Handful of domain name registrations point to defensive registrations for “Proactiv Recall”.

[Update: yes, there's a recall.] Proactiv — the acne control company that apparently keeps Justin Beiber’s skin clear — may be making some “proactive” domain name acquisitions.

Yesterday a client of brand protection company MarkMonitor registered a number of domain names related to “Proactiv Recall”, including ProactivRecall.com, proactivrecall.org, proactivrecall.info, Proactiv-Recall.com, and similar versions of the domain names with Proactiv misspelled with an ‘e’ at the end. [Update 10/17: this is getting more interesting. The company just registered proactivbottlereplacement.com]

Although it’s not for sure that Proactive marketer Guthy-Renker LLC is behind the registrations, the company’s main Proactiv.com registration is managed by MarkMonitor. These may also be merely defensive registrations and not indicative of a recall.

Proactiv has used celebrity endorsements and a continuity marketing model to go mainstream. In addition to Justin Beiber, some of the company’s other spokesmodels over the years include include Jessica Simpson, Katy Perry, and Avril Lavigne.

Company puts domain name on the books at a huge sum.

How much is the cloud.com domain name worth?

According to Citrix’s accountants, it’s $18 million.

The company acquired Cloud.com (the business) for $200 million plus earlier this year.

George Kirikos just noticed that the company is amortizing the domain itself with a value of $18 million.

Now this is just an accounting number, so I’m not sure the domain was worth that much when it wasn’t attached to a business. But it’s still an interesting valuation for a great domain in a growing business.

Thanks for helping Domain Name Wire reach another milestone.

Domain Name Wire has hit a milestone: this is the 5,000th post.

It seems like just yesterday that I started this blog. But it has been nearly 7 years of exciting research, sleuthing, and writing.

The domain industry has seen its ups and downs during this period, but I believe it is stronger than ever. The trajectory is pointing upward, and I look forward to covering the good and the bad as it moves forward.

Of course I wouldn’t keep writing Domain Name Wire if it weren’t for two groups of people: readers and advertisers. My loyal advertisers make it possible to spend time keeping the site up to date with the latest breaking news and scoops.

Speaking of scoops, I also thank my many readers who frequently drop me a line when they hear of something interesting that’s happening.

Here’s to another 5,000 posts.

Claims Google unfairly promoted its own web properties.

Someone close do the domain name industry is getting lots of press today.

ShopCity, led by Colin Pape, filed a complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on November 11.

Pape has been in the domain industry for a while and even keynoted the Epik conference last year.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek is covering the story.

ShopCity says that Google unfairly used its control of search results to damage ShopCity.com, according to Bloomberg. The company complains that Google pushed it down in search rankings and favored its own competing service.

Google says the company — which had 8,000 domains for cities around the U.S. such as ShopPaloAlto.com and ShopCorona.com — violated its guidelines. It says the sites included duplicate and auto-generated content.

Marketing Pilgrim has an interesting take on the story.

Next DOMAINfest Global conference just a few months away.

For three years DOMAINfest has been defined by a single event: its party at the Playboy Mansion.

Don’t get me wrong. The conferences were great and packed with excellent sessions. But when people talked about the conference it inevitably came back to that one party.

The 2012 conference will be different. The final party will be at a different (and less controversial) venue, The House of Blues. I suspect the big discussion after the conference will be different, too.

Here are some of the highlights I’m looking forward to at this year’s conference:

Workshop: Everything You Need to Know About New TLDs – barring any last minute legal action, the window for applying for new TLDs will be open when this session takes place. I think we had a great new TLD session at Domainer Mardi Gras last year; I hope this is something similar where it’s not just loaded with consultants and service providers.

Panel: Affiliate Lead Generation Best Practices – this panel typifies how DOMAINfest is moving away from just a domain monetization show. It’s also good to see former Oversee.net employee Jay Weintraub on the bill. He’s now an expert in lead gen and runs the leading conference in that space.

Keynote Fireside Chat with Biz Stone – DOMAINfest is tops when it comes to landing big name keynote speakers. This year is no different with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.

DOMAINfest takes place Jan 31 to Feb 2 in Santa Monica.