The Domain Industry News » January 27, 2012

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January 28, 2012
1:11
The State of the Industry January 2012: DN Journal's Biggest Annual Cover Story is Now Out
» ‎ Domain Name Journal

For the 8th consecutive year, DNJournal.com kicks off the New Year with our annual State of the Industry Cover Story, an endeavor that brought together 15 experts and company leaders from across the industry to get their thoughts on the key trends of the past year and what they believe is in store in the year ahead.

0:04
The WINNER of the $250 David Walsh Promo Code Contest
» ‎ The Official Name.com Blog

It was back in November of ’11 when the David Walsh deal went down. While at another registrar, Walsh’s domain was stolen, and the story exploded on the social-o-sphere like Justin Bieber had gone missing. Anyway, long story short, in … Continue reading →

January 27, 2012
22:24
Protests Erupt Over EU's Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
» ‎ CircleID

In a blog post today, Michael Geist writes: "The reverberations from the SOPA fight continue to be felt in the U.S. and elsewhere (mounting Canadian concern that Bill C-11 could be amended to adopt SOPA-like rules), but it is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement that has captured increasing attention this week. Several months after the majority of ACTA participants signed the agreement, most European Union countries formally signed the agreement yesterday (notable exclusions include Germany, the Netherlands, Estonia, Cyprus and Slovakia). This has generated a flurry of furious protest..."

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More under: Access Providers, Censorship, Internet Governance, Law, Policy & Regulation

20:48
Reseller Hosting with WHM is now Live!
» ‎ ResellerClub Blog

Over the past few months, as the team conducted numerous surveys and spoke to several Resellers, it became clear that Reseller Hosting is one of our most awaited products yet! We also realized that a significant part of our client base was also eager to have WHM & WHMCS access with this product.

Reseller Hosting with WHM & WHMCS is now live!

We’ve been listening. Today we’re thrilled to announce the launch of our latest Hosting Product – Reseller Hosting with WHM and WHMCS. This product has been in a limited beta for the past month, where over 800 Resellers tested it, and is now available across all our programs.

Take Advantage of our Introductory Promo!

Till the 26^th of February you can choose to purchase/sell any of the four Reseller Hosting packages at the following Introductory Price!

Get Started Now!

If you aren’t already signed up, you can sign up from the ‘Manage Products and Pricing’ section of your Control Panel.

We’ve also prepared a Start-Up Guide for Reseller Hosting. Here, you’ll find all the information you need to set up Reseller Hosting on your SuperSite, purchase packages as well as help guides for cPanel and WHM.

If you need a little help kick-starting your marketing efforts, we’ve put together this White-Labeled Marketing Kit. As always, do feel free to use any of the marketing materials we’ve put up on our Resource Center.

–

What do you think?

Tell us what you make of our latest product offering – All your feedback is welcome!
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20:37
Moniker publishes final DOMAINfest auction list
» ‎ Domain Name Wire
Two more valuable domain names added to auction.

Moniker has published the final list of domains for next week’s live domain auction during DOMAINfest, as well as the online auction to follow.

Bargain.com and Democracy.com have been added to the auction. Bargain.com’s reserve is north of $750,000 while Democracy.com is available for somewhere between $100,000 and $250,000.

Bargain.com is owned by FYI Direct, the company behind credit score monitoring site FreeScore.com.

Democracy.com should be interesting given the elections this year. It’s probably best for a think tank.

A number of the other high dollar domains are owned by CA.

Moniker’s last big auction resulted in the multi-million dollar sales of Social.com and Data.com, although neither were sold during the main auction. Salesforce.com paid $4.5 million for Data.com, which it uses for its Jigsaw.com product.

The live auction takes place Thursday, February 2 from 4:30 to 6:00 pm PST. The follow on internet auction at SnapNames will go through February 16. The extended online auction includes 250 domain names in addition to any names that don’t sell in the live auction.

© DomainNameWire.com 2011.

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20:22
Amazon.com’s Quidsi about to launch home decor shop Casa.com
» ‎ Domain Name Wire
Casa.com is next online store from Amazon.com’s Quidsi unit.

Mi casa su casa…

Earlier this month I scooped that Quidsi, the company behind Diapers.com, Soap.com, Wag.com, and YoYo.com, was working on a new store called Casa.com.

Quidsi has now published a “coming soon” page to Casa.com and launched a Facebook page.

