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Demand
Media's popular registration company, eNom.com,
rewarded its resellers with a Las Vegas bash held
at the Venetian Hotel March 4th and 5th
(immediately before the T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
West conference got underway at the same
venue). I was on hand for this first ever eNom
Reseller Summit to moderate a Monday afternoon panel
discussion, but haven't had a chance to write about it
until now. This newsletter item and our upcoming April
Cover Story on Demand Media and company co-founder and
CEO Richard Rosenblatt will help bring you up to
speed on what is happening at this dynamic new domain
conglomerate. Demand Media was born just ten months ago
but already ranks as one of the industry's biggest
companies.
Scene from eNom Reseller Summit - March 5, 2007 in Las
Vegas
Of
course, Demand Media's eNom division (one of their first
acquisitions) has been around for years and has long
been a favorite with professional domain investors and
registration resellers. eNom has more than 8.9
million domains registered on their platform (second
only to GoDaddy). Those resellers were treated to
an opening night get acquainted cocktail party and
dinner at the Venetian's Tao Lounge Sunday
evening (March 4th).
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Richard
Rosenblatt
Demand Media Co-Founder & CEO |
The
focus switched to business Monday with a full
day of speeches, seminars and panel sessions,
highlighted by Rosenblatt's 45-minute talk
laying out the company's plans for the .TV
extension. A few months ago, Verisign
turned management of .TV over to Demand Media
and Rosenblatt said "when we are done .TV
is going to mean global video channel."
Technically,
.TV is the country code for the small pacific
island nation of Tuvalu, but that country
licensed operation of the extension to Verisign
who began the process of re-positioning the
extension from third world ccTLD to a brand
associated with video on the web. It will now be
up to Demand to take the hand off from Verisign
and get the ball into the end zone.
Demand
Media plans to re-launch .TV to the consumer
market May 1 with heavy promotion and
introduction of tools like a TV Channel
Builder that will make it easy for people to
start their own video based social network.
It's no surprise that social networking is at
the core of the company's plans, since
Rosenblatt was previously chairman of the
800-pound gorillla in that category, MySpace.com.
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| Other building
blocks are already in place, including a
registration site at Enom.tv,
an informational site at ChannelMe.tv
and the signing of TV personality Carson Daly
(who was at the Summit) as the spokesman for .TV
(see CarsonDaly.tv). Daly is seen nationally in the U.S. on his
late night NBC-TV talk show. With
CarsonDaly.tv he (and everyone else with their own
wesbite) is able to reach every corner of the
globe.
Rosenblatt said,
"We plan to make .TV ubiquitous. We are going
to spend a lot of money to make .TV the domain you
must have!" Rosenblatt speaks in an enthusiastic
rapid fire manner that can't help but get his
audience enthused. The resellers certainly
responded well to him, especially when he talked
about the new profit centers he thinks will be
opened up for them from eNom's .TV campaign. |
NBC-TV's
Carson Daly
.TV spokesman |
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eNom
Sr. VP John Kane (left)
and Product Manager Frank Roh
New
eNom VP Chris Sheridan |
Things
had gotten underway earlier Monday (March 5th)
with a welcoming address from Demand Media Senior
VP John Kane. Attendees then watched a
presentation on video from Mao Wie,
President of CNNIC (the organization that
oversees China's .cn country code). Wie
said China has 37 million internet users
(second only to the United States) and that
1.8 million .cn domains have been
registered, with eNom accounting for more .cn
registration than any other company outside of
China.
Verisign's
Chris Sheridan followed with a presentation
based on the company's 2007
Domain Name Industry Brief that had
been released that day. As it happens, that was
Sheridan's last high profile appearance for
Verisign. This past weekend word came that he is
leaving to join eNom as their VP of Customer
Service and Business Development. eNom is getting
a good man in Sheridan who won the respect of
business associates (and many friends) as a Senior
Account Manager for Verisign since 1998.
Resellers
also got an update on .mobi from the new
mobile extension's Business Development Manager Glenn
Roland and received tips on increasing
revenues from GeoTrust Senior Product
Manager Jay Schiavo. After a lunch break
and Rosenblatt's turn in the spotlight, eNom
Product Manager Frank Roh presented a
Roadmap of planned improvements to eNom's reseller
program, including an updated interface for the
company's turnkey PDQ reseller sites
(planned for the third quarter of this year).
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| The
business portion of the Summit closed with the
question and answer panel session I moderated that
featured Richard Kirkendall (operator of
one of eNom's biggest reseller sites, NameCheap.com),
Demand Media President Paul Stahura, Cynthia
Hagan (Lead Program Manager for Microsoft
Windows Live!) and Glenn Roland from .mobi.
There was
one more social event and it was a big one - a
late night party at the exclusive JET
nightclub across the street from the Venetian at
the Mirage. It was the perfect capper to an
event that was both fun and informative. The
success of this debut edition of their Reseller
Summit convinced eNom to make this an annual
event. Since approximately half of their resellers
are based outside the U.S., the company is giving
strong consideration to presenting next year's
Summit in Europe. |
Paul
Stahura
Demand Media President |
Internet Commerce Association Now Open to New Members
We
told you about the new Internet
Commerce Association in our January
newsletter. At that time, the non-profit
organization devoted to protecting the rights of domain
registrants was still in its formative stages. However
this month, as we wrote in our current
Cover Story, the ICA had it's official
coming out party at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West
conference in Las Vegas.
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levels (starting as low as $99) have been
established and all domain owners are now invited
and urged to join and give registrants the
strength in numbers necessary to protect
everyone's rights and assets.
From
now on, the ICA will be keeping a very close eye
on ICANN to make sure the interests of
domain registrants are no longer trampled upon. To
that end ICA Executive Director Jude Augusta
and Legal Counsel Phil Corwin will be
attending next week's ICANN meeting in Lisbon,
Portugal. With your help, the ICA will
continue to give the industry the kind of watchdog
(with teeth) that we have needed for so
long. |
ICA
Legal Counsel Phil Corwin |
New Blog from
Name Administration Chief Frank Schilling Attracting
Attention
If
you were interested in the stock market, wouldn't it be
great if Warren Buffet (regarded as the greatest
stock investor alive) had a daily blog where he gave you
his insight into investing and the market day after day at
no charge? Well, the domain business just got its version
of that very thing, with the debut of Frank Schilling's
official blog, Seven
Mile (named after the beach in front of
Frank's Cayman Islands home).
| Many
regard Schilling (who operates Name
Administration, Inc.) as the world's most
successful domain investor. He built his business
from the ground up, so Schilling can relate to
people who are starting out, sometimes with
nothing more than a dream, in the domain business.
In his posts he details how he found success in
this field and comments on the latest developments
and trends in the domain industry. He also has
occasional guest posts from other highly
successful domain investors (recent examples being
Rick Schwartz and another pioneer who
prefers to remain anonymous but posted as The
Sage).
Schilling
is providing a tuition free education to anyone
who wants to learn and people in the various
domain forums are already buzzing about some of
his posts. Incidently, Schilling is also one of
the founding members of the Internet Commerce
Association and donated $50,000 to the
organization to help get it off the ground so that
domain owners will no longer be left to fend for
themselves against hungry predators. |
Frank
Schilling
Name Administration, Inc. |
Schilling
no longer has to dig through his glovebox to find coins
for a hamburger, but he has not forgotten where he came
from. One of the truly nice guys in the business is giving
back in a big way and we commend him for that.
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