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Verisign
announced today that their new contract agreement
with ICANN to run the .com registry has been approved
by the U.S. Department of Commerce. This contract, like
the current proposed .org, .info and .biz contracts,
was heavily opposed by domain registrants who will end up
paying higher registration fees. More details on the
agreement, which included some amendments before receiving DOC
approval can be found here.
Phil Corwin, legal counsel for the Internet Commerce
Association said "The domain
name owners represented by the ICA are deeply disappointed
that the Department of Commerce chose to approve a
fundamentally flawed agreement that permits VeriSign to charge
above market rate prices for .Com registrations and renewals
over the next six years. However, we are gratified that the
Department gave some deference to the broad opposition of the
Internet community and obtained some concessions regarding
pricing and renewal. We shall be carefully monitoring
VeriSign's actions and the effectiveness of the Department's
oversight under the new contract."
Posted Nov. 30, 2006
It
appears that ICANN has delayed a decision on
controversial new contracts for the .org, .info
and .biz registries until their next meeting Dec. 8
in Sao Paolo, Brazil. The contract proposals were on
the agenda for a Nov. 22 meeting, but the ICANN
website now has them relisted on the agenda for
the Dec. 8 meeting. In addition, a rundown of adopted
resolutions from the Nov. 22 meeting makes no mention of the
contract proposals which had been almost unanimously opposed
in hundreds of public comments posted to the ICANN message
board. If approved, the contracts would pave the way for
dramatic price increases for domain registrants at a time when
the cost of providing registry services is actually falling.
The delay gives domain owners who have not already done so an
opportunity to post their objections to the contracts here: http://www.icann.org/announcements/...ent-24oct06.htm
Posted Nov. 30, 2006
The
December 2006 issue of Business
2.0 magazine has a pair of articles that will be
of special interest to domain investors. One, written by John
Heilemann, profiles Demand Media chief Richard
Rosenblatt (whose company bought major registrars Enom
and BulkRegistrar this year). The other is a feature on
GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons and his company
written by Paul Sloan. The link in the opening sentence
of this post will take you to an electronic version of the
magazine. The Rosenblatt story starts on page 42 and the
Parsons piece begins on page 126.
Posted Nov. 29, 2006
It's
official now - Afternic.com
has been sold to NameMedia
(the company that owns and operates BuyDomains.com). We
reported the sale was imminent last night (see item below) and
the official
confirmation came just before noon today. Pete
Lamson, the Senior Vice President for NameMedia’s marketplace
business, said “The Afternic acquisition advances our leadership position in creating an efficient marketplace for small and medium businesses to acquire domain names and insure a compelling digital
identity.” Roger Collins and Michael Collins,
who head Afternic’s executive team, will remain as leaders of the Afternic business. Lamson said that NameMedia intends to maintain both the Afternic and BuyDomains brands and trading platforms.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed, and Afternic will remain in its
Florida headquarters.
Posted Nov. 28, 2006
Hot
on the heels of the news that AdLink has
increased their ownership share in Sedo.com (see item
below), we hear that the sale of another major domain
aftermarket sales site, Afternic.com, may come this
week, perhaps as early as tomorrow. Several major domain
companies are believed to be planning IPOs in 2007 and a
public offering that includes aftermarket services would have
added appeal. Of the potential suitors, we think NameMedia (owners
of BuyDomains.com), is the most likely buyer.
Posted Nov. 27, 2006
AdLink
has purchased another 24% of popular domain
aftermarket sales site Sedo.com
for €35 million. AdLink, the online advertising and
digital marketing subsidiary of Germany's United Internet,
already owned 52% of Sedo (purchased in 2005), so AdLink now
holds a 76% share of the company. The deal would
indicate a total valuation for Sedo of about €140 million
(about $183 million at current exchange rates).
Sedo had sales of approximately €30 million in the
first nine months of this year. Sedo's original founders still
retain a share of the company and will continue to work in
their present executive roles according to a report from TheAlarmClock.com.
Posted Nov. 27, 2006
There
still has been no word on what decision the ICANN
board reached on those controversial .org, .info
and .biz contract proposals (see Nov. 16 and 17 items
below) that they were to consider during a Nov. 22 meeting. As
soon as we get word on what happened in that closed session we
will let you know. Eventually the minutes will have to be
posted on the ICANN
website.
