Domain exchange Afternic is steadily improving its solid domain trading platform.

I had the opportunity to sit down with Roger Collins, president of domain exchange Afternic, during Domain Roundtable in Seattle last week. Afternic is one of the two major domain name brokerages and competes mainly against Sedo.

Collins said Afternic is working on a couple site enhancements. One is a complete facelift and graphical design. The other is something that I’ve griped about for a while: the speed of Afternic’s site. Collins said they’ve pinpointed the bottleneck to its backend databases and is working on ways to speed up the site. Users should start seeing download speeds increase in phases. Afternic is considering changing databases and using caching to improve the user’s experience.

I asked Collins what Afternic is doing to ensure that domains on the site are listed by their actual owners. I tried to buy a domain on Afternic a few months ago only to find that the person who listed the domain no longer owned it. (I must admit I probably have listings on Afternic for domains I no longer own. I should also note that this problem isn’t specific to Afternic – other exchanges have the same issues.) Collins said Afternic uses several techniques to improve listing quality, including various Whois checks and sending automated emails to users with domains that are about to expire. The company is working on enhancing its Whois verification practices.

Collins emphasized the value of having your domains in the “Closing Soon” section of the web site. Domains are automatically added to this section if the reserve has been met. You can lower your reserve to a buyer’s bid amount to automatically be added to Closing Soon. Your domains will get excellent exposure on the Afternic home page for the 7 days before it closes. As an example, an auction for Saddam.com is ending today and is currently $2,001. This domain entered the “Closing Soon” section at only $315 and has received 18 bids since then (as of time of posting).

It’s worth noting that Afternic makes the majority of its money from domain sales. Some other exchanges profit most from domain parking. Collins attributes much of his company’s sales success to registrar partner relationships such as Register.com (Register.com used to own Afternic). To see this partnership in action visit Register.com and search for ITaustin.com. The results page will show that the domain is taken but allows you to click a button to buy the domain at Afternic.

Sales that involve a partner or affiliate are denoted with an asterisk in Afternic’s “Recent Sales” section. Roughly half of these sales are from partners and half from people that park their domains at Afternic (and a buyer clicks a domain link on the parked page). A small portion of referrals are from affiliate banners and links.

Over the next couple months I’ll test a few domains on Afternic’s parking service (which uses DomainSponsor and Fabulous) and try a domain in the “Featured Listings” section of Afternic. I’ll share results as soon as they’re available.

A silent domain name auction at the 2006 Domain Roundtable netted $200k in domain sales.

The big winner was Jail.com, which Moniker successfully auctioned for $110,000. A late runup on AutomotiveLoans.com, which started at only $1,000, resulted in an $18,000 sale. Among the domains that did not sell were Beef.com, which was listed for $250k, and Wifi.com, which was listed at $225,000.

The silent auction was held Thursday evening. I hope that next year the auction is held during the day. A number of conference attendees pre-plan evening events with fellow domainers and are unable to attend evening events such as the auction.

National Arbitration Forum is ceased its questionable press release practices.

I’ve been critical of National Arbitration Forum, which handles domain name UDRP disputes, for its practice of issuing press releases related to its arbitration decisions. Most (if not all) of these releases have been released when NAF has found in favor of big name companies in domain name disputes (e.g. Amazon.com, high profile celebrities). My belief is that if an arbitrator sends out press releases when it finds in favor of high profile companies and people then the arbitrator might lean toward ruling against a domain name owner.

During Domain Roundtable in Seattle I met a lawyer from NAF. I explained my issue to her and I have good news to report. Apparently there was a battle within NAF between the PR department and legal side about issuing these press releases for the exact reason I stated. NAF no longer issues such press releases as of a couple months ago.

It’s good to hear that NAF is doing the right thing.

Vint Cerf’s keynote at Domain Roundtable in Seattle this morning kept the crowd engaged.

I had the pleasure of eating breakfast with Vint Cerf, chairman of ICANN’s board and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, prior to his keynote address this morning. It was great to discuss some of the issues domainers are facing with regards to registrar practices, expiring domains, etc. directly with Cerf.

Cerf’s keynote kept the crowd engaged. I’ve summarized the topics he covered:

New TLDs - Some people have misunderstood Cerf’s position with regards to adding new domains. He said he is not opposed to adding new TLDs. What he advocates, however, is having a solid rationale for adding new TLDs. Cerf believes the processes and outcomes of the first two rounds of TLD adds were not satisfactory. He hopes for the process to be revised by the end of the year.

