From airline mergers to politics to new TLDs, 2012 was an eventful year.
There are two types of stories that catch fire on Domain Name Wire: ones relevant to domain investing and those relevant to the world at large. All of my posts have to do with domain names, but sometimes they’re merely a tip off of something going on in politics or business.
Consider this year’s top story on Domain Name Wire: it was about the airline industry.
Here are this year’s top stories on Domain Name Wire.
1. American Airlines merger with U.S. Airways is a go, suggest domain registrations – well, no merger has been announced yet. But U.S. Airways thought it wise to protect domains related to a potential merger.
2. Go Daddy patents “announcing a domain name registration on a social website” – this story got a lot of attention on social media.
3. Go Daddy CEO Warren Adelman steps down – it was a surprising move as a long time domain industry figure stepped down from the top spot at Go Daddy about seven months after being promoted to the post. I interviewed Go Daddy founder Bob Parsons for this story.
4. Honey, I screwed up on my $185,000 new TLD application – a number of companies messed up their applications for new top level domains.
5. Blackstone Group says it “sucks” – 2012 was a year of “war on the PE firms”, thanks in part to attention brought by Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. Blackstone was proactive, registering some negative domains including blackstonesucks.com.
6. GoDaddy now offers free domain appraisals, but… – In April Go Daddy started offering free automated domain appraisals. But you get what you pay for, at least when it comes to valuing domains worth more than a couple grand.
7. Surprise? Facebook doesn’t apply for .Facebook. The company did say in advance that it wasn’t applying for .facebook, but I’m still surprised it didn’t.
8. .XXX up to 137k active registrations, 220k total, and new $630k premium sale – the verdict is still out on .xxx, but ICM Registry has made a boatload of money.
9. Four newcomers among Top 10 domain parking companies – this post about results from the 7th annual Domain Name Wire survey got a lot of attention — probably because people were looking for a parking alternative. Soon you’ll be able to participate in the 2013 survey.
10. As Obama wins, domains already snapped up for 2016 battle – names for 2016 campaigns are already registered.
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