- Lawsuit: Bird.com and Fish.com domain buyer failed to pay
- A counterparty wanting to use cryptocurrency for a domain is a red flag
- Registering NFT domains? Skip the trademarks
- After losing cybersquatting dispute, Qatar tries trademark infringement
- Lawsuit alleges CEOs.com, xus.com and other domains are stolen
News
Latest end user domain name sales
A real estate technology company, a medical mask manufacturer, and a rebranded recruiting agency bought domain names.
Sedo’s top public sale this past week was BetterCare.com for $30,000. It doesn’t resolve to a site yet and the owner isn’t known. But I did uncover some nice end user purchases.
Here are the end user sales I found (you can view previous lists like this here).
CelebrityAgent.com $12,600 – Celebrity Agent is a real estate marketing service.
FFP2.de €10,000 – DK medical is a German manufacturer of FFP2 respirator masks specifically made to be more comfortable and fog-resistant for those who wear glasses. I could use some of these!
Blasty.com $7,420 – Leo Vegas Group runs a number of online gaming brands.
Illig.com €6,500 – ILLIG Maschinenbau GmbH & Co. KG forwards this domain to its website at Illig.de.
S-Ray.com $5,295 – Arabesque S-Ray is a global data provider that focuses on advisory and data solutions by combining big data and environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics to assess the performance and sustainability of companies worldwide. It forwards the domain to arabesque.com/s-ray.
Radancy.us $5,000 and Radancy.eu – A company formerly known as TMP Worldwide rebranded to Radancy. It’s an independent recruitment advertising agency headquartered in New York City. It uses the domain Radancy.com.
HLFF.org $4,999 – Wondery Chief Executive Hernan Lopez set up Hernan Lopez Family Foundation for a group that will fight against systemic bias and racism.
Campella.com €4,500 – Henrikssons Husvagnar, a Swedish motor home and caravan sales listing site, bought this domain. It sounds like a camper brand to me.
RayIntelligence.com $3,500 – RaySearch Laboratories is advancing cancer treatment through software.
UniversityofHunting.com $2,988 – Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, a conservation and pro-hunting organization, bought this domain.
BitPanda.nl €2,750 – Forwards to BitPanda.com, a technology firm focused on cryptocurrencies, digital assets and blockchain technology.
MaccaBingo .com 2,500 – This forwards to MEccabingo .com, so it’s likely a defensive acquisition.
Camperbus.de €2,499 – Forwards to Mietwagen-Camper.de, a German travel website where you can rent motor homes, book flights, and other travel arrangements.
FitnessHome.com €2,235 – A website for Shakra Fitness, a retailer of weights, dumbells and other home fitness equipment.
Post link: Latest end user domain name sales
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Frank Schilling will try to liquidate his 23 top level domain names in a single day
Schilling will exit the new top level domain game if the price is right.
Frank Schilling’s top level domain registry UNR is planning to liquidate its TLDs in no-reserve auctions held on a single day.
The company currently has rights to 23 top level domain and will auction each of them for no reserve on April 28, 2021.
No reserve doesn’t mean the TLDs will sell for just a buck, though. .HIV, .juegos, and .llp will start a $0, but the other domains will have minimum bids ranging from $150,000 to $3 million.
While the company may end up selling off its top level domains, it’s not exiting the domain name business entirely. It plans to focus solely on its backend registry services and IP protection services.
In fact, it’s offering its “Registry in a Box” service to buyers of its top level domains if they’d like. It will even serve as a “Trustee” for any of the top level domains, meaning UNR will be the named owner and continue to operate the domains on behalf of the financial buyer.
UNR will use Innovative Auctions to handle the sale. Innovative Auctions handled the recent sale of .car, cars and .auto and was the auction service for many TLD resolution sets.
The unique auction should give us a good idea about the current valuation of top level domains.
Post link: Frank Schilling will try to liquidate his 23 top level domain names in a single day
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Verisign gets patent for domain name suggestion/registration via chatbot
Patent describes way to use chatbots to help customers find and register domain names.
A graphic from Verisign’s latest patent.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted patent number 10,904,212 (pdf) to Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) for “Domain name suggestion and registration via chatbot.”