Posted Nov. 24, 2006
In
the past six months, the number of people
downloading podcasts from the Internet has almost doubled
according to a new
report from the Pew Internet & American
Life Project. In a survey conducted by Pew between
February and April of this year 7% of the respondents
said they had downloaded a podcast. Pew conducted a new survey
in August that showed the number of podcast downloaders
jumping to 12%. Pew said that more than 26,000
podcasts offering more than 1 million downloadable
files are now available online. No wonder it is so hard to
find a good podcast domain name these days!
Posted Nov. 24, 2006
Paul
Twomey, the President and CEO of ICANN, said today
that rushing to add non-English characters to domain names
could literally break the Internet. Twomey said ICANN
(who is in charge of the global domain name system) is under a
lot of political pressure to quickly make domain names
available using local alphabets around the world but that more
testing is needed to make sure that can be accomplished while
allowing the Internet to continue to work without problems.
Domains that use foreign characters (known as International
Domain Names) currently use an underlying puny
code that consists of standard English characters.
If ICANN works the technical issues out (which they are
expected to do before the end of 2007), puny codes will not be
necessary and a true multi-cultural Internet DNS will emerge.
Twomey, a native Australian, made his
comments while speaking today in Sydney.
Posted Nov. 21, 2006
Most
people in the domain business know someone
personally who works at Yahoo. After an internal memo
written by Yahoo senior Vice President Brad Garlinghouse
leaked out over the weekend, many are wondering if the jobs of
their Yahoo friends and acquaintances are in jeopardy.
Garlinghouse, whose memo was published in the Wall Street
Journal Saturday, said Yahoo needs a dramatic organizational
shake-up and cuts in its workforce of up to 20%.
Garlinghouse added that the #2 search engine (behind Google)
must consolidate its overlapping business units and establish
a clear chain of command to improve its performance. The
company reported a 38% drop in third-quarter profit
last month as sales growth fell to the lowest in four years.
Posted Nov. 20, 2006
With
ICANN set to consider new contracts for the .org,
.info and .biz registries again Wednesday,
Nov. 22 (see yesterday's item below), Internet Commerce
Association President Bob Martin sent a letter
to U.S. Senator Ted Stevens today, requesting that he
intervene to stop ICANN from approving the controversial
contracts that could prove to be extremely costly for all
domain name registrants. Senator Stevens, who is Chairman of
the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and
Transportation, had weighed in on ICANN affairs in
September when he (and fellow Senators Daniel Inouye, Gordon
Smith, and Byron Dorgan) sent a letter to the U.S.
Department of Commerce's Assistant Secretary for
Communications and Information John Kneuer in September
expressing the need for ICANN to demonstrate improvement on
issues of accountability and transparency if it is to be
"a lasting and sustainable institution." The Dept.
of Commerce is responsible for ICANN oversight. For more
details on what is at stake, read this letter
that ICA legal counsel Phil Corwin sent to the ICANN
Board of Directors November 14th.
Posted Nov. 17, 2006
Proposed
approval of controversial new contracts for the .org,
.info and .biz registries are on the agenda for
an ICANN board meeting Wednesday, Nov. 22. After
widespread opposition to the original proposals, some minor
revisions were made to the contracts and a very short
window of opportunity was opened for new comments on the
revised proposals. Many in the Internet community are not
aware of this and there is a danger that ICANN will try to
equate lack of a public outcry in this new commentary
period with lack of opposition to the contracts and
push them through before another firestorm of protest is
raised. If you wish to register your continued opposition
to these contracts you need to post your comments
immediately by clicking the comment link at the bottom of this
page on the ICANN website. That page also has
links to both the original contracts and the slightly revised
ones that we believe continue to be very harmful to domain
registrants.
Posted Nov. 16, 2006
Ad
spending on the internet continues to boom. A new
report released today by the Internet Advertising Bureau
and PricewaterhouseCoopers says web ad spending soared 33%
in the third quarter of 2006 over the same quarter in 2005.
Companies spent an estimated $4.2 billion for online
ads in Q3-2006, a new record for a single quarter. The IAB
estimates ad spending for all of 2006 will end up around $16
billion, easily eclipsing the $12.5. billion spent
last year.
Posted Nov. 15, 2006
Recent
minor revisions to ICANN's controversial
proposed contract renewals for the .org, .info
and .biz registries have not changed widespread
opposition to those contracts. Yesterday Philip Corwin,
the Washington, D.C. based counsel for the Internet
Commerce Association (ICA) sent the ICANN
Board of Directors a highly detailed
response to the revised contract proposals that
pointed out the multiple flaws and dangers to domain
registrants that remain in the proposed pacts. The ICA is a
new, not-for-profit trade association that has been
established to provide a unified voice for companies and
individuals with common interests in the Internet traffic
marketplace. As Corwin noted in the opening paragraph of his
letter, "the website ownership community represented by
ICA has risked large amounts of capital in order to develop
domain names as the first new form of property of the virtual
age. These professional registrants are the source of the
fees that support registrars, registries, and ICANN itself."
