Sedo sales just reported their domain sales for the week ending on May 14th, 2012.

This past week, 947 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling over $2.1 million.  41% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings.  Highlights of public sales include:

• Top .com: ahha.com at 112,000 USD
• Top ccTLD: w.to at 53,000 USD
• Top “other” TLD: bangkok.net at 25,000 USD

See the all of the reported sales at Sedo for the previous week after the jump.

Continue reading

The domain name registry that operates the .CA ccTLD, Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), announced today that the .CA domain is turning 25 years old. The very first .CA domain name was registered to the University of Prince Edward Island in 1988. Currently there are 1,925,775 domains registered under .CA.

It was on this day back in 1987 that the .CA domain extension was officially delegated by Jon Postel, operator of Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), to John Demco at the University of British Columbia (UBC).

Demco and a group of volunteers ran the .CA domain registry for 13 years. From 1987 to 2000, those volunteers at UBC registered almost 60,000 domain names. Since 2000, the registry for .CA domain names has been run by the Ottawa-based Canadian Internet Registration Authority. CIRA’s President and CEO Byron Holland said:

“We owe a debt to the visionaries who set up .CA in the 1980s. While many people today may take the Internet for granted, the fact is, without the foresight of people like John Demco, the Internet might not have developed as we now know it… The growth in both the size of the registry and in the role .CA plays in Canadians’ lives bodes well for the next 25 years of .CA. As we move more and more of our lives online, .CA is becoming the ‘flag on the virtual backpack’ for hundreds of thousands of Canadians.”

Back in 1987 when the .CA ccTLD was introduced the world wide web was a very different place. Very few Canadians were online, and until 1990 only governments and the academic community were able to register .CA domains. Today, .CA is an integral part of the Canadian economic and social landscape. Now with more than 1.9 million domain names registered, .CA is the world’s 14th-largest domain registry, and it has the fourth-highest growth rate over the past five years.

On April 15, 2008, CIRA registered it’s one millionth .CA domain name. The next big celebration is right around the corner it seems. In another few weeks give or take, they will be celebrating the two millionth .CA domain registration which will be another huge milestone for the Canadian ccTLD.

The registry has also just opened their nominations for their 2012 Board Elections.

Continue reading

Who knew you could get a free gift simply by registering a domain? Recently the DotAsia Organization (owner/sponsor of the sTLD) announced a new promotion that runs through July 31st, 2012. Every new domain registration qualifies for a gift, and the longer the registration term is, the better of a gift you will receive.

This isn’t the first promotion of it’s kind. The .Asia registry actually ran a very similar freebie giveaway back in the summer of 2009 on the same website at FreeB.asia which they are bringing back. Everybody who registered a domain for at least 2 years under the DotAsia sponsored TLD in 2009 received a 2 GB USB stick for free. Now this time around, they are offering even nicer gifts.

Here are the steps you need to take in order to get your freebie… Register your .ASIA domain such as myblog.asia for 1, 2, 5 or 10 years with a participating registrar and then you’ll be eligible to receive one of the following FreeB’s directly from the .ASIA registry:

• 1 year .ASIA registration — Free Headphones
• 2 year .ASIA registration — Free Stylus Pen
• 5 year .ASIA registration — Free Bluetooth Keyboard
• 10 year .ASIA registration — Free 7″ Android Tablet with Camera

.ASIA FreeB’s are available from May 1 to July 31 2012 or while supplies last. The gifts will be sent from the DotAsia office in Hong Kong to the registrant contact address displayed in the whois record, worldwide. The free gifts are limited to 6 items per postal address. They ask that you allow 6 – 8 weeks for shipping and handling. After registering your domain, you will be e-mailed a special code from FreeB.asia. You have to visit the FreeB website to claim your gift using the provided code and confirm the shipping address.

This promotion only applies to new .ASIA registrations, including new IDN.ASIA domain names. Renewals or transfers are excluded. You will be ineligible to receive any promotional FreeB items under the program if your .ASIA domain is registered after July 31st, 2012 or if your FreeB item is unclaimed before August 24th, 2012.

