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Be careful making bids in the new GoDaddy Investor app

by — Expired Domains 7 Comments

You might inadvertantly place a very high bid.

GoDaddy dropped its new iOS domain Investor app a couple of weeks ago. There aren’t a lot of new features yet, but it was completely rewritten under the hood for some new features coming soon.

There is a cautionary thing to note about the UI.

When you go to a domain name’s bidding screen, you’ll see the current bid price for the domain in the text entry box. You can tap “bid now” to bid that amount. The problem arrises when you want to make a proxy bid.

When you tap your finger in the text entry box, it doesn’t remove the number in the box. Instead, it appends whatever you type to the end of the minimum bid amount. In the example below, the minimum bid amount is $155. I tapped the box to enter $300, but as I typed it made it $155,300:

Screenshot from GoDaddy investor app

After I typed the number and tapped outside the box, this is what I saw:

GoDaddy investor app screenshot

I’ve caught myself several times before hitting the bid button, and I suspect someone (maybe even me) will accidentally submit a much higher bid than planned.

Although I no longer have the old app, I believe it removed the bid amount when you tapped in the text box. This is standard behavior for a number entry field like this.

I let GoDaddy know about this but think it’s worth a warning while it makes a change to its app.

 

Verisign gets domain backorder patent

by — Expired Domains 5 Comments

Schematic from a Verisign patent related to backordering domains. It shows registering an encoding domain that gives the right to register a domain upon its expiration.

A schematic from Verisign’s patent.

Last year I wrote about an intriguing patent application from Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN), the company that runs the .com namespace. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has now issued patent #10404650 (pdf).

The patent describes ways to change up the expired patent game.

One way would be to issue encoding domain names that give people the right to buy a domain upon its expiration. For example, if you wanted to get the domain example.com when it expired on March 28, 2020, you could register the domain dn–example-20200328.com.

The right to register the domain upon expiration could be transferred to someone else by transferring the encoding domain.

Additional embodiments include allowing priority to register domains from a pool of domain names.

Some of Verisign’s patent applications seem to be geared to changing how expired domains are captured, and this could be one piece of the puzzle.

When I wrote about the instant patent when it was merely an application, I noted:

I had another thought about Verisign’s overall patent strategy while reading through this patent application. In 2013, Verisign discussed monetizing its patent portfolio. It has dropped that discussion (at least publicly). It would be a huge risk for Verisign to go after other registries while it works to hold onto its .com contract.

But…once is clears the Cooperative Agreement with the NTIA, one option would be to sell its portfolio to a group that grants a license back to it. That way Verisign can continue operating, get a profit from selling the patents, and be arm’s-length from any actions the buyer takes.

Verisign has now amended the Cooperative Agreement with the NTIA but is still working with ICANN to try to incorporate the .com price increase. It obviously won’t do anything drastic until then. Once it gets its way with price increases, it will have to consider how bold it wants to be. Does it want to hold out on rocking the boat as it pushes for price caps to eventually be eliminated?

To be continued…

This is a dirty way to use an expired domain

by — Expired Domains 14 Comments

A double amputee let his domain expire. Someone bought it for online gambling.

A screenshot of ScottRigsbyFoundation.org showing its use for online gambling

Not cool: the buyer of this expired domain re-purposed a site by a double amputee into an online gambling site.

Earlier this year, the domain name ScottRigsbyFoundation.org expired.

It was used by a double amputee who successfully competed in an Ironman Triathlon. These days he is also a motivational speaker.

The GoDaddy expired domain auction for the domain attracted multiple bidders and closed for $155 in February of this year.

The domain name itself doesn’t have much value to anyone other than the original registrant, but I’m sure it had some backlinks and good SEO. Some people buy expired domains for their SEO value and repurpose the website. I used to do this back in the mid-aughts.

But I’d never do something like this.

The domain buyer has apparently rebuilt the site as an online gambling information site. They even created a new logo calling it the Scott Rigsby Foundation.

That’s downright dirty. I couldn’t sleep at night if I did something like that.

