become the first registrar to offer a free service that gives investors a single, integrated management view of their entire portfolio,
no matter where names are registered. The company says their
DomainMerge dashboard allows easier and more insightful management of any size portfolio, saving time and reducing the cost of portfolio management. Rebel.com CEO
David Chiswell said, “we are not afraid to break away from convention if it helps our customers remove some of the complexities involved with managing domains from multiple registrars around the world.” After uploading a list of their domains to Rebel.com, users can sort domains by registrars, expiration dates and domain name servers (DNS), as well as place domains in customized portfolios, assign tags and export detailed reports.
Posted Dec. 22, 2006
Most
of you have heard of "domain tasting" by
now, but if you are still puzzled by exactly what the practice
entails, BusinessWeek.com
has published a thorough article on the subject. Their piece
focuses on complaints from trademark owners, but they aren't
the only ones who have problems with domain tasting which
involves snapping up millions of expiring domains names each
week, testing them for traffic, then returning those without
traffic for a full refund before the 5-day grace period ends.
The grace period was never meant for this purpose (it was
designed to be a short window where registration errors could
be corrected) and many think it is an abuse of the system that
should be curtailed (a position we agree with). A few weeks
ago, the .org registry convinced ICANN to let
them start charging a fee for excessive registrations in an
effort to curb this practice with .org domains and we think
that is a reasonable solution to the problem.
Posted Dec. 21, 2006
Moniker.com
put out a press
release today announcing a record breaking
financial performance in 2006, fueled in part by their
successful live domain auctions at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
conferences in Las Vegas and Hollywood, Florida.
More than $5 million worth of domain were sold at the
Florida auction in October. Moniker said their new live
auction channel helped the company achieve a 265% sales
increase over 2005. Moniker also announced big gains in their
registration and parking services. As of December 13, they
were the ninth largest registrar in the world (up from 15th a
year ago) with nearly 1.8 million domains under
management, a 92% year over year increase. At the same
time, Moniker said its TrafficClub domain monetization
service experienced more than 200% growth in 2006.
Posted Dec. 20, 2006
Are
owners of high-quality generic .in (India's country
code) domains in danger of losing their names? Many think so
after seeing some clearly generic .in domains taken away by
INDRP panels (India's Dispute Resolution Policy) in what
appear to be successful reverse hijacking attempts by others
claiming what appear to be dubious (at best) trademark rights
to common dictionary words. Names that have been taken
away from their owners include Hotels.in, Computer.in,
Internet.in, Business.in and Jobs.in.
This disturbing trend has become a hot topic of conversation
at both the NamePros.com
and DomainState.com
domain forums.
Posted Dec. 19, 2006
Organizers
of the popular T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
domain conferences have announced the show will
come to New York City for the first time June 19-22,
2007. The event will be held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel
in Manhattan which is immediately adjacent to Grand
Central Station. Prior to that event, T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
West 2007 will be staged at the Venetian Hotel in
Las Vegas March 5-8. The last of the three
annual T.R.A.F.F.I.C. shows in 2007 is slated for the Westin
Diplomat Hotel in Hollywood, Florida next
October.
Posted Dec. 18, 2006
The
.TV extension should get a boost from Demand
Media's new agreement with .TV registry owner Verisign
to administer the extension. Through their registrar, eNom,
Demand Media is slashing the standard registration fee from
$50 to $20 annually at a new sister site, eNom.TV.
.TV also classes some names as "premium" domains and
charges far higher prices for those. Demand Media is headed by
Richard Rosenblatt (who has already made one fortune
with the sale of MySpace.com). He plans to put a major
promotional effort behind .TV as an extension for personal
video sites. CNN
and the Washington
Post are among the major mainstream publications
that have covered the move and Rosenblatt's strategy to pump
new life into .TV.
Posted Dec. 16, 2006
In
one of the largest domain name sales on record,
Florida's Roy Messer has sold Vodka.com to Russian
Standard Company, the largest maker of vodka in Russia.
The deal was brokered by Sedo.com.
Veteran reporter David Kesmodel, who was the first to
report the transaction in his domain
blog today, said Messer went to Russia in person to
negotiate the sale. Reuters
also had a report on the blockbuster deal that will
undoubtedly lead our weekly Top 20 sales chart next
week.