The patent describes ways of using chatbots to help consumers find domain names and register them. The abstract is a fairly comprehensive description of Verisign’s patent:
Techniques for providing domain name suggestions to a user that is a prospective registrant via chatbot are disclosed. The techniques include providing a publicly available online chatbot to the user; requesting domain name generation data from the user via the chatbot and during a chatbot session with the user; receiving domain name generation data based on the requesting; generating a plurality of generated domain names using the domain name generation data; filtering registered domain names out of the plurality of generated domain names to produce a plurality of unregistered generated domain names; offering to register at least one of the unregistered generated domain names to the user; receiving an offer acceptance from the user; directing the user, via the chatbot, to provide information sufficient to register the at least one of the unregistered generated domain names; and facilitating registration of the at least one of the unregistered generated domain names.
The chatbot can ask the user questions in order to suggest relevant domain names, such as hobbies, interests, or work history, and could log in to third-party accounts to collect more data.
I’m not aware of a domain name registrar using such a technology today, but chatbots like this are fairly common across industries.
Verisign applied for the patent in January 2018, and it was granted yesterday.
Post link: Verisign gets patent for domain name suggestion/registration via chatbot
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Radix reports $2 million premium revenue in 2020 H2
New top level domain company’s TLDs generated about $4 million in retail premium revenue last year.
Radix has released data about premium domain sales within its ten top level domains from the second half of last year.
The company estimates that total retail premium revenue was $2.014 million, up slightly from the first half of the year. Radix charges wholesale fees to registrars and has to estimate what registrars charge their customers in some cases.
Of this amount, $861k was from new registrations of 1,194 domains. .Tech led the way with 260 domains for $273k, followed by 238 domains in .online for $173k and 246 in .store for $152k.
Renewal revenue accounted for the remaining $1.153 million of revenue. .Online had the highest renewal revenue at $334k.
Radix charges premiums for each annual renewal, not just a premium first-year price. It reported that 60.5% of premium domains were renewed after one year. Those that were renewed once were subsequently renewed 63.3% for a second time. After that, renewal rates jumped to 80.1%.
The full report is available here.
Post link: Radix reports $2 million premium revenue in 2020 H2
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MSCHF’s latest marketing stunt uses domain names to target presidential candidates
The company registered potential candidates’ domain names and offered shares to the public.
This “ransom note” is at MikePence4President.com.
MSCHF, the creative marketing company that ran the “High Off” campaign to promote musician Future using over 150 new top level domains, is back at it with another domain-related campaign.
The company launched InTheYear2024.com, where people can (well, could) buy shares in domain names the agency registered that relate to possible 2024 presidential candidates.
The agency registered domains like MikePence4President.com, ElectCruz.com, and ElectJulianCastro.com, and offered 100 shares in the domains for $1 each. It then set up landing pages for each domain with a ransom note telling the candidate to buy the domain.
If someone buys one of the domains, MSCHF says that the shareholders will split the proceeds.
It’s not clear what the campaign is about but could be a general awareness campaign for the agency. The site includes this “manifesto”:
Politicians come and go, the vast majority running purely in their own self interest or – as the case may be – the self-interest of the massive corporate donors who own them heart and soul. Yang, kanye, even trump, have shown that running for office is now a standard piece of brand-building.
Universally, however, candidates wear the idea that they are acting “for the people” loudly upon their sleeves. In some small way we can force that to be true: let us collectively hold hostage those assets a campaign needs, and force a prospective candidate to pay ransom back to the crowd before commencing their voyage of public aggrandizement.
As they say in the real estate business: location, location, location! And when it comes to urls, mostly available for paltry sums and entirely unique, well: it’s free real estate.
Pre-buying political domains is like laying a predictive minefield: a sale can potentially detect actions in advance of announcements.
Domain squatting is a plague: conniving scamsters seize premium land and prevent growth. If you don’t have a good idea for cookies.Me, don’t stop someone else from taking it! Of course our defense is that we did have a good idea, and this is it.
The savvy consider betting markets to be more reliable predictors than the polls. Because the political consultant class watches the betting markets, betting affects the race just as polls influence the electorate – a political observer effect. Let’s kick that up a notch: by betting on an asset a candidate will be forced to buy back, these bets will interface with campaigns directly.