After the jump you will find the participating registrars that are a part of this promotion, including some of the bigger fish such as GoDaddy and Tucows.

Continue reading

The domain name MEET.ME was the highest profiled and most expensive dot me (.ME) domain ever sold. It was announced in early November of last year that the jointly owned domain by Rick Schwartz, Mike Berkens and Ammar Kubba was sold for a whopping $450K in an all-cash deal… But the real buyer of this short and catchy domain hack was never identified or confirmed publicly… Until now.

We’ve been able to piece together all of the pieces of the puzzle and provide you with a quick breakdown of what happened in this past 6 – 12 month’s and what is still to come for the newly unveiled MeetMe brand created by the merger of Quepasa and myYearbook.

Quepasa + myYearbook = MeetMe

The new website at Meet.Me was launched and officially made available a month ago. It was then announced in a press release that publicly traded Quepasa (NYSE Amex: QPSA), a market leader for social discovery and owner of North-American platform myYearbook and Latin-American platform Quepasa (often called the Facebook of Latino’s) that the parent company and it’s affiliated brands are being consolidated and re-branded under a single umbrella with a new name: MeetMe.

Quepasa originally acquired MyYearbook.com for a cool $100 big ones in July of 2011. $82 million in stock and the remainder in cash. It looks like they didn’t waste any time and immediately started brainstorming and re-strategizing for bigger and better things. According to reports by ComScore, MyYearbook is the top web site in the Teens category with more visits, minutes, and pageviews than anybody else.

See the rest of the story after the jump.

Continue reading

This past week, 845 reportable transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace, totaling over $1.6 million.   41% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings.

Highlights of public sales include:

• Top .com: drill.com at 50,000 USD
• Top ccTLD: lampa.pl at 12,000 EUR
• Top “other” TLD: hotspot.net at 9,000 EUR

See all of the sales reported by Sedo after the jump.

Continue reading

Washington DC based FairWinds Partners announced on Friday that a custom domain name strategy designed for Verizon, the telecom and internet giant, which has been implemented since mid-2008 has now generated 31 million visitors per year on average to the various Verizon owned websites/internet properties.

An additional 321,000 confirmed online sales were reported to be generated annually as well, resulting in millions of dollars in earnings. All of this new data has been revealed based on a new analysis of Verizon’s website’s analytics.

Verizon isn’t the only billion dollar company or “big client” that FairWinds Partners has worked with in the past. Other major players that have used the various services that FairWinds partners provide include WordPress, GAP, Xerox, Walmart, LivingSocial and DirecTV just to name a few.

Sarah Deutsch, Vice President & Associate General Counsel of Verizon Communications said:

“The work we have done with FairWinds set us on the path to maintaining a lean, effective domain name portfolio, and our ongoing work continues to keep Verizon focused on domains that will have a positive impact on our bottom line. This helps our team deliver on Verizon’s mission to provide quality customer service.”

In a blog post titled “The Numbers Add Up to Success” on the official FairWinds Partners blog website at DomainNameStrategy.com, a quick recap is provided on the “three-pronged approach” which was deployed to make Verizon’s domain portfolio as lean and efficient as possible. Below you will find the highlights:

1. Cut out all the low-quality domains that were costing Verizon money but not driving visitors or otherwise contributing to its business
2. Identified and recovered key domain names that the company did not already own
3. Helped the company redirect its domain names to the relevant content that users expect to find when they type those domains into their browsers.

The post by Josh Bourne, co-founder and managing partner at FairWinds went on to say:

“…the best part of the work we did with Verizon was helping to change the company’s approach toward its domain name portfolio. Verizon regularly evaluates its portfolio to make sure that it is not carrying dead weight, and approaches the registration of new domains with a critical eye, always asking whether the domain will improve its online business. Ultimately, Verizon is able to provide its audience with safer online experiences that deliver relevant content, and increased its revenue in the process.”

The newly released case study contains some very interesting information… You can view it here.

