Company expands beyond recovering typosquatted domain names.

CitizenHawk is expanding from its roots as a typosquatting domain name recovery service.

Today the company announced two new services: corporate domain management and online brand monitoring.

The corporate domain management product puts it in competition with companies such as MarkMonitor and CSC. It includes an online domain management system, registration, and private registrations.

The online monitoring tool is unrelated to domain names. It helps companies monitor product reviews, forum comments, etc.

There’s a lot of competition in both of these areas — particularly online monitoring. However, it makes sense for the company to sell these products as they already have an “in” with the right people at the company. Also, many of the corporate domain management companies provide services similar to CitizenHawk already.

This move also shows the reality that typosquatting recovery is a fairly small market.

Real estate agent explains his domain name strategy including six figure domain purchase.

Here’s an interesting domain name story out of New York.

Two competing real estate firms are fighting each other over domain names after one bought the name of the others’ principle.

This story in Curbed Hamptons is quite insightful for a non-tech publication. It points out that Susan Breitenbach could have avoided having Saunders Real Estate register her name SusanBreitenbach.com had she placed a backorder for it when it expired:

Had the Breitenbach’s backordered the name with a service like NameJet.com, this whole situation could have likely been avoided.

Also interesting are the details that Saunders Real Estate told the publication about its domain name activities. Andrew Saunders said that:

…part of his rapid success in the Hamptons has been due, in no small part, to a “very aggressive web strategy that involves the purchase of all sorts of names.” For example, he says he paid $31,000 to snag Saunders.com from a guy in Canada and spent a whopping $100,000 to secure the very Google-friendly HamptonsRealEstate.com. He also spent weeks registering thousands and thousands of other domain names that might help drive people to his website, including most every available street and place name from Westhampton to Montauk. This strategy also involved registering the names of top East End brokers, too.

Part of his strategy — buying these great generic domain names — is very savvy. But registering domain names of competing brokers is not, and is a way to land in legal hot water.

Perhaps the most peculiar part of the whole story is that the previous registrant of SusanBreitenbach.com was supposedly willing to sell it for “thousands of dollars”. I’m assuming it wasn’t too outrageous, especially for a real estate broker who did more than $210 million in transactions last year.

(Hat tip: Dan)

…or other shenanigans.

OK, the headline is a bit sensational. But the truth is if you let a domain name expire that is tied to any sort of online accounts, you’re putting yourself at extreme risk.

Why the soapbox? I just finished reading this post from Ben Reyes about how he used an expired domain to get access to someone’s entire history of Gmail, Google calendar, contacts, etc., and this gave him a key to unlock the person’s other online accounts like Amazon.

Basically, Reyes tried to use his newly registered domain for a Google Apps account. When he did so he was told sorry, the domain is already in use with Google Apps. That’s because a previous owner used it. Reyes went through an Apps account reclaiming process and voila — he was in.

Expired domains also make it easier to steal domain names. People will look for expired domain names that are used as part of the email in the whois contacts for other domain names. They register the expired domain, set up an email to copy the whois record email domain, then request a transfer out. That’s what happened to ChicagoRestaurant.com.

An easier approach to steal a domain? Look for expired Hotmail usernames tied to existing domain registrations. Open an account with that same Hotmail name. And you’re in.

Be careful.

ICANN expects to spend $67 million in the year starting July 1. That’s if the new gTLD program doesn’t kick off.

Since you, the readers of this blog, ultimately provide ICANN’s funding, it’s important to know how your money is being spent. So you should take some time to look through and comment on the FY12 Operating Plan and Budget (pdf). FY 2012 starts July 1, 2011.

ICANN plans to spend $69.7 million in FY 2012 (including depreciation and bad debt expenses), up $7.7 million from FY 2011′s budget. That’s a 12.4% annual increase. It expects revenues of $69.758 million.

The expense increase can be attributed as follows:

1. $3 million increase in compensation including 4% merit increases, more staff for Global Engagement and Increasing International Participation, and more compliance resources.

2. $1.9 million increase in travel, including paying airfare, lodging, meals, and other expenses for 20 selected community members (more on that later).

3. $2.1 million increase in professional services.

Oh, wait. There’s one thing I forgot to mention. These numbers assume the new gTLD program doesn’t get off the ground in FY 2012.

If it does, and 500 applications are received, ICANN’s revenue is expected to be nearly $154 million. Its expenses will soar, too, but it expects a healthy operating income.

Here are some other interesting new allocations planned for FY 2012:

- $30,000 for two members of the intellectual property constituency to travel to three meetings. So $5,000 per member per meeting.

- $210,000 additional money so the Governmental Advisory Committee can provide travel support to ICANN meetings to 20 of its members instead of the current 6.

- $1,000 for the At-Large Advisory Committee to produce an outreach video for YouTube

- $80,000 for a Security and Stability Advisory Committee retreat

You can read more and comment here.

Gotta remember to register that domain name for future presidential run.

Satirical news outlet The Onion recently published a joke tying politicians and domain names.

The News in Brief article is titled “John Edwards Pays $30 To Register Edwards2016.com Just In Case“. It pokes fun at the disgraced politician, suggesting he registered a domain for the 2016 presidential race “just in case”. The blurb quotes Edwards as saying “It’s only 30 bucks, so I figured, why not? Better safe than sorry.”

Indeed, many politicians neglect to register important domain names for their campaign.

Should Edwards actually try to make a political comeback, he’s out of luck for Edwards2016.com thanks to The Onion. An Indiana company called Neat Neat Neat! Records and Music registered the domain name when The Onion article came out.