If the lion’s share of politics is performance and gamesmanship, let’s get in the game.
I’m hosting a panel about fractional domain ownership on Thursday at NamesCon.online. Join us for a discussion about selling shares in domains.
Post link: MSCHF’s latest marketing stunt uses domain names to target presidential candidates
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Categories: Domains
GoDaddy to introduce Buy Now lander for aftermarket domains
Lander will be in addition to current “request price” landers.
GoDaddy’s new “Buy Now” lander.
GoDaddy is introducing a “Buy Now” lander for domain name sales after many requests from the domain investment community.
The company is currently testing the landers. GoDaddy will test the landers on its own NameFind inventory before opening them to all domain investors.
The landers include a “buy now” link as well as phone numbers for potential buyers who want to speak to a representative over the phone. It also emphasizes GoDaddy’s brand to great confidence, including a large message that reads: “Buy with confidence with GoDaddy”.
Domain investors have been asking for these landers for a long time, with a goal of leveraging GoDaddy’s trust and name recognization with customers to increase sales.
Post link: GoDaddy to introduce Buy Now lander for aftermarket domains
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HugeDomains gets reverse domain name hijacking win
Company in Spain filed dispute against CloudTango.com.
HugeDomains has won a reverse domain name hijacking charge against the company that operates CloudTango.org, a directory of cloud services providers.
The Complainant, listed as Jordi Vilanova in the decision, registered CloudTango.org after HugeDomains acquired CloudTango.com. It apparently didn’t start using the brand until after it registered the .org domain name.
Thus, it was impossible that HugeDomains registered CloudTango.com in bad faith to target the Complainant’s non-existent brand.
Two of the three panelists in the WIPO UDRP decision found that the complaint was a case of reverse domain name hijacking. The third panelist, Lorelei Ritchie, wrote, “a complainant should feel free to initiate a UDRP complaint where the complainant has an honest and good faith belief that it is able to establish the necessary elements.”
Panelist Neil Anthony Brown wrote a concurring opinion on reverse domain name hijacking, noting that, if it were allowed, he would have required the Complainant to pay the Respondent’s fees. He mentioned something I didn’t realize — that Canada’s version of UDRP provides this remedy for .ca disputes.
Mapa Trademarks SL represented the Complainant. HugeDomains was internally represented.
Post link: HugeDomains gets reverse domain name hijacking win
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Court: Lotto Sport Italia must pay $237k attorneys’ fees in reverse domain hijacking case
Lotto Sport tried to reverse domain name hijack a lottery operator’s domains.
A man who won a reverse domain name hijacking claim against Lotto Sport is asking for Attorneys’ fees.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah M. Fine has ordered (pdf) sports apparel company Lotto Sport Italia to pay approximately $237,000 in attorneys’ fees stemming from a reverse domain name hijacking case.
Lotto Sport filed a cybersquatting dispute under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) against David Dent’s domain names LottoStore .com and LottoWorks .com. Dent acquired the domains for over $11,000 with plans to use them for his online gaming business, only to be hit with the UDRP shortly after acquiring the domains.
Dent’s initial case was poorly defended and a World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) panel found in Lotto Sport’s favor. So Dent was forced to defend his domains by filing a lawsuit.
The court granted summary judgment finding (pdf) reverse domain name hijacking against Lotto Sport. Dent then filed for attorneys’ fees, with the court granting nearly the full amount.
Jeffrey Johnson of Schmeiser, Olsen & Watts, LLP, and John Berryhill represented Dent. Marc Randazza initially represented lotto Sport Italia until the company lost the substantive part of the judgment.
Post link: Court: Lotto Sport Italia must pay $237k attorneys’ fees in reverse domain hijacking case
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We need to talk about what’s going on at Clubhouse
New domain investors are being fed a load of crap.
Some good conversations about domains in Clubhouse. If only they were all this good.
I love when new domain name investors get hooked on domains. They discover the excitement that many DNW readers have experienced for years. Domain investing is fun and can be lucrative. But it’s also full of pitfalls.
Which brings me to what’s happening on Clubhouse, a fast-growing app akin to live call-in radio shows.
Last week, I wrote about how Clubhouse is driving a surge in registrations for .club domain names. Over the past several days, I’ve listened in on several discussions and researched to understand exactly what’s happening on the app. It’s been disturbing.