Posted Dec. 14, 2006
In
the first nine months of this year, spending on
Internet advertising jumped a phenomenal 49.2% over the
same point in 2005 according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus. David
Goetzl broke down the numbers in a column at Media
Daily News today (free subscription required to read).
Ad spending in all forms of media was up just over 5%
from last year (with much of that increase coming from
election year campaign spending). While most other forms of
media were flat or showed single digit increases, the surge in
ad spending on the web was eye-popping by comparison.
Posted Dec. 13, 2006
You
see a lot of reports in mainstream media about click
fraud, but most experts say the problem has been dramatically
overblown by old line media outlets that are losing their
advertisers to the Internet. A new article at MarketingPilgrim.com
says Google has gone on the record for the first time
as saying that the percentage of all invalid clicks there in less
than 2%. This is in line with estimates of a 1%
click fraud rate made by some panelists at a T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
East conference seminar in October. There are newspapers
and magazines that would like advertisers to believe the
problem is far bigger to dissuade them from taking their money
online. Inflated circulation numbers by print media is likely
to be a far bigger source of wasted advertising dollars than
click fraud.
Posted Dec. 12, 2006
A
dangerous fire at Sedo.com's office building in Cambridge,
Massachusetts Friday has temporarily shut down the
company's U.S. office and access to their customer
service phone lines. Emails are being answered but expect some
delays as Sedo employees will be working from home until the
17-story building is re-opened. Most Sedo services are based
at the company's global headquarters in Cologne, Germany
are unaffected. One workmen was killed and dozens of people
injured after a transformer blew up in the basement of the
building. Sedo's employees were all able to evacuate unharmed.
These links will take you to news accounts about the fire: CBS4Boston.com-Fatality
and CBS4Boston.com-Injuries.
Posted Dec. 11, 2006
Photon
Group Limited is making a bid
to take over Australia-based Dark Blue Sea Limited,
the parent of Fabulous.com,
a well-known domain company that provides PPC, registration
and aftermarket sales services. Photon (also based in
Australia) offered 65 cents a
share for outstanding shares of Dark Blue Sea which are traded
on the Australian Stock Exchange. Photon already held
approximately 20% of Dark Blue Sea's stock when the bid was
launched. The offer is contingent upon enough shares being
tendered to give Photon controlling interest in Dark Blue Sea,
50.1% of the outstanding shares. Dark Blue Sea has
issued a response to the takeover bid here.
Posted Dec. 11, 2006
Stephen
Michael Cohen, the ex-con who stole Sex.com
from Gary Kremen and earned millions of dollars from
the theft has been released from prison according to a story
at TheRegister.com.
Cohen was reportedly released so he could locate the fortune a
court ordered him to repay Kremen. Anyone want to bet he skips
bail? It may just be a coincidence, but the article says one
of the few people with access to Cohen's hidden millions, Mexican
lawyer Gustavo Cortés Carvajal, known locally as El
Sapo or "The Toad", was the target of an
assassination attempt in Tijuana at 5pm on the day of Cohen's
release. The wild history of Kremen and Sex.com was the
subject of a DN Journal
Cover Story last March.
Posted Dec. 9, 2006
Despite
almost unanimous opposition from domain registrants
and their own constituencies, the ICANN Board of
Directors today unanimously approved controversial
new contracts for the .org, .info and .biz registries.
The action was taken at the ICANN meeting that ends today in Sao
Paolo, Brazil. Phil Corwin, Legal Counsel for the
Internet Commerce Association, is at the ICANN meeting and
sent us this note: "After one hour of discussion the
ICANN Board approved this morning by a 13-0 unanimous
vote of all participating members to approve the revised gTLD
agreements as published in October. Key reasons for taking
action at this this time was the failure of the GNSO Council
to complete its PDP process on registry agreements and
the recent approval of the .com agreement and the
consequent desire for uniformity in these agreements. The need
to provide incentives for registry investments in security was
also a key factor cited by several Board members." While
the registration price increases embodied in these agreements
is bad news for everyone who owns a .org, .info or .biz domain
name, at least it ends ICANN's charade that they are
committed to ground up consensus policy-making. The registries
clearly have complete control of the Board and their wishes
are being granted regardless of the expense to the rest
of the Internet community. See our November
newsletter for more background on these contracts.
