Domain Name Wire | Domain Name News & Website Stuff

Domain Name Industry News and Website Stuff

Featured Domains

5 Domain Name Thoughts

by — Uncategorized 25 Comments

Here are some things I’ve been thinking about lately.

Man with thought bubble

It must be difficult for expired domain name research tools to compete with ExpiredDomains.net. It’s hard to beat free with such a solid feature set.

There’s a new domain name generator out that you might want to check out, called NameBounce. I tried it and got some good results. My favorite name generator is still LeanDomainSearch, and it appears to have gotten an upgrade recently.

Sedo’s auction board isn’t as active as GoDaddy and NameJet, but it’s worth stopping in from time-to-time. Right now Jet.biz has 16 bids and is $650. GV.biz has 17 bids and is EUR 355. Someone placed a $4,200 bid on FreeSlots.casino; I suspect that was pushed to auction after an offer.

Speaking of Sedo, I’d like to give them props for continuing to publish sales data. It’s very helpful for the industry.

For everyone who blasts GoDaddy’s appraisals, I challenge them to sort an expired domain list by the GoValues. Each value might not be perfect, but you’ll notice a marked drop in quality as you go down the list.

I sold another domain through Afternic today and I’m thinking it’s time for me to switch to buy now landers. I waste lots of time responding to inquiries with prices. I like how easy buy now is.

Could Chrome downplay domains?

by — Uncategorized 8 Comments

Some users report a change in the latest version of Google Chrome.

Google Chrome shows recently-visited sites when you start typing the domain. Some users report this has changed to prioritize search results.

Back in the old days, web browsers had just an address bar. Type in a domain name and hit enter. Type in part of a domain and the browser automatically added .com to it.

That changed with the combined web address/search box. This impacted type-in traffic to websites but it was certainly user-friendly. It makes navigating the web much easier.

Ghacks has spotted behavior in the latest build of Google Chrome that could downplay domain names and previously visited sites even more.

The site has discovered that Google is promoting search over recently visited sites. Start typing the domain of a site you visited and it defaults to a search query rather than autocompleting the domain and letting you hit enter to visit it.

I have not been able to replicate this behavior even though I am using the same version of Chrome. I have tried it both logged in and logged out.

Ghacks shows a fix, and it leads me to believe that people experiencing this are facing a bug rather than a feature. While it makes since from a user standpoint to combine the address bar and search box, making it harder for visitors to access recently-visited websites does not. As much as Google would like more search traffic, I don’t think it would take this step.

I don’t think everything Google does that downplays domains is user-friendly. I have major concerns about not showing the full URL in the browser or replacing it with a site name in search results. That’s is a security issue.

But I don’t think Chrome would purposefully put search results above sites you want to visit again.

PIR’s rebrand takes shape

by — Uncategorized 6 Comments

Domain company files trademark applications for new logos.

Public Interest Registry, the non-profit that manages the .org top level domain name, is in the middle of a rebrand. It can’t happen soon enough; my eyes tear up every time I visit its website that has light blue text on a dark blue background.

We now have the first glimpse of this rebrand. The organization filed three intent-to-use trademark applications for new logos. Here’s a comparison of the old PIR logo vs. the new one:

Image showing old PIR logo (left) and new logo (right)

Each of the top level domains will also get a refreshed logo. Here’s the planned .org logo:

New .Org domain logo

I imagine they will have a color that matches the organization’s new color scheme.

New logos will be nice but I’ll settle for a website with readable text.

Uber.com domain could have been $532 million

by — Uncategorized 15 Comments

The company that sold Uber.com to the transportation company could have earned $532 million.

Graphic of Uber app

Raid hailing and mobility company Uber went public today. It hasn’t fared so well in its debut but still got a big valuation.

Early investors in the company got a great return on their investment. The Wall Street Journal calculated the returns for early investors such as First Round Capital, Lowercase Ventures and Shawn Fanning.

One company that could have hit pay dirt is Universal Music. Its investment arm previously backed a company that used Uber.com. It went defunct.

It sold the Uber.com domain name to Uber (which was called UberCab) for the equivalent of $107,148 in equity. The Wall Street Journal calculates that would be worth $532 million at the IPO.

But Universal Music cashed out in the company’s A Round for $863,000.

Oops.

Universal Music isn’t the only one to miss out on riches in a domain deal. The guy who sold the DropBox.com domain took $300,000 in cash. If he took the equity option it would have been worth hundreds of millions.

Of course, there are plenty of examples of people taking equity in a deal only to lose it all.

Former ICANN CFO joins DigitalTown, Ciacco now CEO

by — Uncategorized 1 Comment

DigitalTown gets new leadership as it works on a new business plan.

Picture of DigitalTown CEO Sam Ciacco and CFO Kevin Wilson

Former ICANN CFO Kevin Wilson has joined DigitalTown as Chief Financial Officer. He is also taking a seat on the board.

Wilson was CFO of ICANN from 2007-2011. He was also the initial CFO and VP of Finance at new top level domain company Donuts.

Sam Ciacco is the latest CEO of the company after serving in consulting roles for the past year.

DigitalTown is a pink sheets company that has taken on a lot of different business ideas. Over the past couple of years it seems to have jumped on every possible buzzword and trend to launch local city sites. Its marquee one was Austin.city, which currently has a security certificate error.

The company is relevant to the domain name industry because it owns a large portfolio of domain names and has agreements with new TLD companies to register a certain number of domains.

Rob Monster of Epik was CEO until late last year. A new CEO took over and left within a few months.

It seems that Ciacco and Wilson have a new idea for DigitalTown. We’ll call it DigitalTown 3.0.

Its website says “Stay tuned for exciting announcements regarding the future of Digitaltown”.

Shares in DigitalTown (OTCMKTS: DGTW( trade for a fraction of a penny.