It seems that a large portion of the surge in .club has come from people who think .club is the hot new investing opportunity. Someone brought up the idea of .club domains gaining value because of Clubhouse several weeks ago and it caught fire. People started hand registering .club domains and buying up premium domains.
It’s fine to come to your own conclusion that Clubhouse’s success will lead to companies and people registering .club domains. It certainly won’t hurt .club. It’s also fine to make bad domain investments — we all have.
What’s disturbing is the amount of questionable advice being doled out by people who are either brand new to domain investing or trying to make a buck off of it by peddling a $2,000 course that’s still under development.
Some of the people doling out this advice are also very defensive, with some trying to discredit those that want to help new domain investors avoid mistakes.
In a call yesterday, one person said that the reason domain investors are telling people to be careful with their investments is that those domain investors are busy snapping up all of the .club domains and don’t want others to get in on it. There’s also a lot of classic bubble talk about landrushes, getting in early, etc.
It’s a problem when so-called experts give people unrealistic expectations about their hand-registered 99-cent domains. When they mislead them into making more bad investments. And when they tell people not to listen to the “naysayers” who are only trying to help.
Last night I listened to a couple of people talking about how they jumped in headfirst this month. They regretted spending so much money on domains before getting their head around it. One of them mentioned how they got their siblings in on it too, and they’ve been registering domains nonstop. They now realize they wasted a lot of money.
This regret is a right of passage in domain investing. But it’s troubling when people push new investors down this path.
Look, we can disagree about the best way to invest in domains. NamePros (and heck, the comment threads on DNW) are full of debate. That’s OK. What’s been happening on Clubhouse is different. There’s a lot of snake oil and it has caused many people to lose money.
There is good news, though. Many domain investors have joined Clubhouse in recent days. This morning, two concurrent sessions are going on with domain investors answering questions. I’m currently listening to Adam Strong suggest tools people can use and how to optimize for sales. Josh Reason is in another room answering questions.
These guys are setting realistic expectations. They’re not trying to sell anything. They’re trying to help people out.
So I encourage all domain investors with peoples’ best interests at heart — join Clubhouse. Let’s help new domain investors rather than send them down the wrong path.
Post link: We need to talk about what’s going on at Clubhouse
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MMX: New CEO, settlement with ICM, layoffs, and prelim earnings
New top level domain company provides updates and preliminary 2020 numbers.
New top level domain name company MMX (aka Minds + Machines) (London AIM: MMX) made several announcements Sunday.
First, interim CEO Tony Farrow has been appointed CEO. Farrow took over after the company booted out its former CEO and CFO following an accounting investigation. Farrow worked for ICM Registry and was then COO of MMX after MMX acquired ICM Registry. He had left the company before being asked to return in the interim role.
Second, the company agreed to pay $1.0 million to settle alleged warranty claims brought by ICM Registry founder Stuart Lawley and others related to MMX’s acquisition of ICM. While the announcement doesn’t detail the allegations, I suspect it has to do with warranties MMX made about the state of its business and financials because part of the acquisition was paid in equity.
Third, MMX laid off 20% of its staff last year.
Finally, the company provided a financial update. For FY 2020, it revealed the following unaudited numbers:
- 2020 revenues were in line with 2019
- Billings declined 3% year over year due to a drop in AdultBlock billings
- Renewal rates remained consistent at 68%
- Domains under management fell 19% with no loss in contribution due to shifting to “more profitable transactions.”
- Cashflow from operations was $6.4 million, which was down slightly from 2019 if you ignore a $6.6 million onerous contract payment that year
Post link: MMX: New CEO, settlement with ICM, layoffs, and prelim earnings
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Digging into Squadhelp – DNW Podcast #322
How to get the most out of Squadhelp.
Squadhelp launched its new white label marketplace for domainers last summer and I’ve been testing it out ever since. Today, I quiz Squadhelp CEO Darpan Munjal about many of the features and how to get the best results out of the platform. We get a bit into the weeds (for example, which domains work best with logos vs. images) and I found it very helpful. I hope you do too!
