Porsche.me, Tucows, and .tel headline most read articles of the month.

November is coming to a close. As you digest Thanksgiving turkey, here’s a look back at the top 5 domain name news articles of November on Domain Name Wire, ranked by page views.

1. Porsche.me: Money Down the Drain - The “winning” bidder of Porsche.me during the .me launch lost his domain and his money when he lost a recent WIPO domain arbitration. Will he also lose the $90,025 he spent on Toyota.me?

2. Tucows Lays Off 15% of Staff - the domain industry isn’t immune to layoffs. Tucows was just another in a string of companies announcing layoffs including Oversee.net and NameMedia.

3. Telnic: A $35 Million Investment Gone Awry - Telnic has raised $35 million to launch .tel. Too bad ICANN delays and a changing world wide web will make it hard to recoup the investment. Also read the follow up article including an interview with Telnic.

4. Gregory Ricks Loses LTI.com; Doesn’t Respond to Complaint - after filing a lawsuit to stop the transfer of a three character domain he lost in arbitration, Gregory Ricks didn’t even respond to another three character arbitration.

5. Big Three Registrars Ask Feds for Bailout - a satirical look at the state of the U.S. economy. Why should the auto companies be the only ones to ask the feds for a bailout?

Cheer up and give thanks.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the United States. That means a light work week, time with the family, and then a mad dash to the stores on Friday (except that I buy everything online). It’s a time to reflect on the past year and give thanks. Here’s what I’m thankful for:

1. Domains are holding their values. Yes, they’re down. There’s not nearly as much cash chasing domains today as there was a year ago. But compared to my stock market investments I’m feeling pretty good about my domains.

2. Google’s deal with Yahoo fell through. If it passed government scrutiny you would have seen the end of Yahoo. This would have accelerated Google’s squeeze on domainer margins. Now if only Yahoo could hook up with Microsoft.

3. The domain community. Throughout thick and thin this year, the domain community is staying active. You’ll find it on forums. You’ll find it at conferences, even if budgets are a little tighter. And you’ll find it on Domain Name Wire — traffic has steadily increased every month in 2008.

4. Domain parking cleanup. Domain parking revenue is down, but upstream ad providers are doing what’s necessary to “clean up” the parking channel. (Google’s words, not mine.) Although it may be painful in the short term, it is necessary for the long term survival of the channel.

5. Supporters of Domain Name Wire. I’m really excited to be able to focus more time on creating original and compelling content on DNW. Throughout the year I’ve ramped up coverage and investigations for stories. I also picked up the DNW.com domain name. I’m only able to do this because of readers (see #3) and advertisers. Despite the downturn, I really haven’t lost any advertisers and have picked up a couple. Thanks, everyone.

More examples of poorly chosen company domain names.

My wife took over the home office this past weekend to sort through a few hundred business cards that were scattered across her desk. One of the business cards caught my eye. It was for a company called Mingle. Or at least I think that’s how you pronounce it. The company’s domain name is — get ready for this — Minggl.com. Ouch.

I decided to look through her cards to find other examples of bad domain names. Many times the companies have good names, it’s just that they have poor domain names. Here are some that caught my eye:

Awind: The company name is fine, but you have to go to awindinc.com to find its web presence. There’s another company (non-competing, thank goodness) that operates at awind.com.

Future Works: I like the company name, even though it seems I’ve heard of several companies with names like this. To find the company you’ll have to type in Future-Works.com with a hyphen. Much like Awind, FutureWorks.com is owned by an existing company.

Giftag: Giftag is a Best Buy venture. But if you try to find it by spelling it correctly as GiftTag.com, you’ll end up at a one of Frank Schilling’s parked pages. You’ll have to go to Giftag.com with one ‘t’ to find the company.

FortressWare: This one is really painful. To find this company you have to go to Fortessw.com. I would think that when you brainstormed this company name and you found FortressWare.com unavailable, you’d try to buy it before settling on the company name.

Web 2.0 .tv: This isn’t a company, just a web site. The company behind it is really good. But this name is tough and brings up an issue lots of people face: “how do I deal with web 2.0 in domain names?” I’ve seen people display it as “20″ in domains. In this case the domain is web2point0.tv. I usually refer to it as “web 2 dot 0″, so this choice confuses me. The simple answer for people struggling with the 2.0 thing is: don’t use it in your domains.

Service allows you to get distribution for articles.

Domain parking alternative WhyPark has launched ContentPromote, a complementary solution to its main web site creation service. Essentially, users submit articles, blog posts, and other content to ContentPromote and then it is syndicated across WhyPark’s network of 50,000 domain names.

ContentPromote could be beneficial for improving search engine rankings. The pitch for the service includes:

-You get a one-way text link back to your website or blog at the bottom of each of your articles
- You may add a few sentence description of your blog or website to accompany each article
- A screenshot of your website is included with each post WhyPark syndicates and is also directly linked back to your website or blog
- You can update your site or blog description at anytime by logging into the ContentPromote website
- Your content is only syndicated on domains where the subject is relevant to your individual posts

This is a smart product for WhyPark. The company needs fresh content for its clients’ web sites. So far it has grabbed that content from article directories as well as signing agreements with press release services and premium article services. ContentPromote will take it one step further by syndicating “fresher” content. You can read my preview of the newest WhyPark platform here.

.EU domain headlines Sedo ’s sales week.

Sedo has completed the sale of Internet.eu for $26,250, landing in the top ten publicly announced .eu domain sales of all time. Sedo has a lock on .eu sales, handling the top 20 sales of all time with the exception of one private sale, according to NameBio.

I’m sure the original registrant of Internet.eu expected the domain to sell for much more. But .eu has been a poster child for a bungled domain launch. Almost all of the good domains were snapped up by speculators — many using questionable trademark applications — resulting in slow uptake by real businesses in Europe. Given the limited success of .eu to date, the seller should be happy with his sale.

Speaking of having a “lock” on domain sales, Sedo’s sales list this week shows that it continues to have a lock on country code domain sales. In fact, most of its top sales came from extensions such as .eu (European Union), .uk (United Kingdom), .de (Germany), and .nl (Netherlands).

Also, the buyer of Blackjack.mobi in the Sedo .mobi auction wasted no time completing the purchase of the domain for $9,700.

Here’s a wrap of the past week’s sales:

internet.eu 26,250 USD
glow.co.uk 20,010 GBP
haarverlaengerung.de 20,000 EUR Hair extensions in German
mijn.nl 19,500 EUR
everestbets.com 18,500 EUR
ggg.fr 15,000 EUR
flashplayer.de 15,000 EUR
chrome.co.uk 10,000 GBP
fmn.nl 8,500 EUR
pizzaria.de 7,500 EUR
huiswerk.nl 6,600 EUR Homework in Dutch
sexkontakte.ch 6,300 EUR
guns.co.uk 5,000 GBP
cortexa.com 7,000 USD
blackjack.mobi 9,700 USD
gg.org 7,015 USD
allbodysurgery.com 5,700 USD website
turbobet.com 5,500 USD
girlsgonestyled.com 5,000 USD
qbz.com 4,625 USD
proc.com 4,400 USD
onlineprofits.com 3,500 USD
audemars-piguet.ru 4,000 USD
outlook.fr 4,000 USD
dietdrugs.co.uk 3,650 EUR