A look back at the past month in domaining.

It’s Halloween, which means we’re wrapping up another month of 2008. As I prepare to take my two year old daughter trick-or-treating in her flamingo costume, here’s a look back at the top stories on Domain Name Wire this month by total page views.

1. 10 Things I’d Do if I Were a New Domainer - a list of domain lessons learned (mostly the hard way).

2. Schilling and Berryhill Win Another UDRP - legendary domain owner Frank Schilling and his attorney John Berryhill teamed up to stave off yet another unwarranted complaint under UDRP.

3. Domain Stocks Pummeled - happy, happy, joy, joy. Domain stocks have been hit hard (many of them harder than the broader market). Here’s some advice: don’t open your Q3 401(k) statement. Just toss it in the trash.

4. Does Microsoft Want to Buy Your Domain Name? - here are some tips to find out if Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) (or another big company) is trying to buy your domain name.

5. Live Current Hopes to Sell 6 Geo Domain Names for $6M-$10M - Live Current is looking to raise a little cash (see story #3) by selling 5 of its geo domain names plus its former company name, Communicate.com.

Silly press releases for eBay auctions abound. Here’s how they work.

OK, Elliot. You got me.

Earlier today Elliot Silver sent me and e-mail with the subject “BREAKING DOMAIN NEWS”. The body of the e-mail read “Big News… thought you might want to cover this…” and then there was a link to a press release on PRweb.

Elliot sends me news leads from time to time, so I anxiously clicked the link. That’s when I knew I’d been had.

The link was for a press release about a domain name for sale on eBay. As you and Elliot know, it drives me crazy seeing some of these stupid releases. This one may take the cake:

President Barack Hussein Obama.com Auction Scheduled

Oh boy.

The press release reads like most eBay domain name auction press releases:

Establish demand for your domain

“Responding to demand from conservatives and liberals worldwide, the owner of the widely acclaimed and controversial domain name PresidentBarackHusseinObama.com has decided to sell it in a 10-day online auction…”We anticipate extremely high national and international demand and intense bidding in this auction’s final few days,” said a spokesman for the domain name’s owner, Fix Bay, Inc., a Nevada-based corporation”

Quote top DNJournal domain sale prices to show domain value

“According to the online DNJournal domain name sales reporting service, top domain name sales this year have included $9.9 million for fund.com, $1.659 million for DataRecovery.com, both in March, and $1.015 million for Invest.com in September, after international stock markets began to tumble.”

Say why your domain is worth as much as those million dollar sales

“Although we are not making predictions on the final dollar amount, there is a possibility this auction could smash those records,” the Fix Bay, Inc., spokesman said. “If Barack Obama is elected Nov. 4, the term ‘President Barack Hussein Obama’ will forever become an integral, undeniable and perennial part of American heritage. This compelling and irreplaceable domain name would become embossed in the U.S. and international psyche.”

It appears at the owner of this particular domain name is looking to drum up publicity for his own political campaign rather than sell the domain name:

“Wayne Melton, President of Fix Bay, Inc., a Democrat, and a candidate for the Reno City Council, said he launched the auction four days before the general election to generate publicity–and hopefully, votes–for his own campaign. ”

If that’s his goal, then I bit. But I don’t think the publicity will help him get elected.

Regardless of outcome, Google has won.

You may have read yesterday evening that the Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) advertising deal may not go through, thanks to the U.S. government getting involved.

Bad new for the companies? Not for Google, which played this perfectly.

You see, if Google got the deal then it would have an ad deal with Yahoo that would help fill its coffers while rendering Yahoo’s advertising platform less valuable. Yahoo advertisers would gradually defect, leaving Google as the only tier 1 search ad network.

If Google loses the ad deal, which looks more likely, it also wins. The deal rendered Yahoo useless for several months. The deal also took the Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) option — the option that scared Google the most — off the table in the short term. Microsoft wouldn’t want to get involved if Google is involved, and it gave Jerry Yang a reason to say no to Microsoft’s courtship. Also, you can be sure that Google acquired competitive intelligence during the process.

So Yahoo is even weaker than it was before. Heads, Google wins. Tails, Google wins. Yahoo loses both ways.

Priority deadline is Saturday for Australia auction.

Domainers wishing to sell their domains in the upcoming Aftermarket.com auction at TRAFFIC Down Under should submit their domains by this Saturday. Domains can be submitted through the online system at Aftermarket.com.

The submission process is similar to the one used for the New York TRAFFIC auction.

“From a customer’s perspective, the submission process itself is relatively the same,” said Thought Convergence’s Susan Prosser. (Thought Convergence owns Aftermarket.com). “There are performance and backend database structure updates that will improve user experience but not necessarily functionality.”

Aftermarket.com will focus on no and low reserve domain names, so submitting domains without reserves may increase your odds of having domains selected.

“There is a strong investor base looking at competitively priced domains,” said Prosser. “Knowing that buyers are interested in ensuring sales transactions, our intent is to include up to half of the inventory at a no to low reserve entry point.” The primary method to increase odds of your domain being selected is setting a competitive reserve price, she added.

Although Aftermarket.com’s auction at TRAFFIC New York didn’t sell as much dollar value as competitors, both of the domains I had in the auction sold. Aftermarket.com will learn from its selections last time to have a higher sell-through rate in this auction.

The catalog for the November 20 auction will be released November 14.

Forbes Magazine covers new TLD launch, but has a few inaccuracies.

The maintstream media has paid cursory attention to ICANN’s opening of the top level domain name landscape. A new article in the November 17 issue of Forbes (available now online) covers the topic.

A couple observations: First, the article has many inaccuracies. Second, there’s common ground between domainers and Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse.

Inaccuracies
I find many of the statements in the article misleading or inaccurate.

“The current plan of the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names & Numbers, approved in June, is to allow custom domain names to anyone who asks for one. Addresses ending in com or org will be passé. By the middle of next year applicants will be able to register everything from “.soup” to “.nuts.”"

First, I think we can all agree that com will not be passé. Second, this seems to imply that anyone can register a top level domain. This isn’t true. There will be a (hopefully) strict review process to ensure that only qualified organizations get TLDs.

“Under the current system it costs a complainant $1,300 to file a claim of trademark infringement with an Icann-approved arbitrator.”

This is sort of true, if you file for one or two domains at National Arbitration Forum. WIPO costs $1500. But the bigger cost is legal fees. I’m sure trademark attorneys would point out that the true cost of fighting cybersquatting is more than $1300 per domain.

“Icann says that it has already spent $10 million on software that would spot squatters.”

I think the author is confused here. ICANN has spent over $10 million preparing for the launch of new TLDs. Not on software to spot squatters.

Common Ground with CADNA
Often times organizations that are generally at odds with each other end up on the same side of the table on a particular topic. Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse, which frequently spews out made up numbers about cybercrime and would like to group “domainers” with “cybersquatters”, could actually be an advocate for domainers’ interests.

CADNA is worried about the cost of fighting against cybersquatting and typosquatting on 56+4
second level domains across hundreds of new top level domains. They have good reason to worry about this.

Many domainers I’ve talked to are generally opposed to the new TLDs. They believe that traffic to .com domains will increase due to user confusion, but they also believe the new TLDs could hurt the stability of the internet. Policies made for new TLDs (particularly geo domains and “morality”) might creep into existing TLDs. There are a lot of unanswered questions, but the new TLDs and their policies could hurt existing ones in the long run.

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