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While
Registerfly.com customer anxiously wait to see what
is going to happen to the troubled registrar (and the domains
they have registered there), an elite private Washington
D.C. tech newsletter - Warren's Washington Internet
Daily - picked up the story yesterday. The newsletter,
which is read by Washington politicians and policymakers, put registrant
rights on the front burner and turned up the heat on ICANN
who has been aware of major problems at Registerfly since
2005 but did not act until last week when they threatened to
revoke Registerfly's accreditation (effectively putting them
out of business) if their house is not put back in order
within 15 days. The Washington based Legal Counsel for the Internet
Commerce Association, Phil Corwin, told Warren's
"The incident has illuminated issues that were below the
radar and they need to be resolved before it happens again.
ICANN must establish a clear process by which domain name
registrants can bring their problems with registrars to its
attention, and it must have tools to deal with the complaints".
In addition to raising questions with ICANN, Corwin said the
ICA
plans to discuss the matter with NTIA Director John
Kneuer and members of the U.S. Congress. Corwin
also sent a letter
to ICANN President Paul Twomey last week about the organization's
responsibilities in the Registerfly fiasco.
Posted Feb. 28, 2007
Growth
estimates for online advertising keeps being
ratcheted upward. In a new report from research firm Piper
Jaffray, the company predicts that online ad
spending, expected to be around $20 billion this year,
will surge to more than $81 billion by 2011. Just two
months ago, Piper had pegged the 2011 figure at $78 billion.
In an article about the Piper report at ClickZ
news, writer Kate Kaye noted "the explosion of
niche content online and the related segmentation of audiences
will continue to drive online ad spending by small advertisers
that otherwise cannot afford mass market vehicles." Piper
Jaffray's senior Internet analyst, Safa Rashtchy, said
"This will actually give more power to small advertisers.
Over time, there won't be much difference between the Web and
the rest of the media channels. It will reflect overall
advertising dollars out there." The report also opined
that video will be at the forefront of the coming growth spurt
for brand advertisers as they move money from TV to the Web.
Posted Feb. 27, 2007
Moniker.com
has released the complete
list of domains that will be up for sale during
their live and silent auctions at next week's T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
West Conference in Las Vegas. The list
includes over 4,000 domains, most of which will go to the
silent online auction that runs March 6-14. About 250
of the best domains from the lost will go into the one-day
live auction at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Wednesday, March 7.
Those selections are to be announced later this week. More
details on the auction are available here.
Posted Feb. 26, 2007
The
.org registry will be the first to take action
aimed at slowing the controversial practice of "domain
tasting". That involves registrars snapping up virtually every
domain that expires, testing them for potential traffic, then canceling
all that have no traffic within 5 days and claiming a full
refund from the registry. The 5-day grace period was
originally meant to allow time to correct honest mistakes,
like mistyping a name when placing a registration order. In a
letter sent to registrars today, the Public Interest
Registry (PIR), the operator of the .org extension, said
it will start charging an "excess deletion fee"
on May 26, 2007. Under PIR's formula, when the total
number of deletes within the grace period for a given month
are greater than 90% of the registrations added, there
will be an excess deletion fee of five cents (U.S.)
assessed per domain deleted within that month.
Posted Feb. 25, 2007
Registerflies.com
is warning all Registerfly.com customers to
cease doing any transactions with the registration company immediately.
A post at Registerflies
today said "the Registerfly site has been hacked into and
taken over by Kevin Medina (recently ousted company
president)." The post said that other company officials
have been locked out by Medina and apparently fear he will
abscond with any money sent to the site. Registerflies said
"they are trying to get police in Florida to
arrest Kevin immediately. They have lost control of the site
and are locked out of the system. The data has been corrupted
but they do have a back up and are scrambling to get this
situation resolved." Registerflies is a site that has
been tracking long running problems at Registerfly.com, a
company that was threatened by ICANN yesterday with
revocation of its registrar accreditation (see Feb. 22 item
below). Since a battle between the company's owners resulted
in loss of one camp's access to the site, the locked out
Registerfly officials have reportedly turned to
Registerflies.com to get news out to alarmed customers whose
domains are now in jeopardy.
