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By Ron Jackson
Last summer we told you about a
funding campaign that the unique geodomain development platform CitiesPlanet
was undertaking in an effort to establish the company as the global standard for
.com city geodomain owners seeking to maximize the value of their assets.
We can now tell you that company founder Fred Mercaldo (who operates a
successful city domain of his own at Scottsdale.com) has not only
succeeded in getting the investment he was seeking - a new opportunity opened
that produced far more financial support than he was looking for! Better
yet he attracted a team of world class partners to help the company's
more than 100 "City.com" clients reach their full potential.
Mercaldo, who was profiled in the
March 2013 DN Journal Cover
Story, told us, "CitiesPlanet has finalized negotiations with Tom
Henderson and his San Francisco Regional Center group, resulting in a
new corporation being formed: City
Brand Media, LLC. I am ecstatic to finally have the partnership in
place that will really be a game changer in the City.com space. Tom
and his group have both the vision and the resources to properly support our
efforts to develop, manage and increase the value of each City.com property in
our portfolio.”
Full
Story Here
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After
€400,000 Purchase of Viajes.com Amado Martin Benitez Aims
to Become a Major Travel Industry Player With Newly Launched
Site
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By Ron Jackson
You may not have
heard of Barcelona, Spain based domain
investor/developer Amado Martin Benitez before,
but don't be surprised if you start seeing the
33-year-old entrepreneur's name everywhere in
the near future. In 2012 Benitez managed to acquire
one of the world's best Spanish language domain names
- Viajes.com
("Travel" in Spanish) for €400,000. After more than two years of painstaking
development work, Benitez's company has launched a new
site on the premier domain that he is
confident will make him a power in the huge travel
markets serving Spain and Latin America.
Benitez
said acquiring Viajes.com involved some of the hardest
negotiating he has ever been involved with
because the seller, legendary South American
domain investor Chris Chena, is a guy who
is fully aware of what great Spanish keyword
domains are worth. Benitez recalled, "Chris had
just sold Juegos.com to Spill Games
for $10 million. I was trying to
negotiate the price of Viajes.com with him for
at least a year and a half... but
then the global economic crisis hit and
we were able to work things out – plus, I’ve
always been a saver and I had some cash to spend!,"
Benitez laughed. Full
Story Here
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 Amado
Martin Benitez
Viajes.com Founder
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The
NamesCon 2015 Preview: Bigger and Better are the Bywords for
Round 2 in Las Vegas
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By Ron Jackson
After a remarkably
successful debut
event last January, the NamesCon
conference will be returning to the Tropicana Hotel
in Las Vegas January 11-24, 2015 for an encore
that promises to be even bigger. Show organizers
expect the attendance to jump by as much as 50%
and they have booked dramatically increased floor
space to comfortably handle the crowd.
To find out what NamesCon
Founder Richard Lau and his fellow
Co-Producers, Jothan
Frakes and Jodi
Chamberlain, have in store for you, we connected
with each of them. Richard told us, "We know attendees are expecting an industry leading conference and
we have to deliver. The clarity of goals for this year is different from last year. This has brought sponsors on in larger numbers and the pre-registration list is well over 500 now.
If you are in the domain name space, NamesCon is the place to be.
In addition to more from Richard, Jothan (who crafts the show's ambitious
multi-track agenda) and Jodi (the Queen of
conference coordination) will give you a ground level
look at their critical responsibilities. So, let's get
this party started! Full
Story Here
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By Ron Jackson
Last
year we told
you about CitiesPlanet's
new partnership with Tallwave,
a venture company that also made a substantial cash
investment in the geodomain development platform
created by Scottsdale.com's
Fred Mercaldo (Fred was also profiled in our March
2013 Cover
Story).
