.Jobs
is now officially open for business.
The new TLD can be registered at any of 11 participating
registrars. .Jobs (which was sponsored by
the Society for Human Resource Management) was approved
by ICANN earlier this year and is being operated by Employ
Media of Cleveland, Ohio. Organizations approved for .jobs domains will be able to lead job
candidates directly to career information on their existing web sites,
or, if they choose, can develop a site designed specifically to
communicate with job seekers. Tom Embrescia, Chairman & CEO of Employ Media and
.jobs, said "A .jobs domain for your company provides a non-stop route for job
seekers to the specific and compelling career information, eliminating
distraction or �home page� congestion or confusion.�....
Growth
in internet retail sales continues to explode.
The U.S. Department of Commerce says online sales
jumped nearly 24% in the first quarter of 2005 compared
to the same period last year. That is good
news for the domain industry as numbers like that
prompt more and more businesses who are not online to realize
they have to get on the web to share in the bounty...Mainstream
interest in the domain market continues to build,
helped along by attention now being paid to the
industry by traditional media outlets. The latest is Newsweek
who just published an article at Newsweek.com
on the booming domain business and what is fueling the
rebirth...Interest
in country code domains (ccTLDs)
seems to be continuing to build. The
latest evidence of the uptick comes from the Canadian
Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), operator of that
country's .ca extension. On March 8, CIRA accounced .ca
has passed the half-million mark in total registrations. In
2004, total .ca registrations jumped 24% from the
previous year... Encirca.com
has made some big changes
that open the .pro registry to practically all comers.
They have cut through the red tape and slashed the high prices
that have kept the extension from seeing much activity since
it was introduced in 2004. Details are in this article...Fresh
off his reverse hijacking win in the Mess.com
case, attorney Ari Goldberger has scored
another win for a client who faced loss of his domain to a
company claiming trademark rights. This time out, giant
toymaker Mattel wanted to take Mattel.org away
from Goldberger's client, Gopi Mattel. Gopi had legally
changed his surname from Muthyal to Mattel when he moved from
India and became an American citizen (Mattel rhymed with
common Indian names like Patel and was more easily pronounced
in English). The toy company claimed he took that name just to
justify ownership of the domain. Goldberger pointed out the
name change occurred five years before Gopi registered
the domain. That helped convince the panel who also ruled Gopi
Mattel was known by the domain and made a bona fide
non-commercial use of it for family email addresses and a
planned family website. The complete ruling can be found here...The
organizers of last October's T.R.A.F.F.I.C. domain conference
in Delray Beach, Florida have added a new spring show
that will be held in Las Vegas May 24-27. Dubbed T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
West, the inaugural show will focus on domain security to
address the increasing threat of domain hijackings.
Registration for the show is now open at the TargetedTraffic.com
website where you will also find the week's agenda. .US
domain owners who have been using proxy registration services
to hide their identities in the public WhoIs record are
about to lose their cover. The U.S. Department of Commerce
has directed NeuStar (operator of the .us
registry) to phase out the offering of such services by
registrars or by any of its partners or resellers and to
ensure that complete and accurate WhoIs data is provided for
any existing registrations in .us. Those who have already
bought proxy service may continue to use them until Jan.
2006. After that all .us owner's information will be
visible to the public. We have also heard rumors that a
crackdown is coming on foreign entities who have registered
.us domains in violation of the registry's Nexus
policy...The
cost of chasing expiring domains continues to rise.
Enom's Club
Drop is the latest to raise the tariff. They are
tripling the minimum bid required to enter a private auction
from $10 to $30. If a domain receives bids but none of $30 or
more it will go into a public reverse auction starting at $60
and dropping until someone claims the domain...In
another indicator of the booming demand for an
internet presence, hosting giant 1&1
Internet, Inc.
gained nearly 400,000 active Web sites
in 2004 (making it the year�s fastest growing Web host),
according to statistics recently released by Netcraft,
an independent Internet research and analysis firm...In
addition to the rising sales shown on our weekly
reports anecdotal evidence continues to
come in confirming that the domain boom of 2004 is not only
continuing but is gathering steam in 2005. Ian Andrew
at DotcomAgency.com
told us the New Year is off to an exceptionally strong start
for his company. They have added a new statistics
page on their site that graphs the steady rise in
average sales prices of domains there. DotcomAgency also just
finished a site renovation that included placing a set price
on every domain. replacing the previous "request
quote" function... SnapNames.com
has added another exclusive partner
to the popular expiring domains auction venue. Any domain
registered at Directi.com
that has a Snapback subscription taken out on it at SnapNames
will bypass the standard delete cycle and go directly to
SnapNames after the registrar's 5-week grace period...The
dates for the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. 2005 domain conference
in Delray Beach, Florida have been announced. The show
will run Oct. 18-22 (one day longer than last year) at
the Delray Beach Marriott. Those interested in
sponsorships are invitations to the show can send an email to [email protected].
The 2004 event
was a landmark conference that brought major domain industry
companies, attorneys and domain portfolio owners together in a
single location for the first time ever...In
an important WIPO decision,
the panel ruled that the company that makes Kiwi shoe
polish was engaged in a reverse hijacking attempt in trying to
take Kiwi.com from Future Media Architects. FMA
attorney Stevan Lieberman gets credit for a win that we
hope will dissuade other corporations from attempting to claim
generic terms to which they have no exclusive rights. Being
branded a reverse hijacker will likely hamper any future
claims Kiwi European Holdings might make on domains
owned by others... 2004
ended with another major domain portfolio purchase,
though this one is a bit complicated. EasyLink Services
Corporation announced they had sold control of a group of
1,177 domains to former company executive Gerald Gorman
for $1 million. EasyLink will continue to share in
revenues from the domains for the next five years. EasyLink
owns some four-star domains but the full roster of names
included in this this deal was not announced. See this report
from BusinessWire for details on the transaction. |