Posted Feb. 23, 2007
In
response to a flood of customer complaints about
registration company Registerfly.com, ICANN is
threatening to use the "nuclear option" and revoke
Registerfly's ICANN accreditation. In a lengthy letter
sent to Registerfly.com yesterday, ICANN told the
company they had 15 working days to get their house in
order or face termination of their accreditation. The
letter includes a laundry list of complaints filed against
Registerfly over the past two years and details several failed
attempts to get the company to meet its obligations. The ICANN
letter stated "Registerfly's conduct has fallen far
short of both its responsibilities to the public and its
agreements. We therefore provide this formal notice of
breach of Registerfly's Registrar Accreditation Agreement with
ICANN."
Posted Feb. 22, 2007
ICANN
is reportedly about to take action in the wake of a
flood of complaints about Registerfly.com, a
registration company that seems to have suffered a complete
meltdown in the wake of infighting between the company's now
deposed president and its vice president (each of whom owns
50% of the company's stock). According to a report today at Computer
Business Review Online, ICANN's Vice President of
Corporate Affairs, Paul Levins, said that ICANN has
been talking with Registerfly representatives and is ready to
take "some very decisive action to protect the interests
of people who have 900,000 names registered there."
Levins did not specify what that action might entail. Many
customers say they have been unable to transfer or renew
domains, or reach customer support at Registerfly.com and
there are reports that thousands of domain names have been
lost as a result of the chaos at the registrar.
Posted Feb. 21, 2007
Internet
pioneer (and current Google VP) Vint Cerf
says that cell phones, not computers, will be
responsible for most of the future growth of the Internet.
Cerf made the comments in Bangalore, India this morning
where he was visiting a Google research and development
facility. Cerf told reporters that while the Internet
population has exploded from 50 million to 1.1
billion since 1997, it still only reaches a sixth of the
world's population. He said the only way to deliver the web to
the remaining 5.5 billion people on the planet will be through
cellphones because they are much more affordable and widely
used than computers. ARSTechnica.com has more on Cerf's
comments in an article
written by Jacqui Cheng today.
Posted Feb. 20, 2007
The
continuing problems surrounding registrar Registerfly.com
have apparently come to a head with a report that one of the
company's two 50-50 partners, John Naruszewicz, has
filed suit against the other, Kevin Medina. Registerflies.com
(a site that has been tracking Registerfly's woes) has posted
what it says is a copy of the civil complaint. It can be read
in its entirety through the third link on this
page. In the document Nauruszewicz alleges that
Medina drained the company's bank account to pay for
personal expenses including an escort, liposuction and the $10,000
monthly rent on his Miami Beach penthouse. Nauruszewicz
also said that the missing funds resulted in Registfly losing
75,000 domains in January that it had registered on behalf
of its customers because it could not pay the registries.
Nauruszewicz Is asking that the court order Medina to sell his
interest in the company to him. Registerfly has been an eNom.com
reseller in the past, but eNom recently terminated their
reseller agreement due to a flood of complaints about
Registerfly.
Posted Feb. 19, 2007
In
another sign that the domain business has gone
mainstream, the Associated Press released a detailed article
on "domain tasting" today. Such esoteric topics used
to be discussed only among a handful of industry insiders but
now the man on the street is hearing about even the most
arcane aspects of the domain business. Writer Anick
Jesdanun's article, titled "Entrepreneurs
Profit from Free Web Names" did a good job of
explaining how the controversial practice of domain tasting
works in terms than people outside the industry can
understand. On the downside, the practice itself if not likely
to win this business any fans among everyday internet users.
Jesdanun noted that domain tasting makes it harder for the
average person to get a domain name and that the practice
makes it possible for spammers and scammers to get free use of
domain names to ply their trade.
