GAC asks to postpone expressions of interest for new top level domain names.

The Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) is asking ICANN to delay a decision on the so-called “Expressions of Interest” process for new top level domain names.

In a letter dated January 26, GAC Chairman Janis Karklins says that the period of community feedback has been to short and more time is needed to deliberate and fully understand the implications of the EOI process. The chairman is also miffed that ICANN didn’t ask GAC for its opinion: “no request has been made for GAC’s opinion, despite the clear public policy implications of the proposal.”

GAC’s concerns are threefold: the process will aid ICANN insiders, it will allow a speculative market for EOI application slots, and that it will penalize developing country applicants and non-profits.

I suspect the later concern is over the $55,000 price tag for submitting an expression of interest. But I have to ask, if an entity can’t fork over $55,000 for an EOI, how will they come up with the other $130,000 necessary to apply, let alone the hundreds of thousands of dollars to run a registry?

GAC is asking ICANN to postpone making a decision until after the Nairobi meeting.

One ad banned, but others approved.

Phew, that was a close call. GoDaddy’s media strategy around Super Bowl ads was almost thrown into the air as CBS approved some of its risque ads. Without a banned or censored ad, that would mean less pre-game media coverage.

But thanks to “Lola”, a flamboyant ex-football player turned fashion designer, GoDaddy can live another day. The ad is somewhat humorous, in typical GoDaddy fashion.

Unlike prior years, GoDaddy didn’t have to go take after take to get something the network censors would accept. But thanks to organizations such as Morality in the Media, GoDaddy is getting plenty of press. (By the way, I’m calling for censorship of Morality in Media’s press release.)

Other companies are learning how to play GoDaddy’s game. Well, a religious right organization, anyway. Focus on the Family is grabbing plenty of pre-game press for its ad starring Tim Tebow.

Domainers dress up for The Getty.

When you think of domainers at a party, the last thing you think of is viewing Rembrandts. But that’s exactly what they did at Wednesday night’s DOMAINfest party at The Getty in Los Angeles.

Hundreds of domainers made the trip to The Getty, arriving by bus and then boarding trams for the trip to the top of the hill to enter The Getty. Inside, guests were treated to dinner and drinks, and access to many of the museum’s galleries. They could also participate in a drawing contest or an art mystery.

Although the art was cool, I was personally more captivated by the contemporary architecture of the buildings. Oh, and the view off the south side of the complex wasn’t bad, either (see the last scene in the video below).

Tonight there will be a true domainer-style party, as DOMAINfest returns to the Playboy Mansion. Check back later for video.

This is a live post of Tony Hsieh’s fireside chat at DOMAINfest…updating.

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com gave a keynote fireside chat with Oversee.net CEO Jeff Kupietzky.

Hsieh founded LinkExchange, which he sold to Microsoft. He then invested in and joined Zappos.com, which he sold to Amazon.com. He’s a 36 year old Harvard graduate.

He ran a pizza business in college, where he met Alfred Lin, who is now the CFO at Zappos now. Alfred would buy pizzas from them, and sell it by the slice.

LinkExchange’s reach was more than Yahoo or any other internet property back then. They had about a million web sites in their network. The sixteenth web site on their network was what became eBay. They sold the company because it stopped being a fun place to work anymore. They didn’t pay attention to company culture. Even Hsieh didn’t enjoy coming to work anymore.

They (Lin and Hsieh) used the money from selling the company to invest in OpenTable and many other startups, but they passed on PayPal.

“The original business idea never works out the way you” think it will. So they should have invested in the team behind PayPal, not the original idea (PayPal was supposed to send money over Palm Pilots).

They got the investment pitch for Zappos, and they almost passed. But the founder gave stats about the state of the shoe business, so they realized the web could take over the 5% of shoes sold via mail order. At first it was going to be a dropship business. They did that for the first couple years (100% dropship). Then they realized there were some brands that didn’t have the ability to dropship. They moved to a hybrid model. It was OK, but not a great customer experience. So they decided to become a ‘customer service’ company.

