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Friday Afternoon Domain News Bytes

Andrew Allemann — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:50:27 +0000

A quick look at domain name news.

Next Thursday is Thanksgiving, which means some interesting things for web traffic. Shopping sites will see high traffic, news sites will see less as people stay home from work. Domain Name Wire will continue publishing next week, but I wanted to get a few thoughts and news items out there before my turkey-induced slumber.

Joe Biden did it again. On The Daily Show this week, he referred to Recovery.gov as Recovery.com. I do the same thing all of the time. If I had a dollar for every time I wrote about a .org domain and accidentally type .com…

Next year’s domain conference schedule is overwhelming. I’ve been doing travel planning with my wife for next year, and I must say I’m overwhelmed. Lots of domain shows to attend. Lots of travel to book.

The IDNs are coming! Four days into the fast track process, ten IDN top level domains have been applied for in five different languages.

Don’t miss the Luxury Names auction. Ending two days before Thanksgiving isn’t ideal, but that may mean good opportunities for buyers in the Luxury Names auction. I have three domains in the auction: MusicPhones.com, Newlyweds.net, and WeeklyPlanner.com. The latter is one of three domains at the auction to have received bids already.

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Company That Bought Insure.com Files to Go Public

Andrew Allemann — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:14:26 +0000

Quinstreet files to go public.

Lead generation company Quinstreet, which bought the Insure.com web site for $16 million in October, has filed for it initial public offering.

In its S-1 Securities and Exchange Commission filing for the IPO, the company reported fiscal year 2009 revenue of $261 million with a net income of $17 million.

Quinstreet notes little about the Insure.com acquisition in its S-1:

In October 2009, the Company acquired the website business of Insure.com, a Nebraska-based online marketing company, in exchange for $15 million in cash paid upon closing of the acquisition and a $1 million non-interest-bearing, unsecured promissory note.

The insure.com transaction is one of nearly a hundred acquisitions the company has made over the past two years, and the company isn’t stopping there:

Our growth over the past several years is in significant part due to the large number of acquisitions we have completed. Since the beginning of fiscal year 2007, we have completed over 100 acquisitions of third-party website publishing businesses and other businesses that are complementary to our own for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $189.5 million. We intend to pursue acquisitions of complementary businesses and technologies to expand our capabilities, client base and media.

The company plans to list on NASDAQ under the symbol QNST.

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Webby Awards Gets it Wrong: Adsense Was Bigger than Adwords

Andrew Allemann — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:51:01 +0000

Which was bigger, Adwords or Adsense? The latter changed more.

The Webby Awards has put out its “Ten Most Influential Internet Moments of the Decade“, and I take issue with one of the listings. The list includes this entry from 2000:

Google AdWords launches (2000)
With the launch of AdWords in October 2000, Google turned advertising on its head. The self-service ad program opened up the marketplace to any business, no matter how big or small, and allowed advertisers to target their customers with laser-sharp precision.

Although Google Adwords has certainly transformed the industry, Adwords was merely a copy of GoTo’s innovative system from the late 90s. Google didn’t turn advertising on its head; GoTo had already done that.

I’d argue a more important moment for the decade would be the introduction of Google Adsense; that is, syndicating Adwords ads across millions of small publishers’ web sites. Before then, it was very difficult for small publishers to monetize their sites. Adsense gave them an amazingly simple way to monetize their sites, even if the topic was as niche as the Barton Springs Salamander in Austin.

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Five Warning Signs a Top Level Domain is Doomed

Andrew Allemann — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:48:40 +0000

If you see any of these warning signs, run for the hills.

A number of domain investors, myself included, have invested money in newer top level domain names. Many times these investments haven’t panned out. So here are five warning signs that the top level domain you’re investing in is a money loser.

1. Domain registrants spend more time on forums writing about how the domain is the next great thing than they spend managing their own portfolio.

2. The registry starts giving away domains for practically nothing..

3. Domainers suddenly pay ridiculous aftermarket prices for the domains at auctions, while potential end user buyers sit around scratching their heads in wonder.

4. GoDaddy refuses to be a registrar for the top level domain.

5. The domain was introduced this century.

Any other warning signs you can think of?

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Worst Tech Support Chat Session Ever

Andrew Allemann — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:53:25 +0000

Nomination for the worse online tech support chat ever.

Someone at my web host must have had a bad day Friday. After I discovered a problem with my email forwarding, I opened up a live chat session. Here’s the transcript of the first 10 minutes of the chat.

Support: Hello, how may I help you?

andrew allemann: For some reason none of my forward email accounts under domainnamewire.com are working. e.g. andrew -at- domainnamewire.com, pr -at-domainnamewire.com. This appears to have been a problem for the past month or two at least.

[About three or four minutes later I'm wondering why I haven't gotten the usual "let me look into that", or "please hold on", so I want to make sure my initial query went through...]

andrew allemann: are you there?

Support: Yes

[OK, so the support guy is there. But a minute or two after he said 'Yes', and nothing else, I'm still wondering if he saw my initial query. So...]

andrew allemann: do you have any questions about the problem?

Support: No, I’m checking into it
Support: Be patient

Oh, snap!

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Live Current Turns Profit in Q3

Andrew Allemann — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:56:04 +0000

Live Current Media pulls out a profit after cutting costs.

Live Current Media has reported a profit for the third quarter of 2009. The company released earnings of $703,000 on quarterly revenues of $1.757 million.

The move from the red to the black wasn’t due to a better top line; it was due to drastic cost cutting. Revenue was down 10%, but gross margin was up from 18% in Q3 2008 to 32.7% in Q3 2009. General and administrative costs were down 74% compared to the same quarter last year.

The company’s main revenue producing asset now is Perfume.com. The company has completely exited the cricket business with the sale of cricket.com and the assignment of its cricket rights. It also has a 55% ownership stake in Karate.com, which went live as a web site this past quarter.

Live Current Media has announced that it reduced the salary of its CEO from CDN$300,000 to CDN$120,000 effective February 1, 2009.

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Hyundai Dealer Fails the Radio Test

Andrew Allemann — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:31:39 +0000

Domain name has two critical flaws, and it literally comes out in a radio commercial.

On my way home from an event last night I heard a radio commercial for Capitol Hyundai, a Hyundai dealer here in Austin. I couldn’t believe what I heard:

“Visit Capitol Dash Hyundai dot com…don’t forget the dash”

Wow. That’s bad. And it just goes to show how any domain with a hyphen fails the radio test.

If you forget the dash, which a lot of people do, you’ll end up at Capitol Hyundai of Columbia, South Carolina.

What makes this even worse? Many, if not most, people will spell “Capital” with an ‘a’ instead of an ‘o’. The misspelling is currently unregistered.

If we didn’t live in a society where lawyers were quick to fire off a cease and desist letter or file a UDRP, I’d register that typo and give it to them. But I did something similar for a local government agency a few months ago, and they still haven’t returned my phone call to get the domain name from me.

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