Posted Feb. 18, 2007
If
you use Google's AdWords program to purchase ads
designed to drive traffic to your website, your ad costs may
be changing next week. In a post yesterday on the Inside
AdWords blog, Google said it will change
the way it calculates advertisers' quality scores, which the company uses to determine
minimum acceptable bids as well as ad placement. In response
to complaints about a lack of transparency it how it operates,
Google also said it would try to give marketers more insight into
its quality ranking system by making data available on minimum bids
for all keywords within ad groups. Google will also begin
rating advertisers' proposed keywords as "Great,"
"OK" or "Poor." Google said the changes "will improve the overall quality of ads that we serve by lowering minimum bids for high quality ads and raising minimum bids for low quality
ads. We expect that the higher minimum bids for low quality ads will reduce the number of low quality ads we show to our users."
Posted Feb. 17, 2007
The
Internet
Real Estate Group and Washington
Venture Capital has named a new President/CEO to
head Software.com
LLC and the associated site they are jointly developing
with plans to make it the web's premier destination for
downloadable software. The job goes to Michael Bell,
the co-founder of Encore Software, a company that Bell
grew into one of North America's top software publishers with
revenues of over $60 million a year. Bell sold a
majority stake in the company to Navarre Corporation in
2002 but continued to lead Encore to this point in 2007.
Software.com is one of many premium one word generic domains
owned by the Internet Real Estate Group (who was featured in
our article
about this month's DOMAINfest Global conference in
Los Angeles where IREG's Mike Zapolin and Andrew
Miller were featured speakers).
Posted Feb. 16, 2007
You
may have noticed that Sedo.com
consistently dominates our weekly Country
Code domain sales chart. The company, which is
based in Germany, has always been a believer in
ccTLDs (perhaps because Germany's .de is the most
popular country code in the world and the second most popular
extension of any kind, trailing only .com). As a
result, over the years they have set up dedicated sites or
partnerships in countries and regions around the globe. We
just got a release today from Ricardo Vaz Monteiro at Brazil's
Nomer.com.br
(the first ICANN accredited Registrar in Latin
America) announcing a new partnership with Sedo. The
agreement will allow Nomer's Brazilian customers to view all 6
million domains for sale at Sedo via the Nomer website. Antonio
Marzo, the Director of the Spanish and Latin American
division at Sedo, said "Last year we have seen at Sedo an
enormous growth in the Brazilian market. With more than one
million registered domains, it is in fact our premier market
in Latin America. We believe our partnership with Nomer will
help us to consolidate our presence in Brazil."
Posted Feb. 15, 2007
Thinking
about using one of your domains as a base for your
own podcast? If so, it looks like the timing is right for your
venture. A new article at BusinessWeek.com
today includes predictions that podcasting could be the next
big ad medium. Research firm eMarketer forecasts that
annual ad spending on podcasts will soar from $80 million
in 2006 to $400 million annually by 2011. One reason
for the expected surge is Google's expected entry in
the field. eMarketer's James Belcher believes
that the Google will develop the ability to insert audio ads,
based on keywords, into audio podcasts within the next five
years. For podcast producers, as a way to monetize their
programs, this would be the equivalent of Google's AdSense
program for web publishers. Google has already extended its
reach into audio marketing by acquiring radio advertising
company dMarc last year.
Posted Feb. 14, 2007
Demand
Media Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO Richard
Rosenblatt was the subject on an interview posted at SocalTech.com
Monday. Rosenblatt, the former Chairman of MySpace.com,
commented on the strategy behind the company's acquisition
binge, which included snapping up highly ranked registrars eNom.com
and BulkRegister.com. Through eNom, Demand is also
taking over management of the .tv registry for Verisign.
Rosenblatt told interviewer Ben Kuo, "In early
April, we'll be showing our dot TV platform, which will give
people the ability to build their own video centric web sites
and social networks" and added "you will see a
number of our properties rolled out on the platform in the
coming months."