International Domain Names – First, Cerf noted that IDNs are important for the large portion of the world that doesn’t use roman characters. But he noted that there are some technical and security challenges to overcome. IDNs present an opportunity for phishing attacks that lead unsuspecting users to a domain name that appears to be a reputable company’s site, but the domain name actually includes characters improperly displayed by the user’s browser. Cerf discussed problems with browser plug-ins that enable IDNs. These can give the impression of TLDs that don’t exist, creating confusion. He also pointed out that browsing the web isn’t the only thing to consider when planning for IDNs. Software applications and e-mail systems need to be compatible.

Registrar Compliance – Cerf admitted that ICANN hasn’t been able to monitor compliance of registrar activities effectively. ICANN is trying to hire more people to monitor compliance. But Cerf said the other key issue is that ICANN needs more tools to enforce the policies. Right now it has one option for disciplining registrars — to disaccredit them. He would like more options, such as fines or steps of discipline. There’s an impediment to implementing such a structure – the very group that would give ICANN more disciplinary power consists of people that might be disciplined by the rules. This means we are unlikely to see changes soon.

At breakfast I mentioned GoDaddy’s practice of preventing transfers of domains for 60 days when you change anything about the registrant’s information in Whois. Cerf was appalled at the practice.

Public Policy – referring to a push by countries to stake a bigger role in managing the internet, Cerf pointed out that ICANN is not in charge of the internet. It’s only an oversight group for certain functions. He does not believe the role of ICANN should be transferred to ITU.

Domainers – Referring to those in the crowd that invest in domain names, Cerf discussed how current domain policy is geared toward the naive public, not active domainers. The policies are developed to protect that average Joe that registers a domain. Cerf suggested that perhaps policy decisions should also include domainers.

He wants to see more education about the lifecycle of domain names. The average Joe should understand that domain names don’t expire and simply go to a “domain name heaven”. There are consequences to letting a domain go even if you aren’t using it anymore. The average Joe needs to understand this.

Direct Navigation – he saved an issue near and dear to the audiences’ hearts for the end. He discussed the notion of direct navigation (people typing in domains) as opposed to using search engines to find what they want on the web. As search continues to improve, Cerf said he suspects the percentage of web traffic that comes from direct navigation will fall. However, he said that the overall level of direct navigation might increase as the number of internet users increases.

Q&A – Cerf saved time at the end of his speech to answer a few questions from the audience. Cerf is hearing impaired, so he walked into the audience to answer questions (so he could read the questioner’s lips). In response to someone comparing domain names to real estate, Cerf warned that real estate is not analogous to domain names. Things can happen in the virtual world that can’t happen in the physical world.

In response to a question about the .com contract with Verisign, Cerf reminded the audience that the decision about the contract was made in the context of litigation between Verisign and ICANN. Cerf believes that taking the issue further in litigation would not have led to a better contract than what we have now.

After Q&A, Name Intelligence VP Jothan Frakes made a joke about Al Gore “inventing the internet”. Cerf grabbed the mic and jokingly said “everywhere I go there is some asshole” who makes fun of Gore’s statement. Cerf then gave praise to Gore’s efforts to create the commercial web and explained that Gore never made the statement that he “invented the internet”.

Later, Frakes stood at the podium and said, “I’m still so honored to have been called an asshole by Vint Cerf.”

To park or not to park, that is the question.

The “Domain Monetization” session at Domain Roundtable featured a common question: should I park my domains or develop them? The answer, according to almost all 9 panelists, is “it depends”.

Most panelists straddled the fence and suggested developing select domains but parking most of them. Ron Sheridan of Domain Sponsor said that 95% of domains can be parked and auto-optimized by technology, but the other 5% of domains are better addressed individually. This other 5% includes great names that deserve more than a parking page and low traffic domains that can use a bit of human optimization to maximize revenue (but that don’t warrant a web site). Sheridan said that technology can only take domains so far.

Howard Hoffman of PPCincome.com said he’s focused on parking rather than site development right now because of the opportunity cost. He believes he should spend his time seeking out new domains to buy and then worry about development later.

Dan Warner of Fabulous said there simply isn’t enough time to develop all of your domains. Warner’s company has 550,000 domains and most of them are parked. Only a select few will be viewed as possible candidates for development. Warner is currently researching the question of parking vs. developing and will issue an editorial on this subject when he is finished.