Domain conglomerate files trademark for “Domaining 2.0″.

Domain conglomerate Oversee.net, which owns DomainSponsor, Moniker, and SnapNames, appears to be readying a new marketing campaign around the term “Domaining 2.0″. The company filed for a United States trademark on November 5 for the term “Domaining 2.0″ for use with a laundry list of goods and services. The trademark serial number is 77608409.

Few of the goods and services listed give any clues to new products at Oversee.net, but there are some interesting ones related to the company’s current services:

-market research in the field of domain name traffic
-online auction services and title transfers featuring domain names
-online privacy protection services
-lead generation services, namely, an internet-based technology platform consisting of a customer lead management system for others, the collection and dissemination of consumer information, providing customer lead generation, customer lead origination
-online travel comparison services, online education comparison services
-analyzing internet traffic patterns for optimizing domain pages, namely, computer services for analyzing internet searches for optimizing the content and advertisements on domain name pages

Is it a new marketing message as Oversee.net brings all of its brands under one roof? Or is it a start of something more? Trademark filings often tip off what companies are up to. It was a trademark filing that tipped me off that Network Solutions was starting an expired domain service called NameJet.

BreakingNews.com is a new news site. But the domain name gives it an instant brand.

BreakingNews.com, a news aggregator that will allow users to interact and socialize, launched earlier this month. Thanks to a great domain name, the web site is already a household brand. PV Media Group acquired the domain name BreakingNews.com earlier this year for an undisclosed amount. It has since worked to launch its vision for a next generation news site.

James McDonald, BreakingNews.com CEO, said acquiring the top domain name for the site was critical to its business plan. “It’s a very important component to the strategy,” said McDonald in an interview with Domain Name Wire. “There are a lot of sites that launch and are pretty good but don’t get a lot of traffic.”

Indeed, BreakingNews.com could have used a web 2.0 misspelled domain or a second tier domain, but the BreakingNews.com domain gives it an instant brand and credibility. The Long Island, New York company also hopes to leverage the domain in search engines for the highly trafficked keyword “Breaking News”.

“Our brand will be built anytime there is breaking news anywhere,” said McDonald. “That’s a big part of a product launch.”

Although still in its early stages, McDonald envisions BreakingNews.com becoming a community where people can view and interact with several different stories (or videos, blogs, etc.) on related topics. They’ll be able to comment, chat, and dissect the news. It will also offer citizen journalism so readers can submit their own news.

“I see a wide gap right now in how customers view news media,” continued McDonald. “Generally they’re viewing [the media] with some distrust.” McDonald points out that you’ll never see a Fox News story on CNN.com. You’ll only see CNN’s angle on the story. At BreakingNews.com you can see the story from several different angles.

In a world of news sites struggling to find an identity, BreakingNews.com can thank its domain name for putting it ahead of the pack.

Feedback sought for conference calls with industry executives.

If you’ve never listened to a public company’s shareholder conference calls, they can be rather interesting. The company gives a canned overview of its latest quarter (or year) and goes through its financials. Then financial analysts are allowed to ask completely unscripted questions of the company’s management.

I think we could apply this same model to many domain name service providers to provide two-way feedback and improve industry dialogue.

For example, we could set up a conference call with the head of a major parking company. He would give a short presentation on what’s new with the company’s parking service and then open the floor to questions. Listeners can ask about ways to improve earnings, overall trends in revenue, and suggest new features.

I think this would be very productive for both domainers and the company. Domainers will be able to ask questions without the scripted nature of some company’s “webinars”. The company will get straight forward feedback and the opportunity to build goodwill with its customers.

Just like shareholder’s conference calls, the calls will be recorded for playback and transcripted.

I have a couple questions for readers:

1. Would you participate in these calls?

2. Would you prefer them to be during the workday or in the evening?

7 more registrars added to domain name registrar review site.

Six more registrars are available for reviewing at Registrar Judge, Domain Name Wire’s sister site. Domainers can now review ResellerClub, Dynadot, Gandi.net, DomainDiscover, Joker.com, directNIC, and NameCheap.

The registrars were added at the request of Registrar Judge users. ResellerClub and Dynadot were added last week and since then ResellerClub has shot to the top of the charts.

At Registrar Judge, domain name owners can rate and review domain registrars based on price, security, customer service, and account management tools. These registrar aspects have been voted most important in Domain Name Wire’s annual surveys.

Nearly 100 ratings have been submitted since the site launched November 12. Based on the success of the site, Domain Name Wire will release Parking Judge in the near future. Parking Judge will let users review domain parking services.

Registrar Judge uses a Bayesian ranking system to chart the top registrars. The system takes into consideration all of the star ratings for the registrars (not just “overall”) in addition to the number of positive and negative reviews. The top three registrars are currently:

1. ResellerClub
2. Fabulous
3. GoDaddy

If you disagree with the current rankings, then submit a review.

Marchex thinks “Local is the New Black”. Is it right?

2008 has been a hot year for geo domain names as internet advertising experts push local advertising as the next wave of internet advertising. Call it a coming out party: people have been successful with geo domains for over a decade but are finally getting recognition.

Perhaps it’s fitting that local-centric domain name and advertising company Marchex (NASDAQ: MCHX) filed a trademark for the term “Local is the New Black” earlier this year.

Is local really the new black? This year was the year geo domains finally received wide scale recognition. A geo-specific blog network launched. Attendance at the GeoDomain Expo surpassed that of some of the mainstream domain conferences. There’s even a geo-domain specific domain sales list.

And geo domains have been selling well, too. Here are some examples of both geo location and long- tail geo domain sales in 2007:

SanJuan.com $150,000
Bellevue.com $150,000
MyrtleBeachCondos.com $120,107
EdistoBeach.com $115,000
Sevilla.com $102,000
Yemen.com $100,000
FollyBeach.com $98,000

(Sources: RickLatona.com and DNJournal)

I’ve bought in, too. I’m working on launching a geo domain, Lakeway.com, to cater to the affluent city outside of Austin. eDirectory is currently working on customizations. Although it’s taking longer than I’d hoped to launch, it should be done by year end.

What do you think? Is local really “the new black”? How will it fair in 2009 compared to this year?

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