Posted Feb. 13, 2007
Those
of you who are actively involved in building
websites on your domains are undoubtedly concerned with Search
Engine Optimization and may even by paying an outside firm
to handle SEO chores for you. In a provocative article
(free registration required to read) titled The
Search Engines Are Killing SEO at MediaPost.com
today, author Mark Simon said the search engines are
getting so good at finding relevant content that the need for
outside SEO help may eventually disappear. Simon wrote
"Spiders have made leaps forward in reading content on
dynamic pages, and even in understanding images. They've also
learned to recognize spamming tactics like cloaking and
excessive keyword stuffing...the endgame for all of this is a
world in which SEO doesn't matter. The engines won't need you
to tell them how relevant your page actually is, because
they'll understand on their own. For the same reason, they
won't listen if you lie to them about a page's true value.
Search results may never be unmanipulatable, but they'll be
nearly so, to the point that it doesn't make business sense to
try."
Posted Feb. 12, 2007
On
Thursday (Feb. 8) we posted about the publisher of
the New York Times saying he didn't know if the
newspaper would still be producing a print edition in five
years. In the wake of that startling statement, a lot of
people overlooked another news item noting that the world's
oldest print newspaper, Sweden’s Post-och Inrikes
Tidningar, which started in 1645, stopped printing
and went Internet only this year. Rich Lewis has an
interesting article about this media migration to the Internet
at The
Sentinel. With readers rapidly abandoning
traditional media for the web, the current flood of ad dollars
to the Internet will only grow larger and that is good news
for domain owners.
Posted Feb. 11, 2007
The .ORG Registry will
being offering registration of Spanish Internationalized Domain
Names (IDNs) on March 3, 2007 (at 19:00 UTC), on a first
come first served basis. All Spanish IDNs registered between
March 3 and April 2 (the first 30 days of operation) will be locked until
May 2, 2007 to allow intellectual property interests to file UDRP actions if
warranted.
Posted Feb. 10, 2007
While
YouTube.com is the hottest thing in web video, one
of the giants in traditional media, InterActive Corp.
CEO Barry Diller, told BusinessWeek that won't
be the case for long. Diller supported Viacom's demand
that YouTube take down their copyrighted videos saying "What’s
happened is that media companies have said, ‘We’re not
gonna let you get so strong in distribution,’ It’s smart
for Viacom, who said, "Let me be really clear—you’re
not gonna take stuff that I made, then massage it and control
it for other people," Diller said. Diller, whose company
operates Ask.com, Match.com and the Home
Shopping Network among others, acknowledged
that YouTube rules the user-generated video space, but Diller
said that will change soon. “Those tools are going to be
everywhere. It’s not going to be one place to go,” Diller
said.
Posted Feb. 9, 2007
In
the most stunning sign yet that the Internet is
rapidly replacing traditional forms of media delivery, Arthur
Sulzberger, owner, chairman and publisher of the most
respected newspaper in the world, the New York Times,
said it was possible the times would be available only on
the Internet in five years. According to a report at Haaretz.com,
Sulzberger made the comment at the World Economic Forum
in Davos, Switzerland last week. "I really don't
know whether we'll be printing the Times in five years, and
you know what? I don't care either," Sulzberger said.
""The Internet is a wonderful place to be, and we're
leading there." The Times has reportedly doubled its
online readership to 1.5 million a day to go along with
its 1.1 million subscribers for the print edition.
Sulzberger said the Times is on a transitional journey that
will conclude the day the company decides to stop printing the
paper.
Posted Feb. 8, 2007
eNom.com
has severed its relationship with one its largest
registration resellers, Registerfly.com, due to continual
consumer complaints about Registerfly (see Registerflies.com).
If you have registered domains at Registerfly in the past year
or two, they may actually be on eNom's books which could
require you to take immediate action to have them moved
to an eNom account so that you can continue to manage them (Registerfly
got their own registrar credentials last year and new
registrations are now held by them rather than eNom). eNom has
published a FAQ
on the situation that will explain your options.
Posted Feb. 7, 2007
Michael
Arrington of TechCrunch.com
has posted a note on his highly respected tech blog saying
that domain name registrar Network Solutions has been
acquired by General Atlantic, a private equity firm.
Arrington said the price has not been disclosed. Arrington
noted "Network Solutions was the original domain name
registrar and was part of Verisign until it was spun
off in 2003. Since that time, they’ve lost a stupendous
amount of market share to discount operations like GoDaddy,
eNom and others. They now have about 6.6 million
domain names under management."
