Name.Com Gives To Charity – Verizon Wins $33M

As an entrepreneur and someone who donates to a wide variety of charities, I can’t help but notice when companies do things that are right. In fact, I go out of my way to support such companies, which is why I’m posting this.

Name.com just had a promotion where $.50 from every .ORG registered until 12/31/08 was donated to Kiva.org.  On top of that, they were selling .orgs for a crazy $6.49 – which means you should buy them anyway. In case you didn’t know, Kiva lends money to entrepreneurs in the developing world, empowering them to lift themselves out of poverty. It’s the “teach the man to fish” approach using micro-transactions.

Earlier today I came across another headline – Verizon Wins $33 Million in Suit Over Domain Names. Apparently, “the default judgment of $50,000 for each of 663 addresses registered by the Internet company, OnlineNic, was issued last Friday by United States District Judge Jeremy D. Fogel in San Jose, Calif. Judge Fogel froze OnlineNic’s assets and ordered the transfer to Verizon of all identical or confusingly similar addresses. Verizon sought as much as $66.3 million in damages over names that included myverizonwireless.com, iphoneverizonplans.com and verizon-cellular.com.”

So, it got me thinking. What about donating a large chunk of that to charity? Of course I don’t know how much of the $33M will go in legal expenses. The point is (assuming they get the money) that Verizon have scored $33M. What about doing something good with a % of that?

Aussie Registrar Partners With Auction Site = A New Force In The Domaining Industry

This one is hot off the press and will be of interest to all those Aussies in the .au space, as well as those wanting to diversify their portfolio. Both Netfleet (new .au marketplace) and Netregistry have formed a joint venture. Here’s what they bring to the table:

• Netfleet reports that it has 7,500 quality domain names and has sold more than $40k of domains in the few months its been operational. That’s quite good for a new site – especially in the .au space.

• Netregistry has a customer base of 250,000 businesses. Its privately owned and has 80 full-time staff including developers, engineers, service and support specialists.

CEO of Netregistry, Larry Bloch made an interesting comment that resonated with me – “most people do not even realise that domain names are now tradeable assets so it’s a question of creating the industry as well as satisfying the demand.”

The other comment that reflected both the infancy of the industry and the opportunity, was made by David Lye, GM at NetFleet “its not enough to have hundreds of thousands of listings, but we also need to have a steady stream of transactions which will in turn help the market find a footing.” Its good to see some real business logic being applied to the domaining industry.

If you haven’t checked out the Netfleet marketplace, go over and take a look.

European .Net Domain Older Than .Com – The Real Oldest Domain Names

Given the recent PCWorld article on the Internets Oldest 100 Domain Dot Com Domain Names, I thought I’d bring up a little known fact that is often overlooked by many people. Symbolics.com might be the oldest currently registered dot com, but its not the oldest domain. In fact, there is a .NET that’s older.

According to whois, Nordu.Net was registered on Jan 1, 1985. Don’t believe it? Well…as a nice little Christmas present, I’ve included a PDF version of a hardcover book titled The History of Nordu.Net. Consider it bedtime reading for Internet / networking geeks.

I’d also note another interesting bit of information. RFC 921 states on 15 Jan 85 under “Begin New Domain Registration” -”New domains may register according to the procedures and restrictions described in RFC-920 [5].” Perhaps they didn’t ask the Europeans?

This is how the list should look – the top 5 currently registered, oldest domain names are:

1. Nordu.Net – Jan 1, 1985

2. Symbolics.com – March 15, 1985

3. BBN.com – April 24, 1985

4. Think.com – May 24, 1985

5. MCC.com – July 11, 1985

If you know of any older domain names please let me know and I will update the list.

