Legal sales of .com.au domain names are on our doorstep. Where are the opportunities and what are the issues? Will we see sales like the $12M sex.com ?
This is the podcast from an event I attended at the Churchill Club in Melbourne. The panelists were:
Richard Moore - CEO, Dark Blue Sea Ltd
Bruce Tonkin - CTO, Melbourne IT Ltd
Jo Lim - Chief Policy Officer, .au Domain Administration Ltd (auDA)
Thanks for Brendan Lewis (who was also the moderator) for permission to reproduce the podcast of the event.
I hope you enjoy it.
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In many ways the domain name industry is still the wild west. We have:
Trademark infringement
Cash for comment
Advertising sponsorship on forums and blogs
Conferences, drinks, corporate schmoozing..
With the various information sources available such as blogs, forums, review sites, how do you know that what your reading is accurate? How do you know that someone hasn’t been paid to:
Talk up the share price of a public company?
Post positive comments about a product or service?
Link to other blogs, so they can win a competition?
Recommend products (which they know to be useless), based on high affiliate commissions?
Paid product placement
Where is the line between monetizing a blog and checkbook journalism? What if your whole model is based of freeconomics - giving stuff away for free.
I’d point out that this doesn’t just apply to the domaining industry, it can apply across the Internet, from blogs to forums. The point being, should the domain name industry have a code of ethics similar to the Journalists Association? For example:
1. Report and interpret honestly, striving for accuracy, fairness and disclosure of all essential facts. Do not suppress relevant available facts, or give distorting emphasis. Do your utmost to give a fair opportunity for reply.
2. Do not place unnecessary emphasis on personal characteristics, including race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, age, sexual orientation, family relationships, religious belief, or physical or intellectual disability.
3. Aim to attribute information to its source. Where a source seeks anonymity, do not agree without first considering the source’s motives and any alternative attributable source. Where confidences are accepted, respect them in all circumstances.
4. Do not allow personal interest, or any belief, commitment, payment, gift or benefit, to undermine your accuracy, fairness or independence.
5. Disclose conflicts of interest that affect, or could be seen to affect, the accuracy, fairness or independence of your journalism. Do not improperly use a journalistic position for personal gain.
6. Do not allow advertising or other commercial considerations to undermine accuracy, fairness or independence.
7. Do your utmost to ensure disclosure of any direct or indirect payment made for interviews, pictures, information or stories.
8. Use fair, responsible and honest means to obtain material. Identify yourself and your employer before obtaining any interview for publication or broadcast. Never exploit a person’s vulnerability or ignorance of media practice.
9. Present pictures and sound which are true and accurate. Any manipulation likely to mislead should be disclosed.
10. Do not plagiarise.- If I had $1 for everytime I posted something and another domaining site just happened to post the same thing 20 mins later.
11. Respect private grief and personal privacy. Journalists have the right to resist compulsion to intrude.
12. Do your utmost to achieve fair correction of errors.
What are your thoughts on this? Feel free to post a comment, I’d love to hear from you.
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Ever purchased a domain name using Godaddys TDNAM auction site, only to wait 7 days until it was transferred to you?
This happened again to me last week. I won an auction for a .us domain name. Now, I wouldn’t normally buy a .us domain. This is in fact my first, however it was a single English word AND was also being used as the name of a product line. How could I not buy it? So what happened?
Date Won: 9/8/2008 12:28:00 PM
Yours On: *9/16/2008 12:00:00 AM
The domain name I won was parked at Godaddy when I purchased it. I must admit, I was quite irritated by the fact that I have to wait 7 days while the parking revenue, from a domain that I purchased, went to Godaddy. As I type this; 6 days later its still parked at Godaddy.
The 7-day grace period has been discussed in many forums, but without an explanation from Godaddy. As such, I asked Godaddy for an official view on this particular issue. While I’m not going to name specific individuals, Godaddy was both highly professional and very responsive.
Here is their unedited view, in full:
“When a domain name expires, the original registrant has a 42 day grace period to renew or redeem the domain.
If the customer has not renewed the domain name 26 days after expiration, the domain is sent to auction through TDNAM. The auction for the domain runs from the 26th day to the 36th day of the domain’s expiration.
As the original domain registrant has 42 days to renew or redeem the domain, there is a 7 day grace period from the end of the auction (day 36) to the day the domain is no longer available to the original registrant. While there is a chance for the domain to be renewed by the original registrant, many auctioned domains bid upon are awarded through TDNAM.
