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Vancouver Hexonet Cruise sets sail on August 23

by — Services 2 Comments

Great networking opportunity next week in Vancouver.

If you live in the Pacific Northwest or need an excuse for a last minute trip to Vancouver, British Columbia, get ready for Hexonet’s cruise on August 23.

The domain name registrar has teamed up with a lot of sponsors for its annual evening cruise, networking and educational event. Afilias, Amazon Registry, Donuts, .ME, NamesCon, PIR, Weebly, and .Asia are sponsoring the event.

The evening cruise takes off in Coal Harbour at 5:30 next Thursday and concludes at 9 pm.

Tickets are CAN $20, and all proceeds go to British Columbia Children’s Hospital Foundation. Hexonet will match all funds raised.

The high temperature in Vancouver next Thursday is forecasted to be 73 degrees, so this should give you an incentive to make the trip. (Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it due to a scheduling conflict.)

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Betsy Riot punks NRA Lobbyist’s wife with domain name

by — Policy & Law 4 Comments

Group creates website juxtaposing NRA’s advocacy and successfully defends domain name in cybersquatting complaint.

Above: A picture from Ivy-Lane-Living.com

Betsy Riot, a group that has railed against the National Rifle Association, has won a dispute brought by Courtney Cox, who is married to the NRA’s chief lobbyist and principal political strategist, Chris Cox.

Courtney Cox runs an interior design company called Ivy Lane Living. Betsy Riot registered the domain name Ivy-Lane-Living.com and created a parody site juxtaposing her business with the National Rifle Association. You can see the parody/criticism site here.

Cox filed a cybersquatting complaint against the domain name, but Betsy Riot has prevailed in a decision handed down by World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

In a nutshell, the WIPO panelist determined that this wasn’t a case of cybersquatting and qualifies as free speech and a criticism site.

The group behind the website also owns waynelapierre.com, which is the name of the National Rifle Association’s Executive Vice President.

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16 end user domain sales: a big bank, custom bong maker and more

by — Domain Sales 0 Comments

A Fortune 500 bank, politician, and custom bong maker bought domain names last week.

Sedo’s top sale last week was Christian.com for $600,000 but we don’t know if it was an end user or investor yet. I did, however, uncover 16 domains that are end user sales, and there are surely more. One is a company that uses .co that bought the matching .com. Another is a new ecommerce logistics company that went with .co as it matches the company’s full name. And another is a bank that might be rebranding or starting a new brand.

Let’s take a look at some of the end user sales at Sedo over the past week: Click here to continue reading…

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Namecheap hits $109.1 million revenue in 2017

by — Domain Registrars 1 Comment

One of the largest domain name registrars crossed the 9 figure mark in 2017.

Domain name registrar Namecheap has been a big domain name registrar for a long time but didn’t always show up on top registrar lists because it was an Enom reseller.

Now that it has pulled most of its domains onto its own registrar accreditation, the company’s size has become apparent. It’s among the top five largest domain name registrars for .com domain names.

In 2015, Namecheap had revenue of $76 million and three-year growth of 117%. It fell off the Inc 5000 in 2017, but is back for the 2018 list. Its 2017 revenue was $109.1 million. That’s up 78% over three years, and up 44% from 2015.

According to the company’s Inc 5000 listing, it employees 950 people.

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.Club posts $7.2 million revenue, lands on Inc 5000

by — Uncategorized 19 Comments

Revenue more than quadrupled from 2014 to 2017.

New top level domain name registry .CLUB Domains has landed at #1164 on the newly released Inc 5000 for 2018. The list is ranked based on three-year revenue growth.

The company had $7.2 million revenue in 2017, up 419% over 3-years. It launched its domain name in early 2014.

This is the first look we’ve had at .Club’s financials in a while. .Club CEO Colin Campbell previously discussed the group’s 2015 financials with DomainName Wire. In that year it had about $7.0 million in bookings, but that excludes any sort of revenue recognition so it’s not necessarily comparable.

Whois API remained on the list for a second year, coming in at #651 with $2.7 million in revenue and 775% three-year growth. It will be interesting to see what happens with this company in the age of GDPR.

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