Here's the The Lowdown
from DN Journal,
updated daily
to
fill you in on the latest buzz going around the domain name industry.
The Lowdown is
compiled by DN Journal Editor & Publisher Ron
Jackson.
Companies,
People & Events in the News: DOMAINFest New York,
GreatDomains, the Annual .INFO Awards & Ray Neu
Oversee.net
staged their secondDOMAINfest
Power Networking Day Wednesday (August 18)
in New York City (this new series of
one-day events had debuted in Ft.
Lauderdale,
FloridaMay
13th). A prior commitment prevented
me from attending the New York show but I have
made arrangements to have some photos and
conference highlights sent to us and will post
those for you when they come in.
The
show included a live domain auction staged by Moniker.com.
They wound up with $1,801,900 in sales
from from the catalog for this show ($1,265,000
of that amount came from a five-name package
including
T-Shirts.com
that was actually closed in a separate deal
the day before it was scheduled to go on the
block during the live event. We have more
details on that deal in our latest weekly domain
sales report). The next highest
sales were Disco.com ($255,000), BigApple.com
($70,000), NewYorkApartments.com
($65,000), Companion.com ($45,000)
and, in what may have been the deal of the day, Exterminating.com
at $35,000. The domains that did not sell
in the live auction are still available in an extended
online auction. That event will
close at 3:15pm (U.S. Eastern time) on Wednesday,
August 25.
Another
major online auction kicked off today
when GreatDomains
opened a one-week event that will
continue until Noon (U.S. Eastern time)
on Thursday, August 26. The line
up includes Angels.com, Concerts.net,
VS.net and several 3-letter .coms
including HAA.com and OXI.com.
You can see the full
auction catalog here.
The
annual .Info
Awards contest is
underway with $15,500 in
prize money up for grabs. Those
who have built websites on .info
domains can enter by submitting
those sites before
the September 10, 2010
(at 11:59pm) deadline. A panel
of judges will
choose the top three sites from
among those submitted. The
winner will collect $7,500
with $5,000 going to the
runner-up and $3,000 to
the 3rd place finisher.
Sites
will be judged on their
presentation of content,
the
functionality of the site,
design, usability and
originality. The annual contest,
that began in 2007, is staged by
the .info registry operator, Afilias.
I think it is a great way to
draw attention to the .info
extension and reward those who
develop high quality sites on
the TLD.
Encouraging
development in this or other
creative ways is crucial to the
success of any .non com
registry. The more useful sites
Internet users find on a given
extension, the more that
TLD grows in recognition and
credibility and, as a result - desirability.
.Com has a gigantic head start
so for the newer extensions the
importance of a proactive approach
like this cannot be overstated
in my opinion. Kudos to
Afilias.
Ray
Neu (left) doing
interview with Morgan
Linton that was
posted on Morgan's blog
today.
One
other note today - Morgan
Linton has been
posting a number of the
video interviews he
shot at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
Vancouver
conference in June on
his popular blog
this week. In the latest
one that went up today,
he chats with one of the
industry's rising stars
- Ray
Neu. Ray is
unique in that he has
been involved in this
business at a high level
since he was in high
school!. His dad, Howard
Neu,
founded the T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
conference with Rick
Schwartzand
Ray has played a big
role in staging
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. shows
ever since the first
one back in
2004.
Ray,
who is still in college,
was thus exposed to some
of the most
successful
people
in the history of the
industry and he took
advantage of that unique
opportunity by carefully
listening and learning
the ropes. He is now a
successful developer and
domain investor in his
own right while
simultaneously working
as an executive in Rick
Latona's
organization. If you are
at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
show in Dublin,
Ireland next
week be sure to look him
up. In the meantime
check out Ray's
interview with Morgan.
We need your help to keep giving
domainers The
Lowdown, so please email [email protected]with any interesting information you might have. If possible,
include the source of your information so we can check it out (for
example a URL if you read it in a forum or on a site
elsewhere).