Also: Donuts acquired (again), Namecheap milestone, Closeout changes
Sponsor: Sav
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone or iPad, or click play above or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)
Post link: Digging into Squadhelp – DNW Podcast #322
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Breaking: Ethos Capital acquires Donuts
Former ICANN CEO’s private equity firm buys out Abry Partners’ stake in Donuts, giving it a controlling interest.
Top level domain company Donuts announced today that Ethos Capital has acquired Abry Partners’ stake in the company, giving Ethos a controlling interest in the firm.
I reported on this potential tie-up last month but could not confirm it with the company.
Ethos Capital’s co-CEOs, Fadi Chehadé and Erik Brooks, led Abry Partners’ acquisition of Donuts in 2018. The pair then left Abry to form Ethos Capital, a private equity firm that tried to buy .org registry Public Interest Registry for $1.135 billion. That deal was scuttled after it failed to gain ICANN’s approval.
Chehadé was formerly the CEO of ICANN. He was listed as a Donuts board member in a filing early last year, and the company confirmed to me last month that he was on the company’s board, which showed that Chehadé maintained a continued interest in the firm. It turns out that Ethos invested in Donuts, and now it has increased its stake by buying out Abry’s ownership.
Donuts acquired Afilias last month, and it made sense that Ethos was involved in the deal on the back end. Ethos had investors eager to put money to work in the domain name business after the .org deal fell through.
Akram Attallah, CEO of Donuts, told me today that the company’s main focus going forward is working on the integration of Afilias. The company is reviewing the technical assets of both companies to formulate its next-generation platform. He hopes that plan comes together by the end of this quarter, at which point the heavy lifting will begin.
Post link: Breaking: Ethos Capital acquires Donuts
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End user domain name sales up to $60k
A QR code company, an event producer, and a virtual reality company recently bought domain names at Sedo.
Sedo had some nice end user sales this past week, including HolyGround.com for $60,000 and Flow.me for €48,000. Another interesting sale is EditPad.org for €30,000. There is an online plain text editor at the domain, but I confirmed with Sedo that this was a domain-only sale. There are several applications with the name EditPad.
Here are the end user sales I found (you can view previous lists like this here).
HolyGround.com $60,000 – Holy Ground is a conference series for churches.
Flow.me €48,000 – The DTX Company runs FlowCode, a system to create QR codes. It uses the domain name FlowCode.com. It goes to show that QR codes aren’t a replacement for good domains!
Selera.com $4,995 – ChappellRoberts, a branding and advertising agency in Tampa, FL bought this domain. It might be for a client.
Emissive.com €4,900 – It appears that the buyer is French virtual reality technology company Emissive. It uses Emissive.fr for its website.
AnthemSoftware.com $4,460 – The Whois record shows BamBamtastic Games, a game developer in Florida. The owner of that company also owns a digital marketing company so the domain might be for that.
InsuranceAds.com $4,500 – This website is for a German company that provides an affiliate network for insurance advertising.
MBroker.com $3,850 – Business insurance firm Embroker, Inc. bought this domain, likely as a defensive typo registration. It uses embroker.com for its website.
HR-Tech.de €3,500 – This domain has a coming soon page for HR Tech Consulting GmbH.
B2BInsight.com $3,300 – B2B International is a global full-service market research firm focused on researching business-to-business markets. It’s a part of Merkle and uses the domain B2BInternational.com.
Surfi.com $2,750 – PLM Consulting and Trade, a Croatian business consultancy firm, bought this domain.
THNX.nl €2,750 – Forwards to THNX.nu, the site for Dutch personalized gifting service Thnx.
DutchBitcoin.com $2,500 – This domain is being used for Gulden, which the site bills as the “Dutch Bitcoin.”
Tempire.com $2,500 – It appears that the buyer is setting up a site for people to follow his hikes.
BoardEssentials.com $2,299 – This domain was bought by BoardBookIt, a secure board meeting software application.
OnlineSucht.de €2,250 – Forwards to ProjectWalk.org/onlinesucht/, a blog in German about having an addiction to being online.
QuadroPay.com €2,000 – Quaife, a cross-currency payment processing platform, bought this domain.
Post link: End user domain name sales up to $60k
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The (original) Boring Company sues Elon Musk’s company for trademark infringement
A Nevada company says it is receiving invoices and collection notices meant for Elon Musk’s tunnel-building company.