FairWinds Partners provides various customized services, recommendations and solutions based upon their expertise in the areas of domain names, intellectual property, risk management and marketing. FairWinds domain name solutions are designed to promote and protect brands, drive revenue, reduce internet-related expenses, increase and improve the quality of online traffic and enhance online brand marketing and customer experiences.

Continue reading

While ICANN latest update on the security loophole in the TLD Application System (TAS) doesn’t really hold any new information regarding the actual fixing of the problem and the updated new gTLD timeline, ICANN has decided to release more information from the time the system was taken offline:

• 2,091 applications were either submitted or in progress, which is well beyond the budgeted 500 applications (even though of course there will be several applications for the same strings)
• 214 potential applications were registered prior to the March 29th payment cut-off, but payments have not yet been received
• Approximately USD $350 million in fees for applications for new gTLDs have been received by the not-for-profit organization

ICANN expects to complete the notification process on or before Tuesday, May 8th, 2012.

See the full updated as emailed by ICANN below.

Continue reading

In an email to its subscribers today, Startups.com Network, Inc. announced that they are  shutting down their daily deal site, StartUps.com after a year. The company states that they “didn’t achieve the ambitious goals we set for ourselves when we launched only 1 year ago. ” While the letter does not state anything about the future of the site, it also mentions that the company is selling Blinklist.com.

Startups.com Network, Inc. is the company behind KillerStartups.com. Serial entrepreneur Matias De Tezanos, who has worked with many premium domain names before, is an investor in the company.

See the full email after the jump.

Continue reading

ICANN has just emailed another updated regarding the interruption of the new gTLD Application process availability caused by a security hole in the TLD Application System (TAS). According to the report by Akram Atallah, COO of ICANN, they are still planning to complete the currently ongoing notification of applicants affected by the breach by May 8th, 2012.

Here are the statistics from the email:

• 1,268 registered users in the new TLD Application System (per account up to 50 new TLD applications can be submitted)
• 95,000 file attachments
• 455 file names might have been viewed by other applicants
• System logs are still being reviewed to see which viewings did occur
• Approximately 105 applicants’ file names might have been exposed to other applicants
• Approximately 50 applicants might have viewed the file names of one or more other applicants

See the full updated from Akram Atallah, COO of ICANN after the jump.

Continue reading

DNN recently analyzed the top 1,000,000 most heavily trafficked and popular websites in the world, according to Alexa, and the results were shocking when we specifically looked at the now 1 year old active dot XXX extension. Our research revealed that only 61 developed websites that are using the .XXX extension placed inside the top 1 million of the most visited sites in the world. Many would expect these adult-oriented websites to be pulling in massive amounts of traffic and interest soon after launching, but apparently that isn’t the case so far.

One year later… Now what?

The .XXX extension, a sponsored top level domain operated by ICM Registry has been live for a year now, as was originally reported on April 15, 2011, which is when .XXX was added to the root servers and domains such as Sex.XXX and Porn.XXX were now resolving as live sites on the web, readily available to be accessed as any other extension, all over the world. Dot XXX domain names have been available for anyone to register and develop since December 6, 2011, after the sunrise and landrush phases concluded which were held from September 7 – November 25, 2011. The registry operator also recently announced that it will be applying for the .Sex, .Adult and .Porn TLDs.

Earlier this month ICANN and the ICM Registry released .XXX domain registration stats and the magic number was said to be 215,835. That number represents how many .XXX domains ICM Registry had under its management as of April 6, 2012 when the press release went out. Out of all those registrations 132,859 are adult-oriented and a whopping 82,976 are non-adult defensive registrations, domains of celebrities and sensitive uses, and those ICM Registry reserved for future uses and sales under the .XXX Premium Names Program and the .XXX Adult Performer Program.