Posted Dec. 8, 2006
Aftermarket sales giant Sedo.com
has formed a partnership with Dotster.com
(one of the largest registrars) that will allow Dotster
customers one-click access to Sedo’s domain marketplace or
brokerage service when the domain they searched is already
registered. Integration with Sedo’s marketplace will give
Dotster users a chance at acquiring their preferred domain
name even if it’s already registered. If the name is not
available on Sedo, customers will be directed to Sedo’s
brokerage services to help a buyer locate the domain’s
owner, negotiate fair market value and legally transfer the
domain. Sedo’s partnership with Dotster marks the fifth such
integration with a major registrar this year. The company said
it sold more than 1,200 domain names through the
registrar channel in the third quarter of this year, producing
significant new revenue for Sedo’s registrar partners and
more transactions for Sedo’s domain sellers.
Posted Dec. 7, 2006
ICANN
is frequently the target of complaints about lack
of transparency and nothing exemplifies the secretive
processes within the group better than the way its Nominating
Committee works. ICANN's Nominating Committee decides who
gets most of the important positions within the organization,
yet no one knows how the committee works or how decisions are
made about who is placed in key positions. UK journalist Kieren McCarthy
is in Sao Paolo, Brazil covering the ICANN meeting that
is currently underway there. He is also operating a site with
information on daily events at the meeting. On that site
today, McCarthy wrote about the Nominating Committee and his
account is a perfect illustration of why ICANN
(the organization in charge of the global domain name system)
continually (and deservedly) gets beaten up on the issue of
transparency.
Posted Dec. 6, 2006
DomainCapital.com
has provided more than $1 million in refinancing to the
owners of SanDiego.com.
Domain Capital is the first financial services company to
offer financing and refinancing to businesses based on the
inherent value of premium domain names. Domain Capital
President Robert Alfano said "by refinancing
SanDiego.com, its owners have freed up significant financial
resources to reinvest and grow their core business.” Mark
S. Burgess, CEO of SanDiego.com, Inc. said, "we
believe Domain Capital is leading the industry into the future
where the financial world views a natural city .com domain
name as real estate, with inherent and long term value."
The recognition of premier domains as valuable assets by
financial services companies could have a huge impact on the
future growth of the domain industry. Just as mortgage
financing makes it possible for millions to purchase real
estate, domain financing opens the door for far more
individuals and companies to participate in the premium domain
name market.
Posted Dec. 5, 2006
If
you would like to get a glimpse into daily activity
at the ICANN meeting currently underway in Sao
Paolo, Brazil, you can check out ICANN board member Susan
Crawford's blog posts from the conference. Her entry on
the opening day Saturday is here,
and her day two post is here.
While we are on the subject of ICANN blogs, two independent
blogs that are well worth following for insight into the
organization that oversees the domain name system are ICANNWatch.org
and Bret
Fausett's ICANN Blog.
Posted Dec. 4, 2006
The
ICANN meeting in Sao Paolo, Brazil opened
today and will continue through Friday, Dec. 8. On the
last day of the meeting (Dec. 8), the ICANN board is to
consider approval of controversial new contracts for the .org,
.info and .biz registries that have been almost
universally opposed by domain registrants. That pending
decision is widely viewed as the most important issue at this
meeting as approval could result in much higher domain
registration and renewal fees (at a time when providing those
services is actually falling). A special website backed by
ICANN and operated by UK journalist Kieren McCarthy,
has been set up at http://sp.icann.org/
to help everyone follow daily developments at the Sao Paolo
conference.
Posted Dec. 2, 2006
ICANN
has approved the .Org registry's request to
start charging a fee to "domain tasters" (people or
registrars who automatically scoop up every deleting
domain, test them for traffic, then return those without
traffic for a full refund within the registry's 5-day grace
period). The start date, exact amount and other details of the
new "excess deletion fee" have not been released
yet. We would expect other registries to move in the same
direction now that .org has led the way in curtailing abuse of
the registry grace period.
Posted Dec. 1, 2006
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