Curious changes at Men.com.

Has Men.com, which Rick Schwartz sold for seven figures nearly a decade ago, changed hands again?

That’s a rumor I’m chasing down. If you have any other information, please comment on it. [Update: I've confirmed the domain has sold. Men.com, LLC had two managing members left as of the company's latest annual report with Florida.]

Here’s the deal. In early April the administrative contact for the domain changed from Men.com, LLC to “Harris Cramer LLP Escrow agent”. Harris Cramer is a Florida law firm. Shortly thereafter the nameservers for the domain changed to Rackspace and the domain started forwarding to a male porn site.

Those are two common signs of a domain purchase.

Furthermore, an email I sent to the old administrative contact on the Men.com whois record bounced.

I’ve received a second hand report that the domain sold for another seven figure price tag.

Studies to examine how whois is used — and misused.

ICANN announced it will spend $530,000 to undertake four separate studies of whois. The studies are partially a result of a request by the Governmental Advisory Committee in 2008.

1. Misuse of whois – how people misuse whois information, such as for marketing and spamming purposes.

2. Whois Registrant Identification – classify the various types of entities that register domains, including natural
persons, various types of legal persons and Privacy and Proxy service providers.

3. Whois Proxy and Privacy “Abuse” – will compare these services and how often “bad actors” use them, also comparing this rate of abuse to other “tools” such as falsified Whois data, compromised machines,
and free web hosting.

4. Whois Proxy and Privacy Relay and Reveal Study – measuring how these services respond to requests.

ICANN expects the studies to take between four and twelve months to complete.

Pending sale would give Moniker one of its biggest auctions ever.

I’ve been tracking the potential sale of Social.com for a couple weeks now. The domain name was listed in Moniker’s live domain name auction for Barcelona (which actually ended up taking place online only last week).

A legitimate $2.5 million dollar bid was placed in the auction, and sources tell me there may have been other interested parties. Then the domain was omitted from the extended auction that ends tomorrow, prompting more speculation.

The original reserve was much higher than $2.5 million, but Ron Jackson is reporting that a contract has been signed at $2.6 million.

If the sale goes down this will be the biggest reported sale of 2011. (I’m aware of at least one private deal completed this year that’s bigger.)

The sale will also validate Oversee.net CEO Jeff Kupietzky’s claim that domain auctions are now more of a marketing event than a sales event. This auction will have at least two sales that didn’t happen during the actual auction — Data.com and Social.com.

Last year Moniker sold Tshirts.com and four other related domains for over $1 million before it was to be sent to auction as well.

So while the actual auction last week only sold about $65,000 worth of domains, I don’t think anyone at Moniker will be complaining.

A big domain sales week thanks to two six figure transactions.

Sedo closed over a million dollars worth of domain transactions last week — in .com alone.

The biggest sale was the closing of DataCenter.com, which Elliot wrote about a few weeks ago. In second place was Billionaire.com at $215,000, which Michael wrote about yesterday.

Both domains’ whois records are protected by privacy services.

The top ccTLD sale of the week was Finance.co at $45,000. It’s interesting to note some sales of domains based on the hot startup BitCoin as well — Bitcoin.de and bitcoins.de for 29,750 EUR total.

Here are other notable sales for the week:

.com
epayments.com 52000 USD
radicle.com 27142 USD
ecats.com 25000 USD
mobileads.com 25000 USD
wiseup.com 20000 USD
investsecure.com 20000 USD
motiontemplates.com 20000 USD
mymilk.com 20000 USD
equityrelease.com 18000 USD
eurekakids.com 18000 USD
passarela.com 15000 USD
profm.com 10000 EUR
shop5.com 10000 USD
atnow.com 9000 USD
keepz.com 9000 USD
denied.com 8000 USD
bluerepair.com 8000 EUR
haipu.com 6000 EUR
dreamworld.com 5755 EUR
oldtimeradioshows.com 5625 USD
evanstonhomes.com 5500 USD
bathroomplace.com 5500 USD
7l.com 5010 USD
melbye.com 5000 USD
cloudhelpdesk.com 5000 USD
penpak.com 5000 USD

ccTLD
hosting.in 11500 USD
freundschaft.de 9998 EUR
immobilienmarkt.ch 8229 EUR
collective.tv 6500 USD
preventivi.it 6000 EUR
tc.tv 6000 USD
impotent.ch 5000 EUR
bangkok.ch 5000 EUR

Other
ggi.org 7416 USD
internet-juridique.net 5000 EUR
doo.net 3750 EUR

The good and the bad in auction ending tomorrow.

The DOMAINfest Barcelona extended Moniker domain auction on SnapNames with nearly 500 domain names concludes Wednesday.

Domains range in price from no reserve to nearly $6.5 million for WorkatHome.com. Intriguingly missing from the auction is Social.com, which received a $2.5 million bid during the live auction.

Some of the notable low six figure domains include Invites.com, Frame.com, Skills.com, Dorms.com

There are also some extremely high priced domains that confuse me — from LosAngeles.org for $704,710 to CellPhones.us for $647,060 and SelfHelp.us for $258,830.

But here are some of my picks for the sub-$100k category. They might not sell at the current prices, but are good for the right buyers.

Paranormal $58,830

WorldClock.com $41,180 someone bid $41k during the live auction for this domain — looks like they were very close.

PreMed.com $17,650 didn’t sell in live auction but a great domain

SeniorsHome.com $11,180

BodySculpting.com $9,420 received a bid in live auction but this is near the top of the reserve range.

MuscleRelaxer.com $1,770

PersonalInvitation.com $1,250

IPLawFirms.com $300