The site will offer “everything for your home”, including kitchenware, bedding, home decor, bathroom accessories, etc. Keeping with Quidsi’s tradition, it will offer 1-2 day free delivery. It will also have a 365 day return policy including free return shipping.

Quidsi quickly grew its Diapers.com business into an ecommerce giant, scaring Amazon.com into buying it for $545 million in 2010.

© DomainNameWire.com 2011.

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20:11
The State of the Industry January 2012 DN Journals Biggest Annual Cover Story is Now Out
» ‎ Domainers Magazine

For the 8th consecutive year, DNJournal.com kicks off the New Year with our annual State of the Industry Cover Story, an endeavor that brought together 15 experts and company leaders from across the industry to get their thoughts on the key trends of the past year and what they believe is in store in the year ahead.

20:10
USPTO to Karsten: not so fast with .PING
» ‎ Domain Name Wire
Trademark office sends office action to PING Golf brand owner.

On Wednesday I posted a list of 115 trademark applications that could be related to new top level domains, along with their current status.

The USPTO has a policy of not granting trademarks on top level domains, and the number of “speculative” trademark applications has ballooned as ICANN gets ready to expand the TLD universe. I discovered that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office was doing a good job catching these applications.

One application that the USPTO may have missed was Karsten Manufacturing’s application for .PING. Karsten manufacturers the PING Golf brand of merchandise.

The USPTO approved the mark for publication on January 17. But today it sent an office action to Karsten because of the top level domain issue.

Karsten can certainly apply for a .ping top level domain — but it can’t try to trademark it under current rules. I can also think of other uses for a .ping TLD, so don’t be shocked if you see more than one application for this domain.

© DomainNameWire.com 2011.

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20:03
Use the Hello Bar to Sell a Website
» ‎ Elliot's Blog

I believe it’s more difficult to sell a domain name with any type of development as compared to a parked domain name. Many people who are unfamiliar with the Whois database will type in a domain name to see if someone is using it. If they see a developed website (even a mini site), it’s likely they will move on to other domain names, unless they absolutely need a specific domain name.

When you visit many domain names parked with Internet Traffic (and other parking providers), you can see a bright bar at the top of the landing page announcing that the domain name may be for sale. From what I understand, this helps drive a significant amount of offers for domain owners. Although many offers are unqualified, it still opens a dialog.

The Hello Bar is a neat toolbar that you can easily add to the top of your website or blog, and it can be used to let visitors know the website is for sale. You can choose any color or font combination and add a link to a destination url of your choice. Many people traditionally use it to direct visitors to certain articles or make special announcements, and I think it’s a great tool to sell a website.

It’s very easy to install the Hello Bar, whether you use WordPress, Typepad, Tumblr, or basically any content management system. For WordPress, you can download a free plugin, and then enter the code from the Hello Bar website into the correct field on the plugin editor page. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to install and add. You can then add a page on your site to let people know how to get in touch with you or how to buy the domain name and website.

I want to share an example of how I set up the Hello Bar on one of my websites this morning, and it only took a few minutes. Visit BabyRegistries.com and you can see how the Hello Bar looks. Once I added my messaging to the Hello Bar, I set up a very quick and free form at Woofoo.com. It took less than 30 minutes to set up on my first try.

I can’t tell you if it will work for certain, but it’s a great way to let people know your domain name with website is for sale.

19:42
DOMAINfest “Dine with an expert” slots filling up quickly
» ‎ Domain Name Wire
Opportunity to dine with DOMAINfest speakers quickly disappearing.

Want some quality time with Brook Schaaf, John Morris, Lisa Box, Jay Weintraub, or Paul Nicks during DOMAINfest next week?

Your easiest opportunity is no longer available.

These are among the people who already have full tables for their “Dine with an Expert” session during the conference.

Although I’m sure there will be other opportunities to chat with these experts, there are still a number of good options available under the program. Both Debra Domeyer and Scott Morrow, co-presidents of Oversee.net, still have space available at their tables.

The dining options take place primarily during lunch on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, although there are also some available breakfast slots.

© DomainNameWire.com 2011.