The ICA's founding members include iREIT, Sedo, Oversee.net
(operators of DomainSponsor.com), Name
Administration, Inc. and the World Association of
Domain Name Developers (the company that produce the T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
domain conferences)."
Posted Nov. 15, 2006
After
hosting regional domain conferences in Barcelona,
Spain and Los Angeles (Marina del Rey) earlier this
year, DomainSponsor.com announced today that they will
stage a Global DomainFest Jan. 31 - Feb. 3, 2007
at the Renaissance Hotel in Hollywood, California.
The Renaissance is part of the Hollywood & Highland
complex that includes the Kodak Theater where the Oscar
ceremonies are presented each year. More information is
available at the DomainFest
website.
Posted Nov. 14, 2006
We
all know that advertisers in old media formats like
print, radio and TV have been moving increasing shares of
their ad budgets to the Internet. However financial analyst
Jordan Rohan, managing director at RBC Capital Markets,
says that online marketers will be sending some of that money
back in the opposite direction. Last week Google announced that it intended to start selling ads in 50 major newspapers by the end of the
year and would also be selling radio ads. Speaking at MediaPost's
Search Insider Summit in Palm Springs, California
yesterday, Rohan said that search agencies interested in
adding old media advertising to their campaigns will be able to take advantage of new efficiencies made possible by
Google. "There's a massive opportunity to sell
newspaper advertising differently than it's done today,"
Rohan said. "There are a lot of advertisers who would pay to insert ads in 500-1,000 newspapers if the process were
easier," adding that an electronic interface similar to that used to purchase search
ads was among the main requirements. "The coordination of
traditional and online is going to be one of the main themes
in the coming year. For marketers and service providers, this
is the opportunity of a lifetime," Rohan predicted. Erik
Sass has more on Rohan'scomments in his Online Media
Daily column at MediaPost.com
today (free subscription required to read).
Posted Nov. 14, 2006
Effective
today, Google is willing to help you set up your
own portal site as part of an update to its Google
Apps for Your Domain product. Your customized size
is built around a new Start Page that lets you offer
private-labeled email, IM and calendar accounts to all of your
users. These services are all unified by the Start Page, where
your users can preview their inboxes and calendars, browse
content and links that you choose, search the web, and further
customize the page to their liking. You can also design and
publish web pages for your domain. It's all free and
everything is hosted by Google with no hardware or software
required.
Posted Nov. 13, 2006
A
report from eMarketer.com
this week noted that a December 2005 poll taken by the American
Association of Advertising Agencies, predicting that
online video would show the greatest growth among new media in
2006, has proven to be right on the money. Some 50% of the
group's ad agency reps said online video would show the most
growth while 30% thought it would be podcasting and the
remaining 20% chose blogs. Stats from research aggregator
eMarketer indicate that spending on online video will reach $410
million this year, an 82% jump over last year's $225
million. In two years, eMarketer says spending should top $1
billion and by 2010, as bandwidth becomes cheaper and
content delivery speeds are even faster, Internet video
advertising will be a nearly $3 billion business.
Posted Nov. 12, 2006
One
of the largest domain aftermarket sales venues, Afternic.com,
announced a major policy change today. In a letter to Afternic
customers, company President Roger Collins said "After extensive consideration, we have decided to no longer accept domain names that promote hate, sex, obscenity or self-destructive behavior, such as substance abuse, violence and gambling. The sole rationale behind our decision is to make Afternic a more comfortable site for mainstream domain name shoppers, especially small business owners. We recognize that taking a leadership role on this issue may have a negative financial impact on our business in the near term. Nonetheless, we believe strongly that it's the right thing long-term decision for our industry and
Afternic. In the next few days, we will de-list these kinds of domain names currently posted on our site. Members who own such names will receive a letter from us informing them which names will no longer be listed. We hope that they, and others, will understand that we have no interest in censorship and that we fully support First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and expression."
Collins added "We take this action in the interest of
socially responsible corporate behavior and hope that it leads
to further healthy industry dialog and discussion on the
topic."
Posted Nov. 10, 2006
If
you chase dropping domain names you have probably
noticed a lot of changes at SnapNames.com.
