Archive for November, 2011


8 interesting end user domain sales

Eight domain names that sold to end users last week.

Here are eight end user domain name purchases completed over the past week. All sales were at Afternic except for GameTraining.com, which sold at Sedo.

Anytime Fitness president David Mortensen.com now owns DavidMortensen.com after dropping $1,788.

Internet marketing firm Adventure Marketing upgraded its URL from AdventureMarketingLLC.com to AdventureMarketing.com for $1,000.

Telecom networking company Dynamic Network Advisors bought CloudAdvisers.com for $1,100. CloudAdvisOrs.com (with an ‘o’) is owned by someone else.

Oil & gas product supplier ScanTech, which uses the domain name scan-tech.no, solidified its online presence with Scan-tech.com for $1,000.

Family Marketing, Inc., which provides cost-per-action lead generation targeting new families, bought EverydayFamily.com for $3,188.

Coffee company Allegro Coffee bought the great “statement domain” EnjoyCoffee.com for $3,488.

GameTraining.net, which trains people to develop video games, upgraded to .com for $2,250 at Sedo.

Enterprise software support company Rimini Street, Inc. bought SupportSAP.com for $3,491.40. Yes, it provides SAP support. But I don’t know how SAP will feel about this.



www.Buy.xxx – One week until launch

www.Buy.xxx making a big splash as registry gears up for general availability.

With just a week to go until general availability of the .xxx domain name, ICM Registry’s commercials are making quite a splash. The company’s site www.buy.xxx (sometimes promoted as go.buy.xxx) has received millions of visitors as a result of the aggressive advertising.

Make no mistake. .XXX is the most aggressive (and perhaps expensive) new top level domain marketing push to date.

General availability starts December 6. On that day domains will be available on a first come, first served basis. It makes sense go ahead and get your orders in with registrars as they’ll all be pinging the registry as soon as it opens for business. I’ll publish a price chart comparing registrars soon.

There are two types of registrations: adult and non-adult companies. Adult companies can register anything they wish. Non-adult companies can pay to block their domains. Unlike during sunrise, blocking your domain now will mean paying an annual renewal fee.



Bands.com to launch Wednesday

Domain investor unveils new site for bands.

bands.comA new service for music bands formally launches in beta tomorrow at a killer web address.

Bands.com is billed as a one stop shop for a bands’ web presence. Bands.com offers web sites, music and merchandise sales, social network integration, show calendar integration, and other must haves for music groups. Bands can either use a bands.com URL or their own domain name with the service.

The site is being launched by Emerge Media, led by long time domainer Anthos Chrysanthou. Chrysanthou bought the domain name from iREIT at the beginning of last year. For a long time iREIT held the domain name out as the gem of its portfolio, and one it had grand development plans for.

Bands.com has plenty of competition, but Chrysanthou says it’s unique because it’s literally a one stop shop. It also offers lower fees than many competitors, including six months at no charge.

The site is in invitation only beta. You can use the invite code ‘launchparty’ to sign up.



Oversee.net says Moniker projections “horribly wrong”

Moniker acquisition fell short of expectations.

Yesterday Oversee.net filed a heavily redacted document in support of its motion for summary judgment in its lawsuit with former employee Monte Cahn.

The motion is to dismiss a claim that Oversee.net owes Cahn money as part of a $13 million Management Incentive Plan (MIP).

Oversee.net makes a couple claims (pdf) about the plan in its latest filing. First, it says that Cahn was supposed to identify the plan’s participants each year (presumably other than just himself):

Undoubtedly, Cahn will now argue that, because the designation of participants was in his discretion, he could and would have designated himself as sole participant. That is not how an incentive plan works. As noted above, the MIP participants were to be identified at the beginning of the year. Cahn cannot now avoid the mutiny that would have ensued if he had designated himself as the sole Plan participant by remaining silent when the MIP was in place and appointing himself sole participant after he has left the company. In short, Cahn’s failure to identify MIP participants when he was required to do so renders his First Claim for Relief speculative.

Second, the company blames (in part) the economic recession for Moniker significantly underperforming its projections at the time the company was acquired.

Cahn overstated Moniker’s anticipated growth trajectory and he agreed to accept the risk that his projections were wrong. In a turbulent economy, those projections proved to be horribly wrong, and that is why Moniker did not come close to hitting any of its Performance Goals.

The document redacts information about Moniker’s sale price and segment performance. Cahn earlier disclosed the price as $35 million, but it’s not clear if this was the final price.



Republicans register ObamaVsObama.com to counter Mitt vs. Mitt commercials

Domain names could be used to call into question President Barack Obama’s record.

The democrats just launched an attack ad on republican front runner Mitt Romney called Mitt vs. Mitt. It calls him a flip flopper.

But the republicans have a similar trick up their sleeves.

Someone affiliated with the republican party registered ObamaVsObama.com and ObamaVsObama.net yesterday. Both domain names use a whois privacy service to protect the registrant’s identity, but the domains have been pointed to the nameservers of a web host that works closely with the Republican National Committee.

The web hosting company, Smartech, was the official hosting company for the 2008 Republican Nation Convention. It has previously hosted domain names such as HillarySpendometer.com, HopelessHillary.com, and BarackNotReady.com.

As a defensive measure, the registrant also picked NewtVsNewt.com/.net and NewtVNewt.com/.net. Apparently Herman Cain has been written off as they didn’t register CainVsCain.com.

Although the democrats have their commercial, they neglected to register MittvsMitt.com.


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