DN Journal has had a presence on Facebook since 2007 however, since I joined before the popular social media platform started offering company pages, I have always posted DNJournal updates on my personal account. The reason I signed up in the first place was a suggestion 

from Dr. Chris Hartnett, that this new platform would be a great place for those of us in the industry to stay in closer contact.  

That setup worked fine for quite awhile because the vast majority of people on my friend's list were domain people. However, over the years, non industry friends and family also discovered Facebook and connected with me there as well. For a long time now they have been wondering "does this guy post anything" that isn't related to "domains" - and, oh by the way, what the heck is a "domain" anyhow!

The other problem, with the growth of the industry, was getting dozens of friend requests from people I didn't know, making it impossible to know who I should add and who I shouldn't. As a result, I wound up adding some I should not have (spammers, etc.) and not  adding some well intentioned people that just wanted to follow DNJ.

So, I finally parted the waters over the weekend and launched the new DNJournal.com Facebook Page that anyone can follow just by Liking the page. I knew I also need to 

Screenshot from the new 
DNJournal.com page at Facebook.

give Facebook users a reason to Like the page (beyond the usual site updates that are already available through our RSS Feed and popular aggregation sites like Domaining.com. So, I'll post some exclusive content (and comments) there like the Photo of the Day feature that was added today. 

Over the past 11 years DN Journal has assembled a massive domain industry photo library with more than 100,000 images in it - many of which have never been published before. I'm sure many would enjoy seeing some of those historic photos, so I'll pick an interesting one and post it on our Facebook page each day (or as close to daily as possible).

The final countdown to the 2014 DomainFest conference in underway with the show set to kick off Monday morning (March 31) in Hollywood, California at the Loews Hollywood Hotel.

As you know, things are always changing in the domain business and the conference field is no exception. While this will be the 9th run for DomainFest, the show organizers from Oversee.net (and their DomainSponsor monetization unit) are switching things up this year with 

changes in dates and the show's name, location and format (multi-track for 2014). To get the Lowdown on why the changes were made and what's in store for attendees I connected with Oversee.net CEO Debra Domeyer and  Senior VP Dwayne Walker for the special pre-show interview below. 

Debra Domeyer (CEO, Oversee.net): When you run a conference for 9 years, the challenge is to keep it fresh. Attendees are always our top priority and it’s essential that our conferences continue to offer a valuable experience and lots of fun and networking. So we cleared the board and looked at this from a new perspective. We realized that DomainFest is a very strong brand and needed to be the centerpiece of our conference series. The growing strength of the domain industry also played a huge part in our decision-making. Hollywood was always a favorite for attendees. 

DN Journal: With your move to early spring, a new conference, NamesCon quickly filled the January gap and drew well in Las Vegas, where the next T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference will also be held in late May. This created an unexpected situation for many show goers - three west coast conferences in the first six months of the year. There was also the just 

Oversee.net CEO Debra Domeyer
at Webfest Global 2013

completed ICANN Singapore conference in March. Even though the industry is back in expansion mode, there is only so much money to go around. Has the bigger crowd in a shorter time frame had any noticeable effect on DomainFest 2014?

Oversee.net Sr. VP Dwayne Walker
at Webfest Global 2013

Dwayne Walker (Senior Vice President, Oversee.net): We’ve had a very positive response to the conference with its new date. There is so much interest in domain names today that our industry is rapidly going mainstream. This is good news for domain owners, online businesses, startups and investors. Our format with different tracks is attracting new attendees to the conference. Clearly, the focus on startups, raising money, running online businesses, gTLDs and monetizing Internet traffic has created a buzz. We expect that attendance at this DomainFest to be larger than last year’s DomainFest. There are also a record number of companies sponsoring DomainFest this year!

DN Journal: DomainFest has a long record of success built upon on world famous keynoters, a solid agenda, unique social events and an attractive location in Los Angeles. Looking at the agenda,  that would appear to be one thing that remains 

DomainFest has always been known for its networking and social events. That tradition is alive and well. On Monday night,  .CLUB is hosting a welcome reception to kick off the .CLUB land rush. On Tuesday, there’s a private concert with Grammy-award winning rock band Stone Temple Pilots with Chester Bennington.  And we close out the event with our networking party at the Hollywood famous SkyBar, one of LA most beautiful venues. 

