Here are a few things I’ve been thinking about in the domain industry lately.
Could Amazon sell its new TLDs? When will Epik pay its customers? And the importance of in-person meetings.
Will Amazon sell its new TLDs?
When Amazon reported its latest earnings, it said it was going to shut down some of its initiatives to trim costs. I have to wonder if the company will decide to sell off some of its new top level domains. It has done very little with its domains. I’d call its efforts to date experiments, and none of these experiments seem to be bearing fruit. I’m sure new TLD companies have called in the past about extensions like .joy, .talk, .like, and .hot. Maybe they should try again as Amazon discovers austerity.
Epik
A couple of weeks ago I interviewed Epik’s CEO about what’s going on at the company. One of my big concerns is that the company isn’t paying people it owes money to. A bunch still haven’t been paid. The only conclusion I can draw is that the company doesn’t currently have the money to pay everyone what it owes them. While I’m hopeful that the company’s new management team can turn the company around, the best way it can prove it is by paying people what it owes them, even if that means raising some outside funds. And yesterday.
In-person meetings
I’m at the ICANN Contracted Parties Summit in Los Angeles. This annual (before Covid) event brings together registrars and registries to talk about topics that are impacting them.
It’s only the second in-person domain event I’ve been to since the pandemic hit, and I’m reminded of the importance of getting together in person. I’ve had a lot of great conversations and gotten ideas for stories. These are conversations that wouldn’t have happened in a remote setting.
Rob monster has been a crook forever. Anybody with an iq over 50 knows that
I asked for the withdrawal of funds on October 19. Until this day, the status is still “Pending”. Moreover, when I liquidated domains on NameLiquidate (where the $$$ came from), withdrawals were free. Since Masterbucks has come back online — after weeks of announced downtime — there is an additional fee of at least 2.5% for withdrawals. This all comes against the backdrop of my credit card information, including the security code, having been posted all over the Internet. Thank you, Epik, but enough is enough. I better let domains expire in the future.