Web 2.0.11562 beta

I’m always angered when I read about some shady outfit operating in a questionable ethical manner. Our industry seems to be plagued by a never-ending stream of these, and all registrars get a black eye from the activities of a small minority.

An associate of mine, in the commercial real estate development business recently got a fax. This was an official looking document, stating at the top that his company needed to purchase a domain name, his trademarked project name dot US. They cited statutes and explained that IP owners need to actively defend their trademarks or risk their claim on said marks. It also urged swift action, although it seems that the domain in question has never been registered. They gave him one day to claim this domain for $35 per year.

A word of advice - if you get a fax or letter pushing you into registering a domain like this, send a copy to ICANN. And if time allows send a letter explaining that after sending this kind of notice to subsequently register the domain would clearly demonstrate “bad intent” on their part and you would be forced to defend your trademark in that case.

So long overdue, the domain tasting system that has been exploited by outfits like this, has finally been straightened out. ICANN has now voted to impose their twenty cent fee on every domain registered. Actually they’re no longer going to be allowing registrars to be refunded the fee during the Add Grace Period but it’s easier to just think of it as now applying to all registrations. This would apply whether or not the registry allows registrants to return the domain for a refund.

This small fee completely changes the economics of domain tasting. For the average Joe, it means you can change your mind about a domain you registered and get almost a complete refund. I’ve seen the need for this when customers of mine accidentally register typos late at night.

For the predatory companies out there who register domains people are actively searching for on registrar sites in the hopes of extorting a large profit to surrender the domain, this is bad news. And for Network Solutions’ latest PR black eye over scalping searched-for domains - this removes the monetary incentive. Three cheers for ICANN!

A good post today by Jay Westerdal reminding us all how the availability of credit for house purchases led to an increase in the prices for homes by making them more affordable. Here is the article.

Financing options do exist for premium domains, but for small business owners insightful enough to understand the value of getting a great domain that will shape their ongoing business strategy, there is nothing. Conventional lenders are not interested, and generally lack confidence in the accepted valuation methods.Domain names have real value in business, and smart financiers will recognize this.

Interesting too to see him mention travel.com and guess that it’s worth is $50 million. I happen to own the Thai version of that, ??????????.com, and believe it’s worth to be one half of one percent of that, or $250,000. Current market price today would be more like $10,000 I think, reinforcing Jay’s point that valuations go up if good names are made more affordable.

Tis the season for xmasgiftsquick.com and such - yes this domain was available at the time of writing this. People shop in their few minutes of free time in fear of forgetting to get things before the holidays. Loads of easy 10 minute gifts at places like cosmetics.pro for the women in your life. Give your gifts and enjoy the season - or regret not doing so later in life!

Let me take up the position that nobody wants to hear - Verisign deserves this increase and fought hard to win it as a consolation prize. They implemented a scheme whereby non-registered .com and .net domains typed in inadvertantly would resolve to what amounted to a basic parking page. Monetizing typo traffic by taking advantage of their position as registry for .com and .net.

People became insensed with jealous rage and ICANN stepped in and forbade it. Most people feel that it’s unfair for Verisign to have a permanent monopoly in the lucrative .com market, even though they are unaware of how we got to this situation. In the early days Verisign stepped up and did what it took to make the DNS system happen. No it’s not enough to have BIND, and to have ISPs setting up nameservers - it required some infrastructure that someone had to provide.

Nori - that quintessential sushi ingredient! Nori is technically laver, not seaweed, but if you’ve ever enjoyed sushi try to imagine what it would be like without this great wrapper. In Japanese cuisine nori is ubiquitous, shredded strips are placed on top of at least half the dishes there. Onigiri are eaten like sandwiches in the west. And nori is an important ingredient in many dishes - as you will see if you visit the website (and if you can read japanese!)

Japanese web surfers have long complained that remembering English-language URLs was difficult. I can imaging if I had to try to remember some Kanji domain names! Since we are involved in IDNs, we have begun to publish some Japanese language sites with good results. We published a group of themed sites around food domains: http://??.jp (natto), Mochi http://??.jp (mochi), http://??.com (uni), http://???.jp (mirin), http://??.com (ramen)

The clickthru rate is terrific, 20-25% and the clicks range from $0.20 to $1.50 - a resounding success! Let me get busy with cranking out some more….

THNIC, Thailand’s only registrar selling .TH domains will have competition soon, and plans to promote use of this little-used extension. Here is the article. Oddly there is no mention of IDN.th - what’s up? The only domains that can challenge .com are country codes; locals learn over time to seek out local businesses by using their local ccTLD. Let’s go THNIC, push IDN.th already!

???.com sold today for $42,250 and ???.com  sold for $36,194

These 2 Korean terms both mean handphone/cellphone - and they are the largest Korean language domain sale I’ve heard of. Of course, that always needs to be qualified with the usual disclaimer, “the vast majority of sales go unreported” That utterance is never accompanied by any sort of substantiation, but every domainer knows it to be true by extrapolating on his/her personal experience.

Read all about it, the domain name saga that is already legendary - and is still ongoing.

http://www.sexdotcom.info