Not Elon Musk’s company.
Let’s say you’re a company in Las Vegas that does boring, trenching, and other underground drilling. You’re called The Boring Company. You use the domain name TheBoringCompany.com to promote your services.
Then Elon Musk, the richest person in the world (on paper), decides to create an underground tunnel system and calls his company The Boring Company. At first, he starts tunneling in California. But then he signs a deal to drill a tunnel underneath Las Vegas.
Think that might cause confusion?
According to the original The Boring company, it certainly has.
In a trademark infringement lawsuit (pdf) filed yesterday, Nevada-based The Boring Company says it has “received numerous invoices, past due statements, collection notices, and notices of intent to file liens in an amount exceeding $100,000.00—none of which belong to Plaintiff but have mistakenly been sent to and/or named Plaintiff instead of Defendant.”
Ouch.
The Nevada company is suing Elon Musk’s company for trademark infringement and a host of other claims. It says it has been in negotiations with the company for a while, but has been unable to resolve the issue.
Post link: The (original) Boring Company sues Elon Musk’s company for trademark infringement
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Categories: Domains
Direct visits drive demand for domains in China
Data from Baidu shows how people in China visit websites.
Is domain important when Chinese consumers visit a website? What are the implications in terms of demand for domains and types of domains that can sell to people and companies in China? As a domain investor, these are the questions I want to get answers to.
I have been analyzing website visit data since 2019. Previous results can be found here: 2019 and 2020. They were based on the Baidu web traffic data that you can find here (in Chinese).
Baidu made two changes in 2019. First, the company stopped releasing yearly figures. I solved the problem by averaging the monthly numbers of a year to give us the data we need. This assumes the same traffic each month, but the numbers are roughly the same from month-to-month. You can see the monthly numbers for 2020 below.
2020DirectVisitReferalSearchEngineInsiteVisit Jan68.8615.9414.151.05 Feb6817.3813.680.94 Mar66.4318.414.011.16 Apr65.9518.9113.931.21 May66.9118.4913.451.15 Jun65.7118.9514.151.19 Jul65.6118.2415.151 Aug65.9917.2116.30.5 Sep66.9318.4714.440.16 Oct67.2819.0213.70 Nov66.3720.2713.360 Dec67.4818.8713.650 Average66.7918.3614.160.70In the same year, Baidu removed the “Directory” and “Social Media” categories. Instead, it added “Insite Visit” which is translated from 站内来源 (Zhan Nei Lai Yuan) because I could not find the corresponding term in English. “Insite Visit” measures visitors who become active again after being idle for more than 30 minutes. (If the term is too technical to understand, you are not alone. Because its share is tiny, we can ignore the category.) Below are the yearly numbers.
PeriodDirectReferralSearchDirectorySocialInsite 20120.39360.27740.27340.04880.0068-- 20130.34790.32960.24930.05720.0161-- 20140.39830.33790.19860.04590.0193-- 20150.40830.29960.23390.030.0282-- 20160.41950.29380.25660.020.0101-- 20170.41390.28880.28440.00960.0033-- 20180.44570.24460.30010.00630.0033-- 20190.67380.14650.1664----0.0133 20200.66790.18350.1416----0.007When you look at the numbers, one thing stands out: Over 65% of consumers visit a site directly. In other words, they must remember the domain and then use it to arrive at the site.
Here are two takeaways: (1) Domains are very important, so corporate demand for them is solid and will grow as China expands its economy and global reach. (2) Short, easy-to-remember domains will continue to be sought after by Chinese companies. Specifically, that means mostly .com or .cn domains because they are familiar to Chinese consumers.
Post link: Direct visits drive demand for domains in China
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Clubhouse app driving surge in .Club registrations
.Club is on a tear thanks to the Clubhouse app.
The Clubhouse app is driving a surge in .club registrations. On the left, a screenshot of groups in the app called clubs. On the right, the History Club uses a .club domain name.
