What Michael Collins’ departure means for Internet Commerce Association.

When Michael Collins resigned as Executive Director of Internet Commerce Association last week, I re-read his resignation letter a few times. What did it say about ICA? What is the future of the organization?

It’s clear that Collins didn’t leave solely to focus on a new venture. There were financial considerations at ICA. Collins wrote, “The entire world is going through economic turmoil now. Many of the ardent supporters of ICA feel that they cannot continue their previous level of support in these difficult times.”

I confirmed my suspicions with both Collins and other sources. Any organization that relies on “donations” will have a tough 2009. And it’s not just the little guys that need to donate; big companies that donate $50,000 or more are critical to meeting funding goals.

But I don’t necessarily view Collins leaving as a sign of weakness. It appears ICA realizes the need to be nimble, and most organizations of its size don’t have executive directors.

Sure, it would be nice if money was flowing and we could have an executive director, two assistants, a pr team, etc. on staff. But few organizations of ICA’s size have any full-time staff. It probably makes sense to outsource the functions, relying on a specialized paid contractors (lobbyists, pr, et al) and volunteers (domainers, ICA board members).

This is Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse‘s model. That organization is basically staffed by FairWinds Partners, a company that helps clients protect their trademarks. ICA needs to depend on volunteers, especially ones backed by bid domain name companies that can give them time out of the day to work on ICA issues.

GoDaddy Marketplace is simple, but what effect will it have on the market?

As Domain Name Wire reported earlier this month, GoDaddy is launching an online marketplace to buy and sell goods. It is now live, and over the weekend I had a chance to test drive GoDaddy’s new “marketplace”, which operates similar to eBay stores or Amazon. The process to buy something was relatively simple, and you’ll be happy to hear that there are no upsell/cross-sell pages during the checkout process.

OK, so GoDaddy Marketplace works. But what is GoDaddy’s motive for launching it, and what effect will it have on competitors such as eBay?

Why did GoDaddy launched Marketplace?
We don’t know for sure, but I suspect it has less to do with incremental revenue and more to do with building its brand. GoDaddy can push its Quick Shopping Cart, a product it has offered to web site customers for a while. Users can import their products from Quick Shopping Cart to Marketplace.

When you think about it, web sites like eBay and Yahoo Stores use their paying customers to deliver traffic to their web sites. These customers (sellers) tell people about their products on these sites. It’s nice to have your customers e-mail a link that includes your web site to friends or buy pay-per-click ads to promote their products listed on your web site.

GoDaddy is using shops.godaddy.com as its marketplace URL; it is not using a unique domain name. While they’re on the site, users are just a click away from buying a GoDaddy product.

Will it Work?
That’s the million dollar question. There are a couple things working against GoDaddy here.

First, people visit GoDaddy to buy web services such as domain names and web hosting. They don’t go there to by tangible goods. Making the leap to tangible goods is hard.

Second, GoDaddy has to get a lot more listings for Marketplace to work. When I need to buy something I can’t find on typical sites, I usually go to eBay. I typed in some of these items on GoDaddy Marketplace and got zero results: Norelco, Sega, etc.

It would take a great consumer mindshift to add shops.godaddy.com to the list of places they go to find bargains and hard-to-find items.

After all, what does “the best yogo pants ever” have to do with web services?

eBay need not worry about a competitive threat yet. But judging from sellers’ disdain for the heavyweight, people are pulling for GoDaddy — or anyone else — to succeed.

Domain has met reserve and will sell for six figures.

The domain name Top.com has met its reserve at Sedo and is currently at EUR 101,000 ($133,000 USD). 38 bids have been placed. The auction ends January 29 at 7 am EST.

The auction should give a confidence boost to the domain industry heading into this week’s DOMAINfest live domain auctions.

Although Top.com is the top auction (sorry, I couldn’t help myself) at Sedo right now, there are several other noteworthy auctions to watch.

Acaijuice.com has a single bidder at $24,000. Acai juice is known as a healthy antioxidant and has 625,000 Google results (not to mention a lot of ads).

Anwalt.com, which means a variant of lawyer in German, is at EUR 20,000 with one bidder.

The three character domain FPS.com has four bidders at $10,000. FPS has a number of acronyms.