Overnight, they dropped the dropshipping business, which was 25% of their business.

Original name of site was ShoeSite.com. They based name on Spanish word for shoes. The name Zappos.com was available. Some people thought it was “Zappo’s”, and people went to Zappo.com. They ended up buying the domain for hundreds of thousands of dollars later.

He bought BBQ.com for something like $25,000. He bought Drugs.com at the height of the dotcom bubble, he bought through GreatDomains. He paid $823,456, which were the first six digits of his cell phone number, which he set up as his max bid. Then .com crash happened, and he was betting on Zappos, he sold Drugs.com for the same amount a couple years later. He put that money into Zappos.com.

They view phone calls as a branding experience, rather than a cost to be minimized. Although 99% of sales are on the web, most customers will call at some point. They don’t have phone scripts, they just ask reps to connect with the customers. Reps use their personality.

Spending money on offline ads improves ROI of online ads.

Idealab had the domain Clothes.com and sold it to Zappos. It was at the time they were focused on shoes and thought their next category would be apparel. It seemed like “there’s only one clothes.com”.

Tony had no idea that domain names was an industry before hearing about this conference.

Amazon.com approached Zappos five years ago, and Zappos wasn’t interested. Then Amazon launched Endless.com, which didn’t gain a lot of traction. Then Amazon came back and realized that what makes Zappos special is its culture, so it acquired Zappos but kept it as a separate organization.

by Aaron Krawitz, Gary Males & Patrick Carleton

[Editor's note: this is a guest article about the potential of IDN geo domain names.]

We’ve long been believers in GeoDomains and continue to be on the lookout for new and lucrative niches, which is why we have each individually made substantial investments in IDN GeoDomains.

With the fog of uncertainty finally lifting over IDNs, now is the ideal time for for geo investors to stake a claim in IDNs where the window of opportunity is quickly closing.

For years, antagonists of non-latin IDNs have focused on the premise that the part to the right of the dot was still in English. Let’s face it, [non-English] dot [English "com"] never made any sense, and that was the number one reason why many didn’t take a closer look.

But a few weeks ago, this all changed, as VeriSign finally showed its hand and put to bed the rumors of how these half IDNs were going to operate. In a brief, but game changing interview, Vice President of Policy and Compliance for VeriSign Information Services (VIS) Chuck Gomes spoke of how an existing [non-English] dot [English "com"] could be unlocked so that the domain owner also owns the rights to the same domain but with a localized extension (i.e [the same non-English domain] dot [non-English "com"]). For example, the owner of the Japanese domain, ニューオーリンズ.com (New Orleans), would also hold the rights to the same keyword with a non-English extension in the corresponding local language, such as ニューオーリンズ.コム. The characters “コム” are the familiar way to express “com” in Japanese.

So what does this mean for GeoDomainers?

ICANN’s IDN program aims to deliver on many promises, and the majority of these promises are to native speaking countries. IDNs intrinsically breed nationalistic pride in having one’s own language represented in a domain name, so it makes complete sense that GeoDomains of native cities/towns in their respective languages will be warmly welcomed.

What should we make of the competition, the new IDN ccTLDs?

Russia’s new .рф extension is a prime example, which, like the existing Japanese ccTLD are reserving all geos for government use. You can bet there will be mildly interesting informational sites put up on these geos for IDN ccTLDs, but they will be void of any commercial use. This will clear the way for IDN dot com names to dominate.

Where are the opportunities?

With only 1 million IDNs registered today, there is ample opportunity, and most old-time IDNers haven’t bought geos with a population under 100,000!

We are still in the early days of the IDN market and geos can be picked up for bargain prices on droplists or even occasionally at reg fee.

Aaron Krawitz of IDNBlog and Gary Males of IDNDemystified co-own IDNDroplist, IDNTools and IDNNewsletter. Patrick Carleton is Executive Directory of Associated Cities.