Parking company confirms recent investment and restructuring.

Today I received information from domain name parking and sales company NameDrive about its recent investment from BIP Investment Partners and its company reorganization.

News of the investment and reorganization was first reported by Domain Name News on Tuesday. [Update: DNN's source was DVmag.de.]

BIP Investment Partners S.A., a public investor listed on the Luxembourg stock exchange, made an undisclosed investment in the company. BIP is no stranger to domain names; it holds investments in German registrar Key-Systems, Luxembourgian registrar EuroDNS, domain fund Domain Invest, as well as Polish registrar az.pl.

Michael Riedl, Investment Director at BIP says, “We want NameDrive to be the Apple of the domain parking industry.”

NameDrive now has three subsidiaries: NameDrive EU Sàrl and NameDrive IP Sàrl (Luxembourg), NameDrive US LLC (Texas, U.S.) and NameDrive SRL (Romania). I toured NameDrive’s facilities in Austin last year.

Founded in 2005, the parking company is known for its prowess in monetizing international domain names. Its parking pages are in 21 languages, the company’s homepage is available in 8 languages, and its staff members typically speak at least two languages. The company says it has over 75,000 customers and has sold over $10 million in domains on its NDX Market since launching it in 2008.

Marchex stock on a tear.

Owners of Marchex stock in recent years haven’t had a lot to cheer about.

The company, perhaps best known in domain name circles for buying Yun Ye’s domain name portfolio for $164 million, has traded at over $20 per share within the past five years. But more recently it has also traded as low as $2.98.

Yet the tide has turned in recent months. The stock closed today at $9.50, a 133% improvement over its September 1 opening price.

One of the company’s biggest challenges is its convoluted financials, which must be twisted and manipulated into pro formas to look pretty. It isn’t easy to understand. It also lost a significant chunk of revenue when Yahoo terminated its Search Submit product. Marchex sold $7.5 million worth of the product in 2009, although it says its margins were low.

What are your thoughts on Marchex’s prospects?

Online retailer releases new commercials for o.co.

Overstock.com — or should I call it o.co? — has released two new commercials touting its o.co web address after announcing this morning it is using o.co as a “shortcut”. One of the ads is embedded below.

It’s all a bit confusing, honestly. In some cases the company refers to o.co as merely a shortcut. But its logo is now o.co with “also known as Overstock.com” next to it. This seems bigger than a shortcut.

It seems that the company has half-baking the change, or at least taking it step by step.

Either way this is a huge win for .Co Internet and .co as a TLD. When Overstock.com originally bought the domain they didn’t know what they’d do with it. Then they announced they’d use it for their international sites and as a shortcut. Now they’re going big on o.co.

System would discount price of domain names until a buyer is found.

VeriSign has devised a system to sell more dropping domain names by discounting their price over time.

Details of the idea are in a patent application the company filed in 2009 that was just published today.

U.S. patent application number 12/504396 (pdf) for “METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR SALE OF DOMAIN NAMES” describes a way that a domain name registry can discount the price of domain names within a short window after a domain name deletes in an effort to find a new registrant for the new domain.

It’s sort of like a reverse auction. As an example, for the three hours after a domain deletes it would be available at the standard registration price. During the next three hours the price would drop perhaps 50 cents, repeating every so many hours until the price hits a floor.

Practically speaking this would allow registrants to buy a domain name that they estimate will earn less than the normal registration cost in parking revenue during the first year. If I estimate that a domain name will earn $5 in the first year then I would wait until the price on the domain dropped to below $5 before registering it.

In VeriSign’s example, the price of the domain name would return to full price after a short time period, such as the end of the drop day.

I should stress that this is merely a patent application and I’m not aware of any plans by VeriSign to introduce such a system.

VeriSign also filed a patent application for a system that would estimate the likelihood of a domain name being renewed.

Toyota domains registered — a defensive move?

The domain names EmployeesAgainstToyota.com and ToyotaTracker.com have been registered as the United Autoworkers Union prepares to do battle with Toyota.

The domain names were registered on January 17 by DNStination, Inc., an affiliate of brand protection company Mark Monitor. DNStination was the same company that acquired FB.com on behalf of Facebook and recently registered disparaging domain names on behalf of Bank of America.

So did Toyota or the UAW ask Mark Monitor to register the domains? My bet is on Toyota. It would surprise me if a brand protection company would register domains that included a trademark on behalf of a different client (the union).

Although the union can certainly dream up many other slogans for domain names to use in its fight, I suspect these two terms are commonly used when taking on big businesses.