As I wrote about last month, I’m running cable TV commercials for my geo web site Lakeway.com. We’ve completed the first commercial, which you can watch below.

The commercials will run over 200 times each month across CNN, FoxNews, News 8 Austin, and A&E in the local area. The purpose of these ads is two fold. First, we want to drive more visitors to the web site. Second, we want to showcase some of our advertisers. To do this, we structured the ad with an introduction and closing dedicated to Lakeway.com. In the middle we highlighted three of our advertisers located in Lakeway. We will create multiple versions by swapping out the featured businesses.

We learned a lot creating the first commercial. I underestimated how much time we would have to show each business for. I think we can streamline that by grouping like businesses into each commercial. For example, if we show three restaurants we can introduce them all with one sentence, rather than three separate introductions for each type of business. For the first commercial we just used the first three businesses we could film in time.

With my understanding of the Lakeway, TX area, I think these commercials will grab the attention of the close-knit community. Already it has helped us sign up advertisers; we now have about a dozen advertisers on the site. As far as the effectiveness of the ads, I’ll have to report back on that in a month or two.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

Review and rate domain name parking companies at Parking Judge.

ICANN’s web site is outdated, and the organization knows it. It has hired an outside firm to perform usability analysis and improve the web site. The organization is serious about the effort; I spent 30 minutes on the phone today with its outside consultants discussing the site.

You can complete a short, online survey here to provide your feedback about the site.

I don’t want to sway the survey results, so I won’t give my specific opinions here. But take some time to complete the survey and provide meaningful suggestions. “This web site sucks” won’t help them fix it. What information are you looking for? How can they organize it to make it easier to find?

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

Review and rate domain name parking companies at Parking Judge.

What terms did people register domain names for yesterday? Domize let’s you take a peak.

Domize’s domain registration statistics provide daily and monthly stats for domain registrations by TLD and term. For example, its June 30 report shows that .com picked up 27,145 net registrations while .mobi picked up 482. But perhaps the coolest feature is seeing what keywords people use in their registrations.

On June 30 the top terms appear to be related to Michael Jackson:

Term / Added / Deleted / Net Gain
1. jackson 1,175 103 1,072
2. michael 1,192 127 1,065
3. green 600 201 399
4. cash 516 172 344
5. online 1,208 896 312
6. home 736 456 280
7. life 558 284 274
8. auto 469 214 255
9. king 356 106 250
10. all 521 280 241
11. pop 283 46 237

Domize also shows the biggest losers. For June 30, the biggest losers (meaning more domains using the term expired than were registered) were domain names including ‘financial’, ‘asbestos’, and ‘lawyer’.

For a longer term perspective, Domize also has a 30 day report.

Domize tells me it has lots of statistic enhancements in the works.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

Review and rate domain name parking companies at Parking Judge.

Go Daddy Group Inc. has filed a patent for a method of selling equity in domain names and protecting the domain names in which the equity is issued.

The patent is for a system that will facilitate the sale of shares in a domain name. The patent application explains that a number of institutions are interested in investing in domain names, but there isn’t a simple mechanism to do so. Conversely, many domain owners are interested in selling equity in their domain names, but need a way to connect with investors.

The sale of shares of equity in a Domain Name associated with the current invention simplifies the current rudimentary process by which Registrants attract investors through either knowing the party or being connected through outlets such as forums or other online media. Such a centralized sale of shares of equity would need to provide means to underwrite the sale of such equity and provide a means to protect the domain name from inadvertently or fraudulently being transferred to another entity…

…The invention should have a desirable side effect on the entire domain name industry in that it may provide a significant amount of secure capital to registrants, which would allow them to develop their domain name organizations and invest in capital expenditures such as dedicated servers, other domain names, etc., while providing assurance to potential investors and underwriters that the domain name may be protected and used as collateral during the sale of such equity in the domain name.

United States patent application 20090171823 describes the method of connecting domain owners and equity underwriters as well as protecting the domain names that receive investments. Go Daddy has also filed United States Patent application 20090171678 specifically for protecting the domain name during investment.

Both patents were filed in 2007 but only published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office today.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

Review and rate domain name parking companies at Parking Judge.

Here are the top five news stories on Domain Name Wire in June, ranked by number of views.

