A preview of TRAFFIC’s upcoming Australia show.

The popular TRAFFIC domain name conference heads to Australia this year for the first TRAFFIC Down Under November 18-20. The event is being promoted by Fabulous.com and TRAFFIC founders Rick Schwatz and Howard Neu. I recently caught up with Fabulous to understand how this show came about and what we can expect.

Domain Name Wire: How did this event evolve?

Fabulous: There has always been a lot of interest from the domain community for a show to be held in Australia. We were constantly asked to throw a conference and everyone promised they will be there if we did. So we finally said “Yes, let’s do it”. Over a quick drink and five minute negotiation Dan Warner, Fabulous.com Chief Strategy Officer, pitched the idea to Rick and Howard (founders of TRAFFIC). They loved the idea and as they say, the rest is history!

Domain Name Wire: Is TRAFFIC Down Under meant to attract a local audience or from people all over the world?

Fabulous: We are hoping that TRAFFIC Down Under will attract a lot of local individuals and companies who are based in the Asia-Pacific region. However, the domain industry is global so we have received a lot of interest from industry professionals based in the USA and Europe. We expect the crème of the industry to attend, and those people will be traveling from all over the world.

Domain Name Wire: I just priced airfare from Austin to Australia for this event and it is $2,000? What will make this event worth the cost and time?

Fabulous: We priced the tickets on Expedia.com and Kayak.com with these results:

$1,600 USD via Vancouver, Los Angeles, and San Francisco

$1,500 USD via London

(Air New Zealand allows a stop-over in Auckland if you want to include New Zealand in your trip for no extra cost)

This is a premium event. It isn’t designed to be inexpensive. The event is pulling out all the stops and delivering an intense experience for the participants. Part of that experience is the exclusivity that naturally occurs when expenses exceed the “budget” conference range. We look forward to welcoming a smaller and dedicated group of professional domainers to our exotic location and events.

Domain Name Wire: Do you anticipate having a live domain name auction at the event?

Fabulous: It wouldn’t be a TRAFFIC show without a live domain auction, so of course the famous TRAFFIC Live Auction will be part of the agenda at TRAFFIC Down Under.

The auction will consist of 100 handpicked domains. Each of the domains will have qualified interest and underlying metrics that ensure they are highly desired. Over a course of only two hours the auction will be more compact and intense. The auction will be held in the Australian morning which will suit bidders from the USA and Europe who are internet bidding.

For more information about TRAFFIC Down Under, visit TrafficDownUnder.com.

Company built on generic domain names continues string of major announcements.

Communicate.com (CMNN.ob) is changing its name to Live Current Media, Inc., the company announced today. A name change was hinted at during an interview with Kiplinger earlier this year.

The company also announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Auctomatic, an early stage start-up funded by, among other investors, Y Combinator LLC. Auctomatic has developed commerce technology and tools that enable sellers to easily transact online through sites such as eBay. The acquisition is expected to close in May.

Communicate.com owns a number of premium domain names including Perfume.com and Cricket.com. Its goal is to turn these each into major online businesses.

Being a domain name company, Live Current was wise to snap up both LiveCurrent.com and LiveCurrentMedia.com. The latter is not forwarding to its site yet.

Live Current’s stock has been on a wild (and mostly positive) ride since the Kiplinger article. The stock opened the year at $2.00 and has been as high as $3.48. It closed yesterday at $2.69 per share.

I expect the company’s earnings to be lower in the short term as it prepares to launch into its next phase. It took Cricket.com offline (a smart move given possible legal issues with the domain showing mobile phone ads), and that domain was its biggest pay-per-click generator. But if the company can execute and develop sites like Brazil.com into major online destinations, it will be worth the near term investment.

Analyst predicts decrease in parked domain names.

Credit Suisse Internet technology analyst Philip Winslow predicts domain name parking will become less profitable, leading to a drop in domain registrations, reports financial publication Barron’s.