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15:08
Sedo.com Benelux Auction is Underway
» ‎ DomainNews

Sedo is hosting these days a Benelux auction for domains with the .BE and .NL extensions .The auction runs until February 2,2012 and features 129 .nl and .be domain names .
15:07
AOL wins ShoutCastLive.com and ShoutCastLive.net domains in Arbitration
» ‎ DomainNews

An arbitrator with the National Arbitration Forum has awarded two domain names ,ShoutCastLive.com and ShoutCastLive.net to AOL.The company submitted a complaint on December 19,2011,asserting legal rights over the disputed domains .
15:06
TechStartups.com hits the sales block
» ‎ DomainNews

According to a press release today,the domain name TechStartups.com is now available for sale .
9:46
DOMAINfest 2012 Final Agenda Announced
» ‎ DomainNews

The final agenda for the 2012 DOMAINfest conference - which features a list of experts who will offer opinions on many key changes that will impact the domain industry - has been announced.
9:45
Domain Registrations pass another milestone - .COM hits 100.2 million
» ‎ DomainNews

DomainTools announced recently that there are more than 100 .COM domain name registrations up to date,according to their research .There are currently 100.2 million .COM domain name registrations .
9:44
Verisign reports financial results for the fourth quarter of 2011
» ‎ DomainNews

Verisign,has recently announced it financial results for the fourth quarter of 2011 and year ended December 31,2011 .

6:57
VeriSign plans to apply for about 12 new top level domain names
» ‎ Domain Name Wire

Company will apply for about a dozen TLDs, mostly transliterations of .com.

VeriSign plans to apply for “about 12″ top level domain names this year, Pat Kane, Senior Vice President and General Manager of VeriSign Naming Services, said on VeriSign’s investor conference call this evening. Most of these will be transliterations of .com. In other words, internationalized domain names (IDNs).

Although he did not elaborate on what those domains would be, Kane previously told Domain Name Wire that you can expect .com equivalents in Japanese, Hangul, Chinese, Cyrillic, Arabic, and Hebrew.

The company also said that VeriSign has already been selected as the registry provider by several brands that will apply for new top level domains. It did not reveal any numbers, although the company has predicted there will be 1,000 to 1,500 total new TLD applications.

© DomainNameWire.com 2011.

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6:49
2011 was record breaking year for .com and .net domain registrations
» ‎ Domain Name Wire

Over 32 million new domain registrations in .com and .net last year.

2011 set a record for new .com/.net domain registrations with over 32 million registration, VeriSign announced on its investor conference call this afternoon:

In the fourth quarter, we added 1.9 million net names to the domain name base, and we processed 7.9 million new registrations, which is about a 4% increase over the same period a year ago. The fourth quarter was our strongest Q4 for new registrations on record. In fact, that’s true for each of the quarters in 2011, thus, making it our strongest year for new registrations with over 32 million new registrations processed.

There were 113.8 million combined domain names registered at the end of December.

According to DomainTools, there are now over 100 million .com domains registered, although VeriSign did not announce this milestone on its investor conference call today.

© DomainNameWire.com 2011.

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6:26
GoDaddy reveals Super Bowl commercial featuring the Pussycat Dolls
» ‎ Domain Name Wire
You won’t have to wait until the Super Bowl to see this year’s commercials.

It’s likely you’ve already seen GoDaddy’s Super Bowl commercial featuring .co. GoDaddy has linked to it from its home page for about a week.

Now the company is releasing its second half commercial on the web, too.

The spot, dubbed “CLOUD”, features the new Pussycat Dolls. It also stars Danica Patrick.

Patrick has officially been in more Super Bowl ads than any other celebrity, according to GoDaddy. She’ll be up to ten after this year’s Super Bowl airs. This is GoDaddy’s eighth consecutive Super Bowl ad campaign.

I think releasing this commercials before the big game makes sense. There will still be the “continuations” after the commercials air during the game, so it will draw people back. Also, most people who see the commercials during the game will not have seen the early releases.

© DomainNameWire.com 2011.

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5:24
IP Address Reputation Primer
» ‎ CircleID
There has been a lot of recent discussions and questions about reputation, content and delivery of email. I started to answer some of them, and then realized there weren't any basic reference documents I could refer to when explaining the interaction. So I decided to write some.

This post is about IP address reputation with some background on why IPs are so important and why ISPs focus so heavily on the sending IP.

Why IP addresses?

ISPs built reputation around IP addresses because it was one bit of data that malicious senders / spammers couldn't forge. The connecting IP is a fundamental part of the network transaction and if you forge an IP then SMTP can't work. Because that was the reliable data they had to work with, that's what they used. Even now, when there are other kinds of data, the IP address is still the first thing the receiving MTA sees.

What is IP reputation?

IP reputation can best be summed up as "past performance is an indicator of future results." In other words if recipients responded well to mail from an IP address in the past, then they're likely to respond well to new mail from that IP address.

How is IP reputation measured?