DN Journal: The main topic of 

Stone Temple Pilots with Chester Bennington
will play at Domainfest Tuesday night (April 1)
Photo courtesy of StoneTemplePilots.com

discussion in just about all industry circles this year is the arrival of new gTLDs. After a long recession, many are hoping that new gTLDs will help fuel a new growth spurt in the industry.  Are they, at the early stage they are in now, having a positive impact on DomainFest in terms of attendee and sponsor interest?

DN Journal:  One other question about the industry at large. We are sensing a renewed optimism about how things are going in the industry, including seeing a lot of large aftermarket domain sales (with several seven-figure sales reported this month alone) and all of the activity surrounding new gTLDs. Oversee is in a position to know what is happening in multiple industry categories. Based on your own business, how have things been going over the past year and what is your sense of how things will trend through 2014?

Debra Domeyer and Dwayne Walker:  We see very positive trends for 2014. We believe that the value and success of domains, online businesses and the Internet economy in general will continue to increase. 

Growth image from Bigstock

With the 2014 T.R.A.F.F.I.C West just two months away, show co-founder Rick Schwartz sent a letter out to previous attendees over the weekend with an update on plans for the big event May 28-31 at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. 

T.R.A.F.F.I.C. is sweetening the pot for this year's show by offering two Early Bird ticket packages that come with free nights at the world famous Bellagio where the 2013 conference was also held. The offers - good only until Friday, April 4 - are a $1495 

ticket that includes two free nights at the Bellagio or a $1595 ticket that will give you three free nights there.

After a very successful debut show this past January at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas the NamesCon conference today announced dates for a  return engagement in 2015 on the show's Facebook page. The conference will return to the Tropicana for an event that will get underway at 12 noon on Sunday, January 11, 2015 and continue through Wednesday, January 14.

Ultra low pricing was a key  part of NamesCon's winning formula in 2014 and it looks like it will be again in 2015. They have already put tickets on sale at an ICANN 49 special rate of  just $199 through April 1, 2014. After that you can still snag a $299 Early Bird rate through the end of May.  

NamesCon Founder Richard Lau

NamesCon Founder Richard Lau will again host the 2015 show. The domain industry veteran, aided mightily by Jodi Chamberlain and Jothan Frakes, managed to pull factions from every corner of the industry together for the crowd pleasing multi-track inaugural event that ran January 13-15, 2014. The organizers were able to land six  keynote speakers and produce 30 business sessions (featuring 100 speakers) in their first trip around the track. The show also featured a variety of social and networking events that drew very favorable reviews.

NamesCon was also able to secure an astonishing $79 a night room rate at the Tropicana Hotel. 2015 room rates are not yet available on the NamesCon site and I will be surprised if they are that low again. Prior to the 2014 show, the Tropicana had just finished a major remodeling and were cutting some great deals to get people to sample the impressively revamped facility. Even so, I would bet 

NamesCon still manages to lock in a below market rate for 2015. They have already shown the Tropicana they are capable of bringing hundreds of people from all over the world to the property at the south end of the Las Vegas Strip. While NamesCon had over 500 people for their debut show, they are expecting over 800 in 2015. 

The first stage of balloting for the 2014 Domainers Choice Awards was completed over the weekend with the field narrowed to the top three nominees in 16 different industry categories. The award winners will be selected in a final round of voting that will run May 8 through May 30, 2014 (only those who participated in the initial round of balloting are eligible to vote in the final round).

To insure fairness, the May balloting will be handled by an independent third party, Votenet.com. The winners will be announced and recognized at a June 28th Awards Dinner that will be held at the Dana Point Yacht Club in Dana Point, Calfornia. Tickets for that event are now on sale and can be ordered online through June 7, 2014.  