Lycos Europe To Sell Domain Registration Business

A few weeks ago at a hotel in Amsterdam, an Extraordinary Meeting of Shareholders was called for Lycos Europe. The shareholders voted to liquidate the business. Note that Lycos Europe is a separate company to America’s Lycos Inc. As a part of that liquidation, they decided to sell their domain registration business, united-domains AG.

united-domains AG was valued at 34 million euro and will be sold (subject to due diligence on the financial statements) to United Internet. The transaction is looking to close in Q1 2009.

Thoughts

When your share price is 0.15 € and you have a big picture of a dog as your logo, now might be the time to sell the house and think about doing something else.

The Fake Domain Downturn

OMG the world is going to end – your domains will be worthless! That’s what a number of attention seeking ill informed, oxygen thieving, wannabe amateur domainers will have you believe. Am I being a little bit harsh?

While the kids have been crying about their parking revenue, I’ve been buying BIG time and making a profit. Some of you who know me will know that I’ve only ever sold a handful of few domain names. Why? Because

a) I don’t buy rubbish

b) In the past people have made me offers that I just couldn’t refuse

c) I have made mistakes! Who would believe it eh?

Here is an example of one such mistake. A couple of months ago I purchased a domain with traffic in a gambling related niche. I thought it would make money and couldn’t get it working with traditional parking. It would have been a good name to develop, but I just don’t have the time and I wasn’t 100% convinced that my efforts would be rewarded. As such, I left the domain parked and wasn’t going to do anything with it. A couple of weeks after I purchased the domain I received an offer of just on 400% more than what I paid for it. I thought about it for 24 hours (you have to sleep on these things) and sold it.

There is a well known saying “When everyone zigs, you should zag” and that’s just what I’ve been doing. But you shouldn’t, because then there wouldn’t be any opportunities for me. Go and join the herd. Baaaaa.

Code Of Ethics

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.

Disputes Jump 30% Claims UK Host

UK company Fasthosts is claiming a 30% per cent rise in the number of domain ownership disputes. They believe the reason behind it, is that companies are registering names with employees or third parties as the owner.

While I’ve seen a few media outlets pick up this story, I haven’t found the detail behind it.

Fasthosts chief marketing officer Steve Holford was quoted as saying “Rather than domains being overseen by an IT colleague or agent, businesses should audit them like a business asset and keep an eye on their status.”

I couldn’t agree more.

.ORG Reaches 7 Million – Hippies Clap… Chant

The Public Interest Registry has announced that there are now 7 million .org domain names. Yep, its pretty much as we all thought – .com .net and now .org at 3rd position.

Since 2003.org registrations have increased more than 250%. Alexa Raad, CEO said “.ORG continues to be the domain of choice for individuals and organizations who seek to brand their efforts under a globally trusted and respected address.”

Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia has also come to the party around .org saying “We can’t imagine Wikipedia as a .com — .ORG is a core part of our identity,” “.ORG is available to anyone in the world, and it is a great way for an organization to signal an ambition to be inclusive and global.”

Has .org become that alternative? Is it the bio diesel of the domaining world?

The Obama / Biden Domain Rush

If you are living in the USA, or are the poor victim of American television, you will probably know that Obama selected Joe Biden as his running mate. Now the domain name land grab has begun.

• OBAMABIDEN.ORG -> +16 variants = $100k on eBay. Good luck with that!
• Even the believers have seen the light – catholicsforobama-biden.net is online now.
• electobamabiden.com is live and allegedly paid for by the Republican National Committee.

In any case, it doesn’t matter, Diebold (the company that does the electronic voting) has accidentally leaked the results of the 2008 US Election.

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

Enjoy!

Tucows and Afternic Auction Expired Names

Tucows Inc., (AMEX:TCX, TSX:TC) has announced an exclusive agreement with Afternic to auction Tucows’ daily inventory of expired domain names.

The guys at Tucows have prepared a little video with Bill Sweetman, General Manager, Domain Portfolio to explain it:

You could watch the video…. but this sums it up – “Instead of having to search Tucows, you can just use Afternic to find expired names”. Easy.