The company, which auctions
thousands of domain names per day, has installed a new suite
of tools that it says will help buyers
more quickly identify and purchase investment-quality domain
names that are available exclusively through SnapNames. The
tools are especially helpful in filtering and searching for
domains based on criteria such as a price range, auction start
or end time, pre-order availability for names that are coming
up for auction and names that are currently in live auctions
that can be joined immediately. There is also a new email
alert service and shopping cart that is visible while
searching, making it easier to track domains before ordering.
More information on this is available in a press
release issued today.
Posted Nov. 9, 2006
Would
you like to own and develop a premium .mobi
domain like news.mobi, sports.mobi, weather.mobi
or ringtones.mobi? It could happen. The .mobi registry
has just opened its RFP (Request for Proposals) Process
for those domains. They will accept applications from
potential developers until December 18, 2006. The proposals
they think have the potential to make the best use of the
domain names will be awarded the names on January 19, 2007.
The RFP Process for certain premium domains reserved by the
registry was approved by ICANN when the .mobi registry
was created. More information is available on the .mobi
site.
Posted Nov. 8, 2006
Marchex, Inc.
today announced the launch of the Marchex
Network, an advertising network featuring the company's more than 200,000 owned and operated Web sites which attract tens of millions of unique users per month. Advertisers can directly bid for placement on a Cost-Per-Click basis across Marchex’s network of Web sites, based on designated keywords and categories. Marchex President and
COO John Keister said, “Advertisers continue to seek out premium traffic and targeted search inventory beyond the incumbent top online search
engines. Direct navigation traffic is recognized to be among the highest converting online traffic sources available, and as we continue to build out the content on our Web sites, the Marchex Network will be an even greater source of qualified traffic for advertisers.”
According to a 2006 WebSideStory study, direct navigation traffic (when users type a domain or keyword directly into their browser bar or use a bookmark) converts at
4.23% on average, a higher rate than other sources, including search engines at
2.3%.
Posted Nov. 7, 2006
The
number of .in registrations has cracked the 200,000 mark.
.in, India's country code extension, has nearly 30 times
more registrations than it did when the ccTLD was re-launched
in January 2005 by the operators of the registry, National
Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) and Afilias India
Private Limited. The re-launch involved significant price
reductions, allowing people in other countries to register .in
domains, broader distribution through the global registrar
network and a state of the art technology platform. More on
the .in milestone is available at Afilias.info.
Posted Nov. 6, 2006
Popular
domain aftermarket sales site Afternic.com
has rolled out the first foreign language version of the
well-known website. A German edition has gone live at Afternic.de
and Afternic President and CEO Roger Collins expects
the new site to build upon robust demand for secondary-market domain names both in
Germany and the European continent as a whole. With
more than 10 million registrations, .de is the
world's 2nd most popular extension, trailing only .com.
Collins said, "the German market has expanded to nearly 50 million Internet users in 2006, ranking it first in the European Community.
The addition of a German language version of the Afternic site is a logical next-step extension for our business. Simply put, we're positioning the company to capitalize on a dynamic and growing market for domain names. As the most viable .de URLs are registered, e-commerce businesses will turn increasingly to the aftermarket. We expect to fill this niche."
Posted Nov. 4, 2006
A
new article in London's Financial Times says Google
"is poised to overtake Britain's main TV
channels in the race for advertising revenue, underlining the
internet's challenge to traditional media. The internet search
company's advertising revenue in the UK is expected
this year to surpass Channel 4's anticipated 2006 take
of £800 million. Within 18 months, it is forecast to
overtake ITV1, Britain's leading commercial TV channel
and the country's biggest single recipient of advertising
revenue, according to Mindshare and Initiative,
two top media buying groups. The complete article is available
here.
Posted Nov. 2, 2006
Philip
Corwin, the Washington, D.C. based counsel for the
new Internet
Commerce Association, sent an important
letter to the ICANN Board of Directors
yesterday that we think would be well worth your time to read.
Corwin gets down to brass tacks right away with this statement
in his opening paragraph, "The website ownership
community represented by ICA has risked large amounts
of capital in order to develop domain names as the first new
form of property of the virtual age. These professional
registrants are the source of the fees that support
registrars, registries, and ICANN itself." Corwin goes on
to detail the problems the Internet community has had with
lack of transparency and accountability at ICANN and suggests
ways the organization can address those issues. The ICA
(previously known as the Internet Traffic Association) was
introduced at last week's T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East
conference in Florida. The founding members include iREIT,
Oversee.net (the operators of DomainSponsor.com),
Sedo, Name Administration and the World
Association of Domain Name Developers (producers of the
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conferences).
Posted Nov. 1, 2006
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