Stuart Lawley, the founder and CEO of ICM Registry LLC was interviewed by DomainSherpa about two weeks ago, where he shared some interesting data about the .XXX extension during the 1 hour video interview with Michael Cyger. We’ve highlighted below the few bits and pieces which stand out the most:

• Currently .XXX is averaging 125 – 150 new registrations per day
• $25 million in revenues in the 4th quarter for ICM Registry
• Around 132,000 are normal registrations, which they classified as “recurring revenue domains”
• Actual number of “built out sites” that they are aware of and can acknolwedge is 27,555 at this point

Lawley went on to highlight some of the most expensive and “premium” triple X domains sold to date, which were Gay.XXX for $500,000, Fetish.XXX for $300,000, Shemales.XXX for $200,000, Toys.XXX for $125,000, Sexy.XXX for $100,000, Dating.XXX for $100,000, FootFetish.XXX for $89,000. In a more recent interview with Bloomberg just this past weekend Lawley mentioned that they also just sold Movies.XXX for $100,000.

Lack of any “real” developments…

Now it’s only been approximately 5 month’s that the general public have had the opportunity to freely register any available .XXX domain that they desire, at any one of their favorite domain registrar’s such as Go Daddy or Register.com for example, and then be able to immediately develop their domain in any way they choose.  We would not have thought that only 61 domains in total would be ranking inside the top 1,000,000 most visited sites in the world. That number was suppose to be exponentially higher by all accounts even a few month’s in, which we now are well into 2012, however reality says otherwise.

It is still very early on in the game as some would argue for this year old extension, but the numbers and data which DNN uncovered speak for itself as far as development of these newly available domains go. The concrete data shows that there is a huge disconnect somewhere. For the ICM Registry and hopeful .XXX domain investors that have spent $80 – $100 on average per registration, it is nothing really to get overly excited about, so far into this journey.

Many .XXX domains have been registered at this point, that is old news already. Some have been developed of course, most commonly as YouTube style video portals serving up adult content. Very few of the sites using the DOT XXX extension are taking off though and generating the buzz and activity that a website requires in order to become profitable and a success over the long run.

This begs the question, does the new .XXX extension really help you if you are running an adult oriented website, or is it going to do just the opposite and backfire at a certain point, and hurt your online image, website traffic, etc.? Well established companies from the adult industry and the thousands of TGP/Tube/Freebie adult site operators don’t seem to be rushing to switch over their existing sites to the newly available .XXX domains.

About Alexa.com website and Alexa stats

Alexa.com is the leading provider of free, global web metrics. Alexa’s website ranks over 30 million of the most popular websites worldwide. The global panel of data comes from millions of toolbar users from all parts of the world which were created by more than 25,000 publishers. In-depth coverage and data is provided from more than 125 countries in North America, South America, Asia and Europe. Alexa.com is owned and operated by Alexa Internet, Inc. which is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.

Say what you say about Alexa’s rankings, but the bottom line is that it’s good to have them, as they provide a closer look at millions of sites and their traffic data. Many people swear by these numbers and it is their go-to resource for website intelligence, while other industry insiders and “professional” internet marketers say that the rankings are not very accurate and in certain cases may be misleading because they are not directly measured. At the end of the day, it depends on who you ask. One thing that can’t be argued is that the stats are useful and provide many insights that no other website or service does for free.

.XXX has a long way to go…

For those wondering about some comparisons, we’ve got that for you too. It’s been two years since the .CO extension was re-launched, making a huge splash within the domainer community and generating a ton of buzz in the mainstream world. The “hip and new” ccTLD which is operated by .CO Internet S.A.S  has been unrestricted (available for anybody to register throughout the world) since July of 2011, and it currently has 1,367 domains inside the top 1,000,000 according to Alexa.com.

More than half of the sites found in Alexa’s comprehensive ranking of the top 1,000,000 sites in the world are using the dot COM (.com) extension, 542,769 sites to be exact.

It’s highly unlikely, without a major paradigm shift, that .XXX or any other newly introduced extension in the near future will ever dominate Alexa’s list. Other new gTLD extensions that plan to roll out an extension targeting a niche (like .xxx) or a broader-based audience (like .co) should take heed of the growth patterns evident here and plan accordingly.

See the list of ranking .CO and .XXX domains after the jump.

Continue reading