Delay in revenue stats hits major domain name parking companies.

A domain name parking stats delay from Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) has hit a number of domain name parking companies, preventing them from providing final parking stats to customers for the past few days. Yahoo is one of the biggest domain name advertising feed providers.

The outage appears to have started late last week when parking companies started to notify customers of stats delays (or simply not update stats). The stats delays are affecting all major Yahoo partners, including Parked.com, TrafficZ, HotKeys, and NameMedia (SmartName, Active Audience, and Goldkey).

The problem is being resolved, and it appears that stats are starting to be processed through Saturday, February 14. Stats at Parked.com and HotKeys are updated to February 13 as of the time of posting.

Google Adsense customers faced some delays over the weekend, as stats were delayed starting 4 a.m. PST on Sunday. Those issues do not appear to have affected Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) domain name parking channel.

Domain name parkers have become accustomed to stats being finalized within a day, but it was only recently that major parking companies such as Parked.com were able to provide this data quickly. Delays from smaller parking ad feed providers are common, but it is rare for such a prolonged delay from a major provider.

Park domain names? Review parking companies at Parking Judge.

Arbitrator decides Viacom shouldn’t get Jackass.com.

“We look like Jackasses.”

This is a follow up to a story Domain Name Wire first published in December. Viacom (NYSE: VIA.B), parent company of MTV, filed a UDRP complaint to get the domain name Jackass.com. As I pointed out then, Viacom had an uphill battle. Not only is the term Jackass generic, but it was facing an domain registrant that wouldn’t step down. In fact, Viacom is lucky that it lost this case. Had it won, respondent Future Media Architects certainly would have sued Viacom to keep the domain name.

The arbitrator decided that Future Media Architects (barely) had rights or legitimate interests in the domain, and that it was not registered in bad faith.

As has been the case in previous UDRPs, the complainant pointed to a forum posting to make its case. In a 2002 posting at Domain Name Forum, a Future Media Architects representative posted a message “Ok I am not marketing this name but I keep on getting offers daily… How much would you sell JackAss.com if it was your [sic]. Hits about 300k-600k month min.” But he also made it clear the domain wasn’t for sale.

You can read more analysis of this case at Elliot’s Blog.

When you put the current situation in perspective, the domain name industry is buzzing along nicely.

Let’s face it, 2008 wasn’t the best year in the domain industry. It certainly wasn’t as good as 2007 on a whole. Nor 2006.

But what about compared to 2004?

The reason we’re down in the dumps about domaining is that the industry was doing very, very well for a couple years, so domainers lost perspective.

Perspective is important. Today I filled up my gas tank for $2.00 a gallon. The guy next to me was complaining about how gas is up 30 cents or so. I recalled a picture text message from my little sister back when prices were dropping. It was of a station selling gas at the bargain basement price of $2.59 per gallon! She was so excited, having paid $4.00 a gallon just months earlier. And now someone’s complaining about $2.00 gas.

It’s all about perspective.

Looking back at DNJournal’s sale data from 2004 makes you realize that domain values are still above where they were just 5 years ago.

Reviewing the list, I see only a handful of domains that may not sell for as much at auction today. And that’s at auction, not to end users.

Looking at some of these seemed like “steals” if you reviewed them a couple years ago compared to the high auction prices of the day; now they just seem like good deals. Consider:

Cairo.com $35,001
CleanEnergy.com $31,950
AntiDepressants.com $30,000
Actor.com $30,000
HotelReservation.com $27,500
Band.com $26,000
38.com $20,000

So if the value of these domains is arguably higher now, why are we so negative? Well, look at these 2007 sales that may seem frothy now:

Dollars.com $650,00 (which recently sold for a lot less, so if this was the actual sales price then the buyer took a bath)
Greeting $350,000
Clock.com $175,000
Walkers.com $175,000
Lips.com $135,000
Note.com $115,000
Debit.com $100,000

And don’t forget what has happened to domain parking. It’s worse than a year or two ago, but much better than when I started in this business in the late 90s (i.e., $0).

Unless you bought everything at the top of the market, it’s not as dismal as it seems.

Sprite.me and Firefox.me go back to their rightful owners.

When .me launched to the general public last year, it was clear that a lot of people hadn’t heard of cybersquatting. Domain names like Porsche.me, Toyota.me, and Firefox.me were snapped up (and not my their familiar namesakes). Many of these domains were picked up at auction for a substantial amount of money.

Why did .me attract so many deep pocketed cybersquatters? I can only surmise that .me attracted a lot of people that didn’t know much about domain investing. They viewed .me as another internet goldrush, and thought the quickest way to riches was buying trademark domain names.

The owner of both Porsche.me and Toyota.me learned a lesson when he lost the domain name Porsche.me at arbitration in November. Could Toyota.me, and the $90,000 he spent on it, be next?

Brand holders continue to file UDRP complaints for popular trademarks in the .me country code. Mozilla won a case for Firefox.me and Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) picked up Sprite.me. The registrant of both of these domain names was an outfit called Metro Media in Beverly Hills. When Mozilla Foundation contacted Metro Media about Firefox.me, Metro Media responded with an asking price of $10,000. As soon as Mozilla filed a UDRP with World Intellectual Property Association, Metro Media offered to transfer the domain at no cost. It also offered to transfer Sprite.me at no cost. That Metro Media tried to squeeze the non-profit Mozilla Foundation for $10,000 suggests that it was unfamiliar with cybersquatting laws and UDRP.

There are a few other .me domain names currently at arbitration, including Overstock.me. Guess who owns this domain? Yep, Metro Media.

But other registrants have also lost .me domain names, including danone.me, exxonmobil.me, and creditmutuel.me.

To be sure, not all arbitration cases are legitimate. Just see Ping.me.

The one big winner is the .me registry and its partners, such as GoDaddy. They get to keep the auction riches even when the domain is later lost at arbitration.

Public comment period open for 1 and 2 character .biz domain names.

Last Friday Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) opened up a public comment period on .biz registry NeuStar’s proposal to offer one and two character .biz domain names.

NeuStar has cleared the initial hurdle at ICANN, which found no significant security, stability, or competition issues to releasing the short domain names.

NeuStar’s original proposal was to offer a request for proposal to find domain registrants with good plans to develop the one and two character domains. NeuStar would then have rights to auction the domains, presumably if more than one qualified proposal was received. However, the contractual changes essentially let NeuStar use and RFP, auction, or or first-come-first-registered approach.

dotMobi has already received permission from ICANN to release one and two character .mobi domain names, which it is allocating through an RFP process.

.Biz has been a laggard of so-called “new top level domains”, and is an example of what is likely to happen to new top level domains released under ICANN’s TLD expansion program.