1. VeriSign Gets Walloped in Court, .Com Domain Prices Could Fall - a court ruled that a case against VeriSign could go forward. If VeriSign ultimately loses, the cost of registering a .com domain name could drop.

2. Facebook URL Landrush This Friday Night - Facebook opened up vanity URLs. No more facebook.com/13343953212…

3. I Didn’t Get My Facebook URL Because I was Socially Networking - remember that landrush in #2? I missed out, but for a good reason.

4. Business.com Owner Files for Bankruptcy - R. H. Donnelley bought Business.com, but is suffering under a mountain of debt. Don’t look for an auction of Business.com, however. The company is reorganizing.

5. Bill Clinton Loses Domain Name Challenge - in a controversial domain dispute, Bill Clinton lost a challenge to get three domains including williamclinton.com.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

Review and rate domain name parking companies at Parking Judge.

Moniker put the live domain name auction on the map. So it was a surprise to many in the industry when T.R.A.F.F.I.C., host of many of Moniker’s live domain auctions over the past few years, announced that Rick Latona Auctions would be its only auction provider in 2010. That leaves one more Moniker/TRAFFIC auction this fall under the company’s existing contract.

An end of an era? Not really. Moniker has established a brand for its live auctions. Even though sales aren’t what they were two years ago, the company is finally hitting some of its long term goals, including selling to end users.

I caught up with Monte Cahn (founder of Moniker) and Peter Celeste (Senior Vice President and General Manager, Domain Services at Oversee.net) to discuss the future of Moniker’s live auctions and the live auction scene in general.

Change of Venue
With TRAFFIC off the table, Moniker will look to other venues in 2010. Its next large auction (after October’s TRAFFIC) will be at the company’s own conference, DOMAINfest Global in January. The company also plans another large auction later in 2010. Oversee.net is considering adding a second DOMAINfest event next year, perhaps on the East coast, so this would be a logical venue for its second large auction of the year.

“If you look at the attendance at DOMAINfest Global compared to some of the other shows out there, it’s clear that it is the industry’s premier show,” said Celeste. Celeste said it attracts a diverse audience, which is key to holding a successful auction.

Moniker will also offer online themed auctions, with the first scheduled for July 16. These auctions will run on the Snapnames platform.

Selling to End Users
Moniker has tried to sell directly to end users through its auctions. It has been a tough slough. It turns out end users are eager to participate in domain auctions, just not in person, said Cahn.

“Many of them don’t want to show their face and raise their paddle,” said Cahn. “We had more end user buyers at the last auction participating online than we’ve ever had before. That was a credit to our efforts in reaching out to the corporate world and getting our list out a little bit earlier this time. We feel that trend is going to continue.”

Cahn says 20-30 of the domains at the last show were sold to end users. For example, a bottled water company bought BottledWater.com.

Industry Landscape
Right now there are several live domain auction providers. Celeste sees some shakeout ahead. “You need a large audience and a diverse set of customers” for a successful auction, said Celeste. “Very few shows can provide that. I think it’s going to take a year or so for the rest of the industry to understand that.”

Moniker is adjusting to a new market reality. Gone are the days of frothy investor-to-investor sales propped up by domain parking earnings. The future of domain auctions will be dependent on end users and reaching out beyond the domain industry’s comfort zone. It will be exciting to watch.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

Review and rate domain name parking companies at Parking Judge.

In May the domain name Tweet.me sold for $11,505 at Sedo. At the time, I wrote:

I’m a bit concerned about all of the services popping up that use variants of Twitter and Tweet in their names: could Twitter ever come after them for trademark infringement?

Some developers referred me to Twitter’s apparent company line on this issue:

There are certainly many applications out there that include “Twitter” as part of their name, but we prefer that you not do so. “Twit”, “Tweet”, etc. are all fine.

But TechCrunch is reporting that Twitter may be changing its mind. Robin Wauters explains that a third party developer is getting pushback from Twitter over his design and branding. Twitter stops short of saying that using ‘tweet’ is unacceptable, but certainly gives itself wiggle room to do so in the future.

Although Twitter wants its ecosystem to grow, developers should certainly be cautious about using any of its trademarks in their domain names. Social networking sites such as Facebook are pursuing domains that include Facebook in them, even if the owner plans to develop a Facebook-based site.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

Review and rate domain name parking companies at Parking Judge.