Posted Feb. 6, 2007
ICANN
is currently considering a revised contract
proposal that could revive the .xxx extension for adult
websites that was apparently left for dead last year. In
response to the proposed revised agreement, Philip Corwin,
the legal counsel for the Internet
Commerce Association, just sent a letter
to ICANN registering opposition to the revised
contract. The ICA position is based on precedents the contract
language would set that could allow ICANN or even individual
registries to claim regulatory rights over domain registrants
and domain usage that they are not entitled to have. "ICANN
is there to make sure the DNS is secure and stable and that is
it, period. Plus, ICANN’s secret renegotiations on this, at
the same time they were promising greater transparency and
accountability to the Department of Commerce, shows
egregious bad faith, in my opinion," Corwin said.
Posted Feb. 6, 2007
Over
the weekend we had an opportunity to spend an
afternoon with TrafficZ.com's
COO Ammar Kubba in Los Angeles. While touring
the company's spacious new offices on Olympic Boulevard, Kubba
gave us a sneak preview of some truly exciting new
landing page technology TrafficZ will be rolling out in the
near future. For competitive reasons, details can't be
released yet, but suffice it to say that a long held dream
of domain owners that their parking pages could automatically
be turned into full blown websites, complete with content, is
about to become a reality. We're sure that other companies are
also working on projects with similar goals in mind, but to
see a finished product demonstrated on a raw undeveloped
domain name was a real eye opener. The examples we saw
had design and content elements that were as attractive as
developed websites that would cost thousands of dollars to
build. When people see the value that can be unlocked from a
domain name through this kind of parking technology, we think
it should drive interest in domains (and their resale prices)
to new highs.
Posted Feb. 5, 2007
DOMAINfest
Global concluded a very well received debut
conference last night at the Renaissance Hotel in Hollywood,
California. The show organizers, Oversee.net, said
the event drew over 300 attendees. Plans have already been
announced for next year's edition of DOMAINfest Global which
will be held at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas March
19-21, 2008. Oversee's Ron Sheridan said the
company may also stage a couple of regional conferences in
2007. We will be publishing a complete wrap up of the Los
Angeles show next Friday (Feb. 9).
Posted Feb. 3, 2007
The
first full day at the DOMAINfest Global conference
in Los Angeles ended in the wee hours this morning with
DomainSponsor's spectacular James Bond themed
casino night party at the Renaissance Hotel in Hollywood. The party capped off a day highlighted by keynote
speeches from Mike "Zappy" Zapolin and Andrew
Miller of the Internet
Real Estate Group just after breakfast and from Michael
Arrington of TechCrunch.com
at lunch. Both presentations were highly informative and
entertaining. The conference concludes with another full day
of activity today but many are staying over in Los Angeles
this weekend to enjoy some of the optional recreational
activities or visit friends in the city. We will be back in
our Florida office Monday to start production on the show wrap
up article that will be published by the end of the week. We
have taken several hundred photos so that we can give you an
inside look at this major new event on the industry's show
calendar. Next stop will be Las Vegas, barely a month
from now, for the T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
West 2007 conference March 5-8 at the Venetian
Hotel.
Posted Feb. 2, 2007
There
was no post Wednesday because we spent the day
traveling to Los Angeles for this week's DOMAINfest
Global conference at the Renaissance Hotel in Hollywood
(a complete show wrap up will be published late next week).
The event kicked off with a welcoming cocktail party last
night. We bumped into Jay Westerdal of Name
Intelligence who told us the dates have now been set for
the next Domain Roundtable Conference. It will be held August
13-15 in Seattle. Jay also whipped out his laptop
and showed us a great new WhoIs tool his company just
released at PsychicWhoIs.com.
There isn't room here to give you all of the details about how
useful this free tool is. We'll write more about it after DOMAINfest. In the meantime, check it out yourself - it takes
just a few minutes to understand how it works and the vast
amount of info it makes available to you.
Posted Feb. 1, 2007
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