CitiesPlanet aggregates
over 100 City.com brands under
one umbrella and Mercaldo is intent on growing
the company into a new media powerhouse. Toward that
end Mercaldo and his partners are
entering a third round of funding (one
they expect to be the final round) and
they are doing it in a thoroughly modern
way, having engaged business crowd
funding firm Fundable.com
to help CitiesPlanet reach its goal of
raising $500,000 in exchange for 25%
equity in the company.
Full
Story Here
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That's
a Wrap! Wall to Wall Photos & Highlights from DomainFest 2014 in
Hollywood
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By Corinne Forti
The
2014 DomainFest conference wrapped up its three-day run at the Loews
Hollywood Hotel in Hollywood, California April 2, 2014. This year's
event marked a return to Tinseltown where it ran from 2007-2009 before moving
out to the beach for a four-year run in Santa Monica. In another move
aimed at keeping things fresh, DomainFest also hopped from its usual mid-winter
spot on the calendar to its first foray in spring.
The agenda also had a different look
with new gTLDs getting a bigger place in the spotlight now that they have
begun arriving en masse. One thing remained the same though - the great
networking opportunities that attendees consistently name as the most important
reason they go to industry conferences. If something unique is thrown into the
social mix, like this year's private concert by Stone Temple Pilots, so
much the better!
Full
Story Here
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By
Ron Jackson
In recent years
the original founders of industry pioneer Sedo
have made a profitable
exit, selling their shares in transactions
that resulted in the domain sales and
monetization powerhouse becoming a subsidiary of
German corporate giant United
Internet. In the nearly 10 years
since we first profiled Sedo much has changed
there but one thing remains the same - the
company continues to play a leading role in an
industry where the tides are always
shifting.
Many other companies that failed to adapt have come
and gone but Sedo is now well into their
second decade, determined to make the next 10
years even better.
To
get a complete overview of today's Sedo,
we connected with several members of the company's
leadership team to find out how see Sedo has
changed (and what has remained the same) and
to get an update on the company's latest
service offerings, as well as what they have
in the pipeline. Our conversations started
with CEO Tobias Flaitz who took over leadership of the Cologne,
Germany based company 18 months ago. Click
here for Full Story
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Sedo's
home office building
in Cologne, Germany
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Someone
Filed a UDRP Against Me - Now What?
Editor's
Note: If you find
yourself asking the
question in our headline, this guest article by veteran Internet
legal counsel Brett Lewis of Lewis
& Lin LLC is for you!
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By Brett Lewis, Lewis &
Lin LLC
Being on the receiving end of a UDRP Complaint
can be unnerving and worrisome for some clients, while others receive it
as a
declaration of war. Many factors will influence whether a domain
name registrant chooses to fight back and file a response, including the
value of the domain name, the registrant’s ability to fund a defense, and the
odds of successfully defending the domain name.
Although the odds are generally stacked against
registrants statistically, statistics can be misleading. Many times
respondents should expect to lose, because they are engaged in conduct
that runs afoul of the dictates of the UDRP and governing law. However, the odds
for respondents in contested proceedings are far better –
perhaps in part because the Respondents are represented by counsel, and
in part because the domain names in question are worth defending. Click
here for Full Story
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Cyber
law image from Bigstock
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By Ron Jackson
January 31, 2012 marked the
end of an era at domain aftermarket and parking
powerhouse Sedo.com.
It was the day that company Co-Founder and long time industry leader Tim Schumacher officially completed
his run as Sedo's CEO and, after more than a decade leading the Cologne, Germany
based company, set his sites on new business ventures outside of the domain
space. Less than 48 hours after Schumacher turned over his CEO duties to Tobias
Flaitz, I sat down with Tim in Santa Monica,
California, where we were both attending the 2012
DOMAINfest Global conference, for a
private chat about his years at Sedo and the company's meteoric rise during that
time. The result was a fascinating look back at a turbulent decade in
which the company first thrived, then had to survive a global recession that
washed many others away. You won't want to miss this inside look at the history
of one of the industry's key companies. Click
here for Full Story
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Tim Schumacher,
Sedo
Co-Founder & Former CEO
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The
GeoPublishers.com Expo Makes Its First Appearance on the GeoDomain Stage With an
All-Star Cast in Chicago |
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By Ron Jackson
The first ever GeoPublishers.com Expo was held
Sept. 30 - Oct. 2, 2011 at the Fairmont Hotel in Chicago with some of the world's top geodomain owners on hand for the inaugural event.
