A look at a few stories I haven’t covered this week…

There are a few notable stories in the domain name industry that I missed writing about over the past week, so here’s a quick run down.

A “monster” of an acquisition – Mesh Digital, which owns domain name registrar DomainMonster, has been acquired by Host Europe Group for an undisclosed sum. DomainMonster isn’t a huge registrar, but it has proven quite adept at mastering domain registrations when new top level domains enter their “general availability period”. This will come in handing with hundreds of TLDs coming on line in the next couple years.

iPhone5.com – Apple filed a UDRP to get iPhone5.com earlier this month. The owners put up an initial fight before deciding to hand the domain over the Apple this week.

Vanity.com – Quite a stink going on over at TheDomains about this UDRP filing. I hope there’s more to this story than meets the eye. For what it’s worth, the owner of the domain has had it since at least 2005. The company was formed in Nevada.

Tags: domainmonster, iphone5.com, mesh digital, vanity.com

Moniker auction nets close to $20,000 in sales.

The Moniker Premium Spring Auction at SnapNames just concluded. Here are the (unofficial) results:

drivinggloves.com 6450 – this is a recently developed site. Auction included Facebook page (with 2,000+ likes) and Twitter handle.
florists.info 3050 – good keyword, but not a bad price given how marketplace for secondary TLDs like this will change in coming years.
loaninterestrates.com 2000
obese.net 1650 – 5 bidders duked it out for this one. It was the last auction to close due to extensions.
scubadivinglessons.com 1267
bearings.net 770
alumn.com 590 – not a very common spelling of the term
njlawfirms.com 575
grilled.net 500
32a.com 470
wyvn.com 300
upcbarcodes.com 300
overnightpriority.com 300 – not to be confused with Fedex’s Priority Overnight
joggingshorts.com 300 – definitely falls under the “niche” category
attempt.net 300

Tags: Moniker, SnapNames

Company transfers domains between registrar accreditations.

If you start to see domain name registrar Domain.com growing in registrar ranking reports, there’s a good explanation for that.

Dotster, which owns Domain.com, has transferred the domain names from its Dotster accreditation to the Domain.com one.

I was alerted to this change when I received a DomainTools whois change alert on a friend’s domain name that I helped her register. My first thought was that her domain had been stolen, until I remembered that Dotster owns Domain.com.

I reached out to Dotster to find out what was going on. Brian Unruh, General Manager at Dotster, told Domain Name Wire:

Through acquisitions, Dotster historically has owned many registrar credentials. We consolidated them to deliver a higher quality customer experience and better efficiency. In fact this change is just one of many that we’re making to improve the services we provide our customers. While Dotster.com’s registrations are now using the Domain.com credential, Dotster customers will remain Dotster customers and continue to receive industry leading service and care.

Tags: domain.com, dotster

Oversee.net hires GM from online travel industry to run its travel network.

Oversee.net has hired Raj Beri as General Manager of its travel vertical, the company announced today. Beri was previously Director and COO of IgoUgo, a travel site owned by Travelocity.

The travel vertical is part of Oversee.net’s “vertical markets” business that includes fully developed web sites. Oversee.net is best known to domainers for its DomainSponsor domain parking service.

Oversee.net’s travel properties include LowFares.com, FareSpotter.net, AboutAirportParking.com and AirportParking.com. These are big sites; LowFares.com has a US Quantcast rank of 1,492 and FareSpotter.net is ranked 2,973.

So just how big is Oversee.net’s travel vertical? According to Beri’s LinkedIn profile, it’s a $40MM+ business.

Other vertical markets at Oversee.net include consumer finance (CreditCards.org, IdentityTheft.com) and shopping (ShopWiki.com).

Tags: lowfares.com, Oversee.net, raj beri

From dessert names to rather unflattering names, here are 14 odd domain registrar names.

People get creative when coming up with domain names. Even registrars sometimes get into the act when naming their registrars.

Many registrar names are created by companies creating drop catching registrars. Since they aren’t public facing registrars, they get really creative. Here are some of the more amusing registrar names (both drop catching registrars and regular ones):

Afterdark Domains, Inc (eNom) – what is this, a registrar for porn names?

Backslap Domains, Inc. – just a really funny name for a domain registrar

BearTrapDomains.com LLC (Moniker) – I guess the visual makes sense for one of SnapNames’ domain registrars.

Betterthanaveragedomains.com LLC (Moniker) – Sell it to me!

Decentdomains, LLC (Dotster) – I’m having a tough time choosing between Better Than Average Domains and Decent Domains as my domain registrar.

Chocolatecovereddomains,LLC (Dotster) – Yeah, I’ll take a dozen.

Domainsouffle.com LLC (Moniker) – or maybe I want a souffle instead.

Dontaskwhy.ca Inc. – I won’t ask why. Forwards to NameScout.

DuckBilledDomains.com LLC (Moniker) – uh, ok.

eNom’s numbered registrars enom1008 Inc., enom1009 Inc (enom) – eNom didn’t have the all night drug induced namestorming session that SnapNames apparently had

EurotrashNames.com LLC (Moniker) – Love it!

Microbreweddomains.com LLC (Moniker) – Little know fact: name was brainstormed at a microbrewery.

NotSoFamousNames.com LLC (Moniker) – No thanks, I’ll keep my business at DecentDomains.

Wild West Domains (GoDaddy) – got to wonder what GoDaddy was thinking when it named its reseller division. Nothing says “lack of trust” more than the Wild West.

Tags: Domain Registrars