Apple co-founder proud of his three character domain Woz.com.

Steve Wozniak delighted a crowd of 500 domain industry professionals this afternoon at DOMAINfest in Los Angeles. Wozniak dished out stories of the early days at Apple and his philosophy on business. But the crowd was most engaged when he talked about domain names.

Wozniak, known as “The Woz”, is somewhat of a domainer himself. He owns Woz.com, and recounts the story of how he almost didn’t register it in favor of Woz.org. He felt he wasn’t a commercial entity so .org made the most sense. A friend told him that the .com was important and registered .com for him.

He was able to use the woz.com domain name for a later company. Wozniak was in a company name brainstorming session listening to others discuss various names and domain names. He quickly tried to think of an acronym for woz.com, and came up with “Wheels of Zeus”. He blurted the name out to a surprised reaction, but the company ended up going with it.

Wozniak also joked about being asked to join ICANN. He joked that he looked at it as just a chance to take four great vacations a year in exotic locations. (He didn’t accept.)

See Wozniak discuss Woz.com in the video below.

Snyder out, Hurtte in at Internet REIT.

Internet REIT, a media company that has acquired hundreds of thousands of domain names over the past few years, has a new CEO.

Bob Hurtte joined the company from Gurwitch Products, LLC, the worldwide distributor of the Laura Mercier brand of cosmetics. Hurtte was Chief Operationg Officer at Gurwitch Products. Prior to Gurwitch Products, Hurtte was an accountant with Ernst & Young, LLP.

Former CEO Craig Synder came from competitor Marchex (NASDAQ: MCHX). Synder’s LinkedIn page has not been updated with new employment. Synder had been commuting from his home in Seattle to Internet REIT’s Houston office.

Internet REIT made a splash in the domain business after raising over $100 million. It also spearheaded the formation of Internet Commerce Association. It later was sued by Verizon for a number of trademark typos it owned. Internet REIT exited Internet Commerce Association because of some of its legal issues.

Oversee.net president discusses state of the domain name industry; seeks transparency and cooperation.

Oversee.net president Jeff Kupietzky kicked off the first full day of DOMAINfest Global this morning with a parody of a Barack Obama speech (see video below). It was a light-hearted way to discuss the difficulties and opportunities the domain name industry faces. His underlying message was that we’re in tough times, but these tough times will breed opportunity. In order for the industry to succeed, domain companies must look outward and exhibit transparency.

Kupietzky said the domain parking and aftermarket business is shrinking. While valued at $1.2 billion in 2007, the business fell to $1.0 billion in 2008. Oversee predicts it will shrink further to $0.9 billion in 2009. Futhermore, Kupietzky predicts many of the companies in the space today will disappear during the downturn.

I sat down with Kupietzky this afternoon to understand more of his views on the domain market and Oversee.

Kupietzky said he understands that at times Oversee has made mistakes, but said the company is moving to a new era of transparency and predictability. He urges the industry to do the same. A prime example is traffic quality and working with Google to ensure value to advertisers. For years the domain industry has fought the issue of quality. But in the long run, the domain industry thrives when it delivers quality traffic. Working with Google and other ad partners is essential.

Oversee created DOMAINfest not because it wanted to be in the show business, but because it felt there were no opportunities for partners and domainers to come together in an open environment (without worrying about prohibitive costs, invitations, etc.) I admit it’s rather remarkable to see many of the company’s competitors exhibiting. Even more remarkable is that Google and Yahoo are both here and talking one-on-one with domainers in a structured networking session.

This years’ show will be slightly smaller than last year in terms of attendees, but there are more exhibitors. I estimate about 200 people attended yesterday’s “bootcamp” and there are 500 people at the show.

Stay tuned for further updates from Los Angeles. For photos, see Domain Name News’
Frank Michlick’s Flickr page

Legal panel at DOMAINfest Global says think twice before moving your domain names or forming your business offshore.

Derek Newman

Tuesday afternoon at DOMAINfest Global in Los Angeles, a panel of lawyers suggested that moving domain names to offshore registrars or forming your domain company offshore may not be the panacea it seems. In fact, Derek Newman of Newman & Newman said you may actually be hurting yourself by setting up an offshore corporation to hold your domain names.

Newman said that companies — and often times judges — assume that you’re trying to hide something if you set your domain names up in an offshore company. This may also apply to moving your domains to an offshore domain registrar.

Other lawyers on the panel generally agreed. They said that just because your domain names are in an offshore company or at an offshore domain name registrar doesn’t mean you are outside of United States’ jurisdiction.

Here are some things to think about:

1. Is your web host or server based in the United States?
2. Does your domain name parking company have a presence in the U.S.?
3. If your domain parking company is outside the U.S., does it use a U.S.-based ad feed such as Google or Yahoo?

RPC, RPM, etc. mean nothing when comparing parking services.

I came in to the “Domain Monetization 101 & 201″ session at DOMAINfest today near the end. But I caught a couple questions, one of which was “what three statistics should I look at most for my parked domains?”

I was surprised when the first couple answers had to do with revenue per click, revenue per thousand (RPM), etc. A couple years ago I thought that too, but I now know it’s not the case.

Thankfully, Donny Simonton from Parked.com set the record straight: the number that matters is the revenue number. That’s it.

The reason the other stats mean little is that each parking company counts visitors, clicks, etc. differently. So you may get a $100 rpm at one parking company and $200 at the other, but it’s because the second one only counted half of the visitors that the first one did.

There’s another reason RPM doesn’t mean as much as total revenue. Some parking companies manage to get your domain names into search engines. If you get a $100 RPM with one company and $50 with another, but the latter manages to get your page into the search engines and deliver five times as much traffic, you’re better off with that one.

Now, when working within one parking company, the other statistics are important. But when deciding which company to use, just look at the revenue number.