Scott Rigsby is suing (pdf) over losing the domain, although I question the approach. He is suing GoDaddy in Georgia, claiming various parts of its contract aren’t valid and that he didn’t receive renewal notices for the domain.

I guess GoDaddy has money, but I don’t see this lawsuit going anywhere.

If the real goal is to get the domain back, Rigsby might do better by talking to a domain attorney who can walk him through options to get the domain either through a UDRP or via an in rem ACPA case in Virginia (assuming his claim that the registrant used false registration info is correct). I imagine he can easily show common law trademark rights in the term.

Cerebrum.com domain auction [Updated]

by — Expired Domains 13 Comments

High profile Uniregistry expired domain sale at Dynadot is nixed.

Picture of clock with words "expired domains"

Update: it appears that some snafus with Uniregistry sending its domains to Dynadot caused the domain troubles. The original bidder is getting the domain for $23,000. Dynadot hasn’t historically had high-value names sold through its system, and apparently, it didn’t give enough time to the winning bidder to pay given the amount involved. This caused a ripple effect with automated cancellations, plus apparently a mistaken support rep.

A Dynadot representative told DNW: “There was a payment issue that has now been rectified and the sale is being processed. We understand that there have been some kinks with the launch of Uni domains to our auction platform but our teams are working hard to make the necessary adjustments for a smoother process moving forward.”

Original story follows…

Last week there was quite a bit of chatter after Cerebrum.com closed for $23,000 in an expired domain auction at Dynadot. Some people thought the winning bidder overpaid while others were upset they were outbid.

This morning I received an email from the runner-up bidder in the auction. It turns out that the winning bidder didn’t pay.

Not only that, but the domain auction was subsequently canceled. This domain was at Uniregistry and owned by an end user, Cerebrum Health Centers in Texas. Dynadot informed the runner-up that the auction was canceled because the domain was transferred to another registrar. (Whois still shows the domain at Uniregistry as of this morning.)

The runner-up is upset because he transferred money across international borders (i.e., it cost money to transfer) to buy the domain and the auction was subsequently canceled.

Like third-party domains auctioned off at GoDaddy, ones auctioned by third parties at Dynadot can still be renewed or transferred.

Regardless of the circumstances, Cerebrum.com didn’t end up selling for $23,000 after all.

Favoring expired domains over other domain auctions

by — Expired Domains 15 Comments

Many domain investors will pay more for expired domains than ones owned by other investors.

Picture of expired parking meter.

Over the past few days, there’s been a lot of conversation on Twitter about expired domain auctions.

I believe it started with Josh Reason asking GoDaddy to allow private sellers to include their domains in the GoDaddy expired auction stream. He proposed running them like the other auctions (no reserve) but labeling them as private party on the auction page.

The closest comparison is NameJet, which lets private sellers on its platform. I think a lot of buyers are frustrated with reserve domains on NameJet, but Josh thinks as long as the domains have no reserve people don’t care if it’s an expired auction or private party seller:

I disagree and I know that others do, too. There are a couple of reasons that I’d prefer to buy an expiring domain than one that another domainer is trying to sell through the platform.

First, I think there’s less chance the domain has been shopped around in recent years. Less chance it’s on Sedo or Afternic. I’ve sold expired domains within weeks of buying them when someone who was watching the domain but didn’t know how expired domains work reached out. And if you add it to Afternic for the first time, some registrar partners will email customers with similar domains and let them know the domain is available.

Second, there’s at least some psychological feeling that if another domain investor is dumping a domain, perhaps it isn’t that good.

The other challenge I see to private party listings is shill bidding. It adds incentives for people to bid up domains. This is a problem NameJet recently had.

The fact that people want to get their domains in the expired auction streams at GoDaddy and NameJet says a lot. These domains tend to sell for good amounts. More than the domains would sell for if they weren’t expiring.

An interesting middle ground would be to have a separate auction stream of no reserve, private-party listings. The lists would be provided to services like ExpiredDomains.net so people could analyze them. Having a separate stream allows investors to apply whatever premium they want to domains that are expired.