January in Review: Domain Names
2007 started with a bang in the domain name industry.
January symbolizes a fresh start and a fresh beginning. For the domain name industry, January 2007 was another month of (mostly) positive news.
Here are some of the top stories from January:
GoDaddy PR Flap. It wasn’t so much that GoDaddy changed the DNS on one of its client’s domains. It was how it responded, with GoDaddy Chief Counsel Christine Jones saying the firm “reserves the right to terminate your access to the services at any time, without notice, for any reason whatsoeverâ€. That’s a legal response if I’ve ever heard one. Note to GoDaddy: hire a crisis PR team.
A Fabulous Agreement. Fabulous is one of the biggest domain portfolio owners. But the firm realized the benefits of playing nice with “competitors”, and inked an agreement for NameMedia to help sell its domains. NameMedia owns BuyDomains and Afternic.
MGM v. Cadenshead. Reglike took an in-depth look at the UDRP fight over WarGames.com. Perhaps it was too in-depth, as few people took the time to read and comment 🙂
2007 Domain Survey. Reglike launched its annual survey in January. As an added incentive to participate, 50 respondents will win a free domain name.
Domainer’s Get a Magazine. It’s long overdue, but the domain name industry got its own print publication, Domainer’s Mag. Reglike interviewed magazine co-founder Jerry Nolte.
Dirty Money. Whether you invest in the adult space or not, you have to give credit to Moniker for pulling in $2M in sales during its ‘adult’ domain auction in Las Vegas. Here’s a hint to those who didn’t participate in the online silent auction: there were a lot of non-adult domains, and a lot of bargains to be had. Yours truly picked up some ‘clean’ gems. More importantly, Moniker proved it can take its auction model to end-users.
Scalpers? A ZDNet article claimed the owner of a generic domain name was a “scalper” when he sold the domain. Ouch.
Overture is Over. Reglike’s article regarding “The Death of Overture” set off a firestorm on the web. Here are relevant discussions on NamePros and DNLocal.
As a closing note, thanks for turning to Reglike in January for your domain news. We set a traffic record last month with 213,000 page views and 75,000 uniques. I also noticed that one of Reglike’s articles was picked up by a UPENN law professor for his intellectual property course.