Here is a final reminder that nominations for the 2014 Domainers Choice Awards close tomorrow night (Saturday night, March 22) at 12 Midnight U.S. Eastern Time (9pm Pacific time). The top three nominees in each of 16 industry categories will move on to the final round of balloting that will run May 8-30.

It is also important to remember, as I told you when nominations opened two weeks ago, that if you do not at least register your email address at the DCA site during this nomination phase, you will not be able to vote in the final round of balloting. So, do it now so you will have a say in who takes home the hardware!  

Here's another important date, March 29, 2014, especially for those who will be in the Los Angeles area that night. That's when the Southern California Domainers Group will hold their next meetup. The event will get underway at 7pm at the Loews Hollywood Hotel (located at 1755 N. Highland Avenue in Hollywood) where attendees will be treated to a talk from DNForum.com owner Adam Dicker.  

The Loews Hollywood Hotel will also host the 2014 Domainfest Conference that opens the following Monday (March 31). If you happen to be arriving in town for that show a couple of days early, and act quickly, you might be able to reserve a spot at the Southern California Domainers meetup. There is room for 65 guests and as of this writing 57 spots were filled (you can see who has already registered to attend in the right hand column of the sign up page). 

One other note today - congratulations are in order to  veteran domain investor/developer/broker Larry Fischer, of GetYourDomain.com who just co-brokered a massive sale of Chat.com (Michael Berkens has more background on the sale of this already well established website in a post at TheDomains.com). 

Fischer worked with co-broker DigitalDNA to sell the domain on behalf of CBS Interactive. Unfortunately, the sales price was subject to a non disclosure agreement but there is little doubt the price was measured in millions of dollars.  Over the years Fischer has been involved in many other mega deals that you probably haven't heard about because transactions at these nose bleed levels are almost always subject to NDAs. Even so, make no mistake, Larry is one of the best in the business at what he does. He is also one of the nicest guys in the industry, living proof that the old adage, "nice guys finish last" is a lie. 

Larry Fischer
GetYourDomain.com

Wow! What a big news day for domain registries - one that culminated late this afternoon, right after the stock market closed, when Neustar (operator of the .biz and .us registries) announced they have entered into a definitive agreement to acquire .CO Internet S.A.S., the administrator of .CO domains. for $109 million. 

Neustar already had an existing partnership with .CO Internet to provide back end registry services and infrastructure support - a contract that earned Neustar $4 million in revenue last year. It was also reported that .CO  exited 2013 with an annual revenue run-rate of $21 million, so you can see why Neustar valued .CO so highly.

Since its global launch in 2010, the number of .CO domains has grown to more than 1.6 million with registrants in over 200 countries and territories worldwide. 

While Neustar and .CO Internet S.A.S. are celebrating their deal, the TLD Registry team is in Macau throwing a big party of their own surrounding the launch of their two new Chinese TLDs, Dot Chinese Online (.在线) and Dot Chinese Website (.中文网).  The festivities there include a two-day Landrush celebration and a live/online hybrid premium name auction tomorrow (March 21). .CLUB Domains (their strategic partner) and Afilias are sponsoring the auction event with all auction lots online now at Sedo.

Daniel Negari
.XYZ Founder

While TLD Registry was getting their launch party underway in Macau, the new .XYZ Registry, founded by Daniel Negari, celebrated the start of .XYZ's Sunrise registration period for trademark holders today. The .XYZ Sunrise period, that ends on May 20, 2014, gives companies that have registered their marks with the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH) the opportunity to register their corresponding .XYZ names before the general public.

Following the sunrise, .XYZ will have a 14-day Landrush Period where individuals, businesses, and trademark holders alike can priority register domain names which were not taken during sunrise.  

With hundreds of new gTLDs coming online this year, one of the biggest hurdles for new registry operators is getting "shelf space" at the leading registrars, especially industry giant Go Daddy. Negari has done very well on that front with nearly 200 registrars around the world agreeing to offer .XYZ domains, including Go Daddy, Network Solutions and 123-reg. Registrations are also available 

through brand protection agencies such as Corporation Service Company (CSC) and MarkMonitor. A list of .XYZ's featured registrar partners can be found here. 