According to the Barron’s article:

To wit, some enterprising folks will sign up tons of temporary, or “parked” Web sites, to drive keyword search results to their pages and collect an ad fee they split with Google. Google’s cracking down on that practice, notes Winslow, in an effort to weed out what are called “link farms,” pages set up to milk Google’s ads while offering no real content for Web users.

And as that happens, it could reduce the practice of registering those opportunistic Web sites, which would reduce overall domain registration, which would affect VeriSign’s [NASDAQ: VRSN] growth, writes Winslow.

Although I hardly view parked pages at temporary, the general belief here is likely true. I haven’t talked to a domain owner recently who reports an increase in parking earnings. There are a number of factors conbributing to this, including “parking page blindness” (which I’ll write about soon) and changes at ad providers such as Google (NASDAQ: GOOG). As certain domains no longer cover their renewal cost, they will likely be dropped.

Will this hurt VeriSign? Sure it will. It collects $6.42 from each .com registration. But domain growth will continue, even if it’s at a slower rate. And VeriSign can jack up its .com prices another 7% this year. It also has a built-in monopoly. Although I don’t like the monopoly, I don’t think VeriSign’s registry business will be hurting anytime soon.

According to the Barron’s article, Winslow blames other factors for lowering his estimates on VeriSign.

Will the GoDaddy brand wither as it is institutionalized?

GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons is one outspoken guy, and he has built a brand around this “edginess”.

He recently took a stab at video blogging on his blog BobParsons.com. He discussed the idea of having former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s call girl Ashley Dupre be the next GoDaddy girl (he said he was open to discussion, which suggests this video was recorded before GoDaddy’s PR team dismissed the idea). He also discussed a recent motorcycle accident and how he’s going to start driving a car. He then relived his fond memories of this year’s Super Bowl commercial.

The big question is: who cares? When Parsons started blogging, he made some insightful commentary on domain names and the internet, which is what his business is about. Sure, he made some off-topic commentary about torture too, but his message was mostly relevant.

Now it’s too neatly packaged.

Here’s the problem I see with Parsons and his brand. At first it seemed ingenious and uncalculated. A true maverick. The first Super Bowl commercial put the company on the map with lots of media exposure. The coverage was even better since the company couldn’t get any ads approved.

But then it became institutionalized. Here’s another year, another GoDaddy commercial, and another “oh gee whiz, they rejected our commercial again!” As further evidence, GoDaddy’s PR team released a “timeline” of the commercial saga. It was all planned out from day one. It was no longer edgy; it became trite.

Parson’s video blog is just another example of this. I’m sure he came up with most of the topics, but it’s too polished. (That is, except for Parsons, who comes across as rather quirky.) And it’s irrelevant. Do I really care what Parsons drives to work?

Stepping outside of whether or not you like GoDaddy as a company, where do you think the brand is headed?

Site encourages violation of pay-per-click rules.

Ever wonder why advertisers want to opt out of domain name advertising? Fraud. Here’s just another example that went live yesterday: highlighterz.com.

Highlighterz purports to help you generate paid parking income without violating parking service terms of service:

HighLighterz, find what you need. We provide your PPC web page to all internet users, without violating the PPC rule of no web sites linking parked domain names, to drive traffic. “Only type in and search engine results”. How it works, Find a site that interest you then highlight it copy and paste it to your browser. And click away on relevant links. Find what your looking for. That’s it. Have Fun!

Let me make this clear: encouraging people to click on your parked domains is a violation of almost all parking companies’ terms of service.

Services like this are ruining the domain industry. Latecomers poke, prod, and swindle their way to clicks on domains that don’t get any traffic. Sorry, folks. If your domain doesn’t get any traffic, you need to develop it or get it into search engines if you want to generate revenue. There’s no free money.

It will be difficult to police Highlighterz because it’s unclear if the domain owners actually submitted their domains for the service. For example, there’s one good generic domain owned by a famous domainer on the page. Trust me, this domain gets more type-in traffic than it needs, and there’s no way this domainer would submit it to this service.

Do the industry a favor. When you see a service like this, let the owner know you don’t appreciate it. Your livelihood depends on it.