If you follow .Club founder Colin Campbell on twitter, you know he’s been excited the past couple of weeks. .Club has been on a tear. Here’s one of his tweets:
The only way to describe it is “Absolute Pandemonium”
Yesterday hit 469 premium name sales, 7401 registrations and 75K in sales at https://t.co/KMcRncDdxN @thedomains @getdotclub @domainnamewire @DInvesting @GoDaddy@onlinedomaincom @dnjournal
@DomainGang pic.twitter.com/Ax9aGYOQBS
— Colin.club (@ColinDotClub) January 15, 2021
And that’s just one day. Other tweets show that hundreds of premium .club domains have been registered every day recently.
From January 1-17, premium .club registrations are up 737% compared to the same time last year. Regular registrations are up 92%.
Some of the premium registrations are fairly inexpensive (about $20), but others are pricey.
So what’s driving this sudden surge? It seems to be the popular Clubhouse app.
You might have heard of Clubhouse described as an app that’s kind of like podcasting. It’s a social media platform focused on the spoken word. I think a better description is communal radio because it’s not recorded like a podcast is.
On Clubhouse, you can follow people or groups called clubs (see top left image).
The nomenclature seems to be driving people to register .club domains related to their clubs. The top right image shows the History Club on Clubhouse. It uses and promotes the domain historyclub.club.
Additionally, domain investment discussions on the platform are driving new interest in domain investing. Clubhouse users who learn about or discuss domain investing on the platform are interested in .club domains given the popularity of the app.
Clubhouse will likely get much more popular as the year progresses. Its success is remarkable given that it’s only available on iOS so far and is invite-only.
It will be interesting to see if this surge in .club registrations continues along with the app’s popularity.
Post link: Clubhouse app driving surge in .Club registrations
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Related posts:Categories: Domains
Google publishes their TLD registry software: Nomulus
Google announced this morning that they are releasing their TLD registry platform, Nomulus, which is written in Java, under an Apache 2.0 license. The company uses the software to run their own registry for their TLDs. Portfolio TLD applicant Donuts has partnered with Google and contributed to the source code – they will also be running a public test instance of the system, which is geared towards being run on the Google Cloud Platform. So far, Rightside (NASDAQ: NAME) has been operating Donuts’ registry backend.
Also covered by:
- DomainNameWire: Google open sources domain registry, Donuts collaborates as pressure on registry providers mounts. The article focusses on the rising pressure on Domain Registry Operators, and a potential switch of platforms by Donuts away from Rightside.
Here’s the full press release:
Introducing Nomulus: an Open Source Top-Level Domain Name RegistryDate: Tuesday, October 18, 2016 8:00am PT
Author: Ben McIlwain, Software Engineer
Today, Google is proud to announce the release of Nomulus, a new open source cloud-based registry platform that powers Google’s top level domains (TLDs). We’re excited to make this piece of Internet infrastructure available to everyone.
TLDs are the top level of the Internet Domain Name System (DNS), and they collectively host every domain name on the Internet. To manage a TLD, you need a domain name registry — a behind-the-scenes system that stores registration details and DNS information for all domain names under that TLD. It handles WHOIS queries and requests to buy, check, transfer, and renew domain names. When you purchase a domain name on a TLD using a domain name registrar, such as Google Domains, the registrar is actually conducting business with that TLD’s registry on your behalf. That’s why you can transfer a domain from one registrar to another and have it remain active and 100% yours the entire time.
The project that became Nomulus began in 2011 when the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced the biggest ever expansion of Internet namespace, aimed at improving choice and spurring innovation for Internet users. Google applied to operate a number of new generic TLDs, and built Nomulus to help run them.
We designed Nomulus to be a brand-new registry platform that takes advantage of the scalability and easy operation of Google Cloud Platform. Nomulus runs on Google App Engine and is backed by Google Cloud Datastore, a highly scalable NoSQL database. Nomulus can manage any number of TLDs in a single shared instance and supports the full range of TLD functionality required by ICANN, including the Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP), WHOIS, reporting, and trademark protection. It is written in Java and is released under the Apache 2.0 license.
We hope that by providing access to our implementation of core registry functions and up-and-coming services like Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP), we can demonstrate advanced features of Google Cloud Platform and encourage interoperability and open standards in the domain name industry for registry operators like Donuts. With approximately 200 TLDs, Donuts has made early contributions to the Nomulus code base and has spun up an instance which they’ll be sharing soon.
For more information, view Nomulus on GitHub.
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Categories: Domains