When a TDNAM bidder enters an auction for an expired domain, TDNAM states on the bid page (as part of the terms and conditions) the original registrant still has the opportunity to redeem the domain name.”
There you go. It’s pretty self explanatory. If I was to summarize it, I’d say that buy the time a domain expires, Godaddy has a buyer and cash in the bank from a) parking revenue and b) the auction process.
While it might irritate people having to wait 7 days, when you take the time to understand it, it makes good business sense. That’s Bob Parsons for you - which is why I have his 16 Rules for Success poster on my wall.
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A picture tells a thousand words. Lets look at what happens when Google Chrome visits a web page that does not exist:
What Are The Issues?
1. Revenue from 404 pages down. Although that depends on if you park or develop yourself.
2. Look what happens when its http://www.secure-domain-blah.com/user.php?user=john&session=12345678. Google is now in possession of my User ID and session details.
I tried it out on a non existent test script on Domainer Income. For those technical people, this is what it looked like when I ran a packet sniffer over it:
—
66.249.89.100 HTTP GET /tbproxy/lh/fixurl?hl=en-US&sd=com.au&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.domainerincome.com%2Ftest.php%26id%3Djohn%26session%3D123&sourceid=chrome&error=http404 HTTP/1.1
—
Yep, its sending it to Google alright. So that got me thinking…. what if this script just blindly accepts stuff like…. the Google home page not existing for instance ? I think I’ll leave that one for the kiddies.
3. Did I just consent for this confidential information to be analyzed by Google? Did you notice how it tried to split up the domain name into words for the search box?
Matt Cuts has stated on his blog that “I believe if Google Chrome sees a very short, stock 404 page (less than 512 bytes), it talks to Google in order to try to suggest other possible pages and options.” Interesting choice of words…. I believe….
Although there has been some healthy paranoia around the licensing agreement, I believe that your:
Google Account: Knows your personal information.
Google Mail: Analyzes email you send, and email sent to you.
Maps: Knows where you are - even on your mobile phone.
Search: Knows what you are looking for.
Adsense: Knows what you click on = interested in.
Analytics: Knows what sites you visit.
Checkout: Knows what you buy and who you buy it from.
Can I make it any clearer than that?
When you put it all together, this is far worse than Microsoft back in the 90’s. What do you think?
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auDA’s Industry Competition Advisory Panel has released draft recommendations for public consultation. Here some interesting points:
1. “The Panel recommends that auDA should require all overseas accredited registrars to register with ASIC to trade in Australia.”
That’s going to irritate the overseas registrars who have largely operated remotely; some of which have multiple credentials.
2. “auDA should work with the registrar community to develop a policy to ensure fair and equitable access to the registry so that the ownership of a number of registrar accreditations does not create an unfair market advantage.”
Again - they are worried about registrars having multiple credentials and picking up dropped domains. Lets share the love and hold hands.
3. “The Panel believes that the current policy on the registration of domain names by registrars on their own behalf is satisfactory. The Panel believes that auDA should work to ensure fairness and transparency in the provision of registrar services and access to information that may provide a market advantage. The Panel makes no recommendation in this draft document but will consider the issue again after receipt of public comments.” I think this might be code for lets stick our heads in the sand and see if anyone notices.
Yes I’m a capitalist - if someone can put up the cash and run multiple registrars, then great. Why should a growing industry like domain name sales, be hampered by further regulation? It doesn’t make sense to me.
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Given that the US is focused on their next el president’e, the domain registration festivities have begun.
sarahpalinsucks.com diverts to johnmccain.com. Some media outlets are speculating that the McCain camp purchased this one, but its owner is a mortgage broker in California.
In the words of the movie Spaceballs - “Oh my god, she’s gone from suck to blow”. It seems that sarahpalinblows.com doesn’t paint her in a particularly nice manner.
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After installing Google Chrome, I thought to myself - “I’ve seen this somewhere before“. It wasn’t until I read John Younkers Global By Design did it dawn on me.
Simon was an electronic game launched in 1978 by Milton Bradley. Google, its time to confess. Which 70’s / 80’s product designer “borrowed the idea”??
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There are a bunch of special offers and coupon codes circulating at the moment, so I thought I’d put them all into one post.
FREE .biz domain name and private registration with 1 and 1 hosting. Apparently you can get up to 25 of these for FREE. Although there is the $6.95 per year hosting cost. Not bad if you want to develop just one site.