While each spam filtering company and ISP have their own ways of calculating the reputation of an IP address, there are some similarities in what they measure.
- How many non-existent email addresses is this IP attempting to deliver to?
- How many abandoned email addresses is this IP attempting to deliver to?
- How many "known bad" email addresses (spamtraps) is this IP attempting to deliver to?
- How many recipients complain about receiving this mail?
- How many recipients complain about not receiving this mail?
- How respectful of my resources is this IP?
- Does this IP keep connections open for long periods of time?
- Does this IP retry deliveries too aggressively?
- Does this IP stop mailing addresses after receiving a "user unknown" message?
- Is this IP address configured as if the associated machine was infected by a virus?
- Is this IP address listed on blocklists we use?
- That is by no means an exhaustive list of what ISPs measure. If they can measure it they've tried. If the measurement helps them separate spam mail from not-spam mail then they're using it.
How fast does IP reputation change?

IP reputation is often measured over multiple time periods. ISPs can look at a 1 day, 7 day, 30 day and 90 day reputation. A good analogy is stock prices. Prices can be very volatile in the short term, but more consistent over the long term. A single bad day, where one or more reputation measurements go bad, may affect delivery that day or the next day but won't damage an overall good reputation. Likewise, a few days of improved mail may not be sufficient to counter months of poor reputation.

How is IP reputation used?

Mail from IPs with a high reputation is accepted faster and at a higher rate than mail from IPs with a lower or unknown reputation. IP reputation can also influence whether mail is delivered to the inbox or the bulk folder.

Key IP Reputation takeaways
- IP reputation is about how recipients react to mail from that IP. Happy, content recipients turn into good delivery.
- Brief changes (for good or bad) don't necessarily ruin delivery over the long term.
- Steady improvements will result in improved reputation.
- It may takes as much time to change a reputation in one direction or another as it took to establish the reputation in the first place.
Written by Laura Atkins, Founding partner of anti-spam consultancy & software firm Word to the Wise

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More under: Email, IP Addressing, Spam
3:52
NORDUnet's Brilliant Internet Peering Strategy
» ‎ CircleID

Map Showing NORDUnet's 2011 completion of network expansion by taking a third connection to the US in production.
(Click to Enlarge)NORDUnet, the R&E network connecting the Nordic countries has recently undertaken a brilliant Internet peering strategy that will have global significant ramifications for supporting research and education around the world.

NORDUnet is now emerging as one of the world's first "GREN"s — Global Research and Education Network. NORDUnet is extending their network infrastructure to multiple points of presence throughout the USA and Europe to interconnect to major Internet Exchange Points (IXPs). This will allow them to negotiate as a Tier 1 Internet service provider and exchange traffic with other global commercial Tier 1 Internet transit providers. NORDUnet is also playing a global leadership role by extending this service offering, on a shared cost basis, to NRENs such as SURFnet (Netherlands), PIONIER (Poland) and perhaps others.

Many network operators ask why they should build an extensive peering network when transit prices are only marginally more expensive than peering (and still dropping)? The NORDUnet engineering team are one of the first to understand that Internet peering is not about cost comparison between peering and transit pricing.

Most universities (as well as consumers and business) have a fixed budget for Internet connectivity. So regardless of traffic volumes they can only spend so much money for Internet transit. As result many institutions cap traffic volumes to commercial transit providers. But peering traffic is done on a settlement free basis and therefore traffic volumes are not linearly related to cost. Many NRENs have discovered that content peering traffic has a huge benefit for their connected institutions in stabilizing costs without restricting use of the network. On some NRENs, content peering traffic is now 90% of their overall traffic volume. By connecting to the major IXPs in the USA, NORDUnet can eliminate purchase of virtually all transit traffic. Traffic volumes are expected to immediately jump because now institutions will not have to cap formerly transit traffic.

This arrangement will have a huge benefit for the research community as more and more computational research is done on commercial clouds in the US. NORDUnet realizes, that despite concerns about US Patriot Act, researchers are voting with their wallets and using commercial cloud providers and value added cloud providers in the US. Many research disciplines, especially genomics and bio-informatics are being increasingly dependent on commercial application providers, because they have the necessary tools critical to their research. Numerous bioinformatics companies, like SoftGenetics, DNAStar, DNAnexus and NextBio, have sprung up to as they have found life sciences a fertile market for products that handle large amounts of information. Access to these commercial organizations through the commercial Internet or Open Lightpath Exchanges is essential for the future of research.