However, the news that the U.S. plans to loosen its grip on ICANN (and by extension, The Internet, itself) has been one of the few exceptions because of the patriotic overtones involved. Even so, a lot of people I talk to are still primarily interested in what the move means to them and their business. On Monday, the Wall Street Journal published the best breakdown I've seen thus far on how this development will (and will not) change the Internet world we've come to know and love. The piece by Gautham Nagesh titled ICANN 101: Who Will Oversee the Internet? covers everything from (for the complete beginner) what ICANN is to when the change in U.S. oversight will happen, what happens after that and how it will affect U.S. businesses and the operation of the Internet.

If you are not an ICANN insider it is a good way to get a handle on the basics and decide whether or not this is an issue you want to head to the front lines to fight for or against (plenty of people are already there and the battle will rage on for some time to come as there are many details still to be sorted out and decided on).

Frank Schillng Uniregistry Founder	Elsewhere today, Frank Schilling's new domain registration service, Uniregistry.com, has launched in Preview mode, which has allowed some test users to access the site with a password and poke around ahead of the public launch that could come at any time now. I was able to do so last night and found the site had a very clean, easy to navigate interface that will appeal to many domain investors.   Features are still being added to the site ahead of the public debut so I can't yet speak to whether or not Uniregistry will have everything that is important to me. However, the fact that Frank is a domain investor with a very large portfolio of his own leads me to believe anything that is  important to domain investors will likely get incorporated at
Uniregistry in fairly short order. History has already shown us that his domainer-friendly investment background helped Frank develop disruptive products in his previous service offerings covering domain monetization and sales (DomainNameSales.com).

Like most large portfolio owners, I need a very competitive wholesale price to help ease the pain at annual renewal time. Bulk pricing information is not yet posted on the site, so, wanting to test Uniregistry's Support response anyhow, I used it to send a question on how to get that information. I got a very quick response from industry veteran Sevan Derderian (who recently joined the Uniregistry team). He said that for now those interested in bulk pricing can send an email to [email protected] to get that information and that in the near future a permanent link will be added to the site's Contact section.

Also important to those who invest in a variety of extensions (especially with the  flood of new gTLDs now arriving on the scene) is having a registrar that supports a wide variety of extensions. While Uniregistry - again in Preview mode - supports many both new and traditional gTLDs (including their own new strings like .tattoo and .sexy), I immediately 

Sevan Derderian
Uniregistry.com

noticed there was no support for ccTLDs. So, I tried the Support system again and again got a very quick response, this time from Heather Pierre who assured me, "We will be supporting ccTLDs and they will be coming soon. We have focused on launching with some of the top TLDs along with some of the new gTLDs, but will be offering other TLDs shortly. If there are any particular ccTLDs that you are interested please let us know and we could possibly provide you a better update as to when they would be available."

While everything is not in place yet, it appears to be on the way. I expect Uniregistry will hit most, if not all, of the other marks that are important to investors including security and easy transfer in and out options.  Uniregistry is also breaking some new ground by offering free WhoIs privacy. It's not an important feature to me as I don't use it, but it is highly valued by many and could be a real money saver for those who require it. 

Some of these new geo TLDs, like the one that has the honor of being the first of its kind to enter general availability - .BERLIN - will be limited to businesses and citizens (or those who serve them) with local contact information. Starting tomorrow (Tuesday, March 18, 2014) 

Hakan Ali
Founder & CMO, InterNetX

Berlin oriented organizations and individuals can freely register domains representing Germany's capital city - a thriving metropolis of 3.4 million people.

Hakan Ali, founder and CMO of InterNetX, a leading international registrar that is based in Germany,  believes .BERLIN will be a big hit thanks to the city's creativity and broad range of startup companies (well over 500 at last count).  Ali noted, "Berlin is the hub of the innovative German IT scene and is an internationally known brand. Even during the pre-registration phase, .BERLIN was one of the most popular TLDs among the hundreds of new endings." 