This show followed in the footsteps of the popular GeoDomain Expos that
were staged by Associated Cities before that groundbreaking organization
was sidetracked by irreconcilable differences among some of its founders.
Many former AC members were involved in putting together the new
group and its conference, an event that impressed with exceptionally strong
programming and a first rate venue in a great city. Here is our wire to wire
coverage of what went down in the Windy City.
Click
here for Full Story
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DNCruise
2 Delights Domain Industry Guests on a Wonderful Week-Long Cruise Through the
Caribbean |
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By Ron Jackson
Alumni from the debut edition of DNCruise
in 2010 were first in line
to sign up when the event's organizers, Patrick Ruddell (Chef
Patrick) and his wife Zezura, announced plans for DNCruise 2 to run Sept.
5-10, 2011. Last year the itinerary was changed on the
fly when an unexpected hurricane developed in the Gulf of Mexico, but attendees
still kept a sunny disposition throughout,
delighted to have an opportunity to spend several days
networking with industry veterans and newcomers alike in a
low cost, casual, fun filled environment.
This time the weather fell in line with everything else
and was picture perfect. A change of port
to Tampa, Florida also opened up an especially
attractive Western Caribbean itinerary that not only took
cruisers to Cozumel but also to Grand Cayman for an unforgettable
day with legendary domain investor Frank
Schilling on his home turf.
Click
here for Full Story
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DNCruise
2 took dozens of
domain industry guests on
a memorable tour of the
Caribbean Sept. 5-10, 2011
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Backstage
at Domain Holdings: How They Are Turning Tier 1 Generic Domains Like
Mortgage.org Into Fully Developed Businesses |
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By Ron Jackson
When Advertising.com co-founder John Ferber
(who was featured on ABC-TV's Secret Millionaire March 27,
2011) and domain industry pioneer Chad
Folkening teamed up with Erik
Simons to found Domain
Holdings Group, LLC last year, big things were expected from
the new domain development, SEO and monetization company. Ferber already has one
massive success under his belt with the sale of Advertising.com (a company that
he and his brother Scott founded) to AOL in 2004 for $435 million
in cash and his new partners also have a long history of internet success.
As expected, that new union is already bearing fruit. The
acquisition and development of Mortgage.org
on behalf of a major corporate client is a perfect example of the multiple skill
sets that Domain Holdings Group, LLC can apply to projects they take on. The
Mortgage.org story also offers an interesting case study in the process
of turning a premium domain name into a full-blown business that stretches
across traditional geographic boundaries. Click
here for Full Story
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Rick
Schwartz Takes Off the Gloves: Says Domainers Getting the Shaft While
"Partners" Roll in The Dough |
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By Ron Jackson
We hooked up
with long time partners Rick Schwartz and Howard
Neu to do an interview previewing their 2010
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Miami conference.
However, the conversation quickly morphed into one covering
much broader ground once we started talking about
recent changes in the industry and how the current business
environment would be addressed at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Miami.
Schwartz said, "Domainers are not
happy with the trends. They feel like they are getting
the shaft while our so-called “partners” are rolling
in the $$$ we are making for them...The end user pays $5.00
for a click, but we get 5 cents and we are supposed
to believe that is an 80% cut? I think every
domainer knows this is
garbage and that it has to change. I believe that
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. is going to start a conversation that
Yahoo and Google cannot ignore. I have listened
to their empty lip service for six years and now it is time
for show and tell." Click
here for Full Story
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Howard Neu and Rick
Schwartz
T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
Co-Founders
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