Here are some other domain names worth keeping your eye on:

eNew.com EUR 4,000

Facts.info EUR 3,000 – a high price for a info

AthensPlumbing.com $3,000 – this must be an end user sale, and provide a boost to two word geos

FBomb.com – $1,500 – so many uses

DNMarketplace.com – $1,500 – OK, who’s planning to start another domain name aftermarket?

SportsMemorabilia.co.uk – 1,050 £

MVPCapital.com – $500 – hmm. There are several investment groups that use this name and would like to have this domain.

Marketing potential of brand-name top level domains seems limited.

I’ve had a question about the proposed new top level domains for a long time. And no one has provided me with a good answer. Hopefully someone reading this can provide one.

A handful of people have suggested new top level domains are an excellent global branding opportunity for brands such as eBay and IBM. Instead of promoting eBay.com or IBM.com, they can promote their own top level domains .ebay and .ibm.

Let’s assume both of these companies get their own tld. Pop quiz: how do you visit that company’s home page?

You can’t just type “ebay” into your browser. The way browsers are set up now you can’t even type .ebay into your browser and expect to be taken to the .ebay tld. There has to be a second level domain, such as home.ebay.

It reminds me of the mobile web site conundrum. If I want to go to CNN’s mobile web site, I don’t know if I should type cnn.com, cnn.mobi, cnn.com/m, m.cnn.com, etc. The same thing goes for new TLDs that are used as brands.

Even if a global brand gets its own top level domain, it will still need to “mirror” that tld on its .com address. Consider that eBay promotes “go to shop.ebay”. At first, 99% of people will type in shop.ebay.com. That number will decrease over time, but not quickly. And e-mail addresses? If the address is promoted as support@mail.ebay (remember, it has to have something before the tld), 99% of people will send mail to support@mail.ebay.com. So eBay will have to mirror its email addresses.

When you see a domain name in an ad, on TV, or billboard, you know it’s a domain name because it either has a common extension (such as .com) or start with www. (Seriously, I was confused when a billboard showed the .jobs extension).

At current prices, only a small percentage of companies can afford their own top level domain. So internet users will continue to default to .com.

This isn’t an argument against generic top level domains such as .bank (although there are plenty of arguments about that), but many people who make money from working with brands keep pumping new TLDs as a great branding opportunity. It doesn’t make sense to me.

What to wear and what to see.

DOMAINfest 2009 kicks off tomorrow evening in Hollywood, California. The lineup is solid and this looks to be a great event. Here’s my “practical” guide to attending the show.

When to Arrive
If you’re new to domaining, or even intermediate, you should try to arrive Tuesday at noon. Tuesday is “bootcamp” day, and includes several excellent sessions. I’ll be speaking at 1:30.

Everyone else should arrive by Tuesday evening at 7:00. That’s when Moniker’s low and no reserve auction starts. Afterward is a welcome cocktail party.

If you fly into Burbank you will have a short trip to the conference. If you fly into LAX it may take a while. A taxi will cost you $50-$100. Town cars cost about the same. A cheaper alternative is a multi-drop point shuttle service or public transportation.

What to Wear
High temperatures should be in the high 60s to low 70s and lows in the 40s (Fahrenheit). Dress at the actual conference will range from jeans and t-shirts to business casual. You might see a handful of people in suits.

Wednesday evening’s entertainment is outside at Universal Studios, so you should bring a sweater or jacket.

For Thursday night’s party at the Playboy Mansion, suggested attire is what you would wear to a nice club or dinner. Suits/ties are not necessary.

What to See
I think the best session will be Session 5 on Thursday and the structured networking later that afternoon. Google’s Hal Bailey will be at both, and he agreed to participate before Google announced it was going to start competing with DomainSponsor and other domain parking companies. It should be interesting to get his perspective — if he is willing to talk about it.

Thursday Night’s Party
Thursday’s party is a benefit at the Playboy Mansion. There are a few things you should know about the party.

First, be sure to remind your spouse that the only reason you’re going is because this is a benefit for AutismSpeaks.

Second, see “what to wear” above.

Third, DOMAINfest attendees won’t be the only ones there. DomainSponsor is the lead sponsor, but other organizations are involved.

Fourth, there will be a number of celebrities there including Brady Anderson (Cleveland Indians), Kenny Lofton (Cleveland Indians), Jose Canseco (not a typo), Clyde Drexler (NBA star), Sugar Shane Mosley (boxer), Bernard Hopkins (boxer), Brian Bosworth (NFL), Orlando Jones (actor and comedian), and a few others.