The idea of a top-level domain devoted to the German capital has been on the table since 
1999. However, it would be another 13 years before ICANN announced an application process
that opened the door for a huge wave of new gTLDs. In January 2012, dotBerlin GmbH submitted the application for .BERLIN and on January 8, 2014 www.nic.berlin launched as the first page with a .BERLIN ending. This was followed by a Sunrise period for trademark holders, and now, starting tomorrow, .BERLIN registrations open to all Berliners.

The domain afterrmarket has been enjoying a resurgence in recent weeks. In the past two weeks alone we have reported the sales of Whisky.com at $3.1 million, Youxi.com ("games" in Chinese) at $2,430,000 and 37.com at $1,960,800. Nosebleed territory for sure, but how 

Cellphone Money image from Bigstock

many of you k new that some mobile phone numbers also sell at stratospheric levels, just like the best domain names?

A perfect example of that came last week when the United Arab Emirates mobile phone number 050-777-7777 was sold in an auction for a mind-bending Dhs 7.82 million which comes out to $2,120,000 at today's exchange rate. Why is that such a good number combination? To dial a mobile number within the UAE, you dial 050 and then the number. The string of seven lucky 7's should be self explanatory.

A Yahoo News! report on the March 8 sale said the multi-millionaire Emirati buyer did not wish to be identified (no wonder, since everyone now knows his phone number can you imagine how many people are already trying to call him)!

Heritage Auctions (HA.com) became the first major mainstream auction house to sell domain names last fall when they held their inaugural domain auction and racked up over $1.5 million in sales. Now they are back with their second 

major domain auction that got underway today with more than 100 high end names on the block, including Tablets.com, Future.com, LK.com, Digital.com, DEC.com and Cola.com, to name just a few. You can view the full catalog here. Most names have reserves that will be made public for everyone to see seven days before the auction. There are also some names that have no reserve price. The new online only auction will conclude at 2pm (U.S. Central Standard Time) on Wednesday, April 9, 2014.

Just yesterday, in our latest weekly domain sales report, I told you about the first two 7-figure domain sales reported this year - Whisky.com at $3.1 million and Youxi.com ("games" in Chinese) at CNY 15 million which equals $2,430,000 at current exchange rates (in case you missed it, the  remarkable full story of the Whisky.com sale by the Castello Brothers is detailed in our current Cover Story). 

Now, less than 24 hours later, we have confirmed a third blockbuster 7-figure sale. A Chinese maker of browser based games, 37Wan, announced they purchased 37.com for CNY 12 million, which comes to $1,960,800 as of this writing (the seller is believed to be a U.S. company incorporated in Delaware that holds many other prime numeric domain names). 

The huge SXSW Interactive Festival begins its five-day 2014 run Friday (March 7) at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas. Sedo's long time General Counsel Jeremiah Johnston will be in Austin to talk about new gTLDs in a session titled The Discussion’s Over: New Domains Are Here that will be held at 12:30pm CST Monday, March 10 in Ballroom E.  

Johnston has been with Sedo since 2004 and served five years as Chief Operating Officer and head of marketing until 2011. He also represents Sedo as a founding member of the Internet Commerce Association (ICA), now in its sixth year, and sits on the Board of Directors in the role of association President, working to shape the future of domain names in the regulatory and political space. 

The program synopsis for Johnston's SXSW session notes, "Years of discussion and debate have come to a close and a historic expansion of the Internet is underway. The domains we've become accustomed to since the Internet’s birth – extensions like .com, .net and .org – are no longer the only game in town. New top-level domains (TLDs) have started to launch for business and personal use, and hundreds should be available by year’s end. This session will help you understand new TLDs, explain why you should care, and give you everything you need so you're not left behind by those in the know.

With new TLD developments happening daily, you’ll hear the latest news and learn about unique issues that accompany their launch such as string contentions, Internationalized Domain Names, the debate over open and closed registries and how to beat the crowd for the best new domains. You’ll get practical advice about when you should spend money on domains that will advance your brand, and when you should – or shouldn’t – invest in defensive registrations."

Jeremiah Johnston
Sedo General Counsel