This initiative by NORDUNet will have profound implications for the future of the Internet and data intensive science. The obvious next step after exchanging peering traffic is also to use this links for dynamic lightpaths and virtual networks for large data flows. It is no surprise that networks like NORDUNet and SURFnet are also leading the developments of dynamic optical networking through GLIF. The other important development is for other NRENs to build similar global links and exchange peering routes so collectively they can represent themselves as a global Tier 1 and finally eliminate the archaic telco business models that currently dominate the Internet. This will significant benefits for those NRENs who are deploying community IXPs and can extend the benefits of content peering to community anchors and support community broadband developments.

Peering traffic also goes hand in hand with dynamic optical networks and GOLEs. Some NRENs are under pressure by some large institutions threatening to leave. Some institutions think that by directly connecting to a GOLE and purchasing commercial Internet for the balance of their traffic is all they need for R&E connectivity But peering dramatically changes the balance as it is a service and business model that is not available from commercial providers. The cost savings are dramatic for the connected institution and it does not cripple researchers accessing commercial research services such as clouds because of traffic caps.

Once again, NRENs and GRENs are demonstrating their important role in redefining the critical role of the Internet and creating new opportunities for the global informational economy. Kudos to NORDUnet.

Written by Bill St. Arnaud , Green IT Networking Consultant

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More under: Access Providers, Broadband
3:47
Making the Web Faster: Google Working on Enhancing Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)
» ‎ CircleID

As part of its efforts to speed up the delivery of web content, Google has proposed changes to Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), "the workhorse of the Internet." Yuchung Cheng who works on the transport layer at Google writes:

"To deliver content effectively, Web browsers typically open several dozen parallel TCP connections ahead of making actual requests. This strategy overcomes inherent TCP limitations but results in high latency in many situations and is not scalable. Our research shows that the key to reducing latency is saving round trips. We’re experimenting with several improvements to TCP."

Cheng believes the current transport layer badly needs an overhaul to catch up with other (networking) technologies. Read more.

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More under: Internet Protocol, Web

3:25
.Com Registrations Pass the 100 Million Mark - Final Agenda Set for DOMAINfest Global
» ‎ Domain Name Journal

Today in the Lowdown at DN Journal: .Com registrations pass another milestone - the 100 million mark. Plus, DOMAINfest Global releases the final agenda for next week's big show in Santa Monica and domain sales giants Afternic and Sedo have announcements about the latest expansion of their respective platforms.

2:02
Tucows to Join Afternic DLS
» ‎ Elliot's Blog

I read a press release this afternoon, and it should come as good news for Tucows domain registrants who are looking to sell their domain names.

The company has been added to Afternic’s Domain Listing Service (DLS) Premium Promotion network, meaning that it is easier to list domain names for sale across the full DLS reseller network. With DLS, customers can seamlessly list, sell, and transfer domain names with far fewer hassles and delays that accompany many domain transactions. Customers can select names they want to sell, price them accordingly, and potential buyers will see the names at various POS opportunities at DLS partners.

There are over 11 million domain names registered with Tucows and its affiliates, so this should also be a boost to Afternic as well.

Press Release below:

Toronto-based Tucows, a top ICANN- accredited registrar with over 11 million domains under management, and Afternic, the world’s leading reseller network for premium domain names, announced today that Tucows will join Afternic’s Domain Listing Service (DLS) Premium Promotion network.

This exclusive agreement will allow registrants to sell their domains across the entire Afternic DLS reseller network—the largest domain reseller network in the world with the highest sales velocity in the industry.

“We strongly believe selling premium names increases customer loyalty by allowing buyers to find the perfect domain and begin using it immediately,” said Adam Eisner, Director, OpenSRS Product Management. “Our inclusion in Afternic’s Premium Promotion network allows us to connect more sellers and potential buyers through the industry’s largest network.”

Afternic is the world’s only true global domain sales network offering premium domains for sale to millions of buyers worldwide via a network of more than 50 partners including most of the world’s largest registrars. The Afternic platform features Instant Transfer technology, which automates the premium domain purchasing process, eliminating the lengthy administrative process required by legacy marketplaces.

“Adding Tucows to the DLS Premium Promotion level is very exciting for us. Now, with the majority of the world’s top registrars enrolled in our Premium Promotion level, we are realizing our vision of a unified domain aftermarket,” said Jason Miner, senior vice president of sales and General Manager of Afternic. “DLS has become the center of aftermarket domain transactions, connecting the most buyers and sellers of premium domains.”

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