News
GoDaddy makes connecting domains to crypto wallets with ENS easier
World’s largest domain registrar adds two-step wizard for connecting domains to Ethereum wallets.
GoDaddy has added a crypto wallet integration.Last week, Ethereum Name Service (ENS) announced a new, “gasless” way to connect real domain names with wallet addresses.
Today, GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY) gave a significant boost to the effort by adding a two-step integration to connect domains at GoDaddy to ENS.
Customers will now see a “Crypto Wallet” option within the DNS section of their domain manager.
All customers have to do is click a button to turn on DNSSEC and then enter their Ethereum wallet address. In the background, GoDaddy will add a TXT record to the domain. The domain must point to GoDaddy’s nameservers in order to use the automated setup.
While cryptocurrency users that would use a domain with their wallet address are probably technologically savvy, GoDaddy is making it super simple for them to connect domains to ENS without fiddling around to find how to implement DNSSEC or add a TXT record to their DNS.
It will be interesting to see how many people use this feature at GoDaddy.
Post link: GoDaddy makes connecting domains to crypto wallets with ENS easier
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January’s top 5 domain name stories
Squarespace and several cybersquatting cases were in the news last month.
Miss any big stories on Domain Name Wire last month? These were the top five stories, ranked by views:
1. New registrations plummet after Squarespace takes over Google Domains – Brand recognition, pricing, and usability probably all play a part.
2. Binance wins binance .ae domain name, which loser bought for $300k – A guy paid $300,000 to buy the domain name and lost it in a cybersquatting dispute.
3. A flaw in GoDaddy’s Whois contact form – The form doesn’t verify email addresses, which could be a problem.
4. Five Guys burger chain hits domain name roadblock in Sweden – Five IT bros have the domain name it wants.
5. Verizon wins $450k cybersquatting judgment – A brazen cybersquatter owes the company money after a court order.
And here are the five podcasts from last month:
#471 – Universal Acceptance
#470 – My 2023 domain sales results
#469 – Weddings, onions, and dude ranches
#468 – The world’s sweetest domain names
#467 – 2024 Predictions Episode
Post link: January’s top 5 domain name stories
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Italian clothing company Malo tries reverse domain hijacking
Company filed cybersquatting dispute after failing to buy a domain name it wanted.
Italian clothing company Malo S.p.A. tried to reverse domain name hijack the domain malo.com, a World Intellectual Property Organization panel has determined.
The company uses the domain name malo.it and coveted the matching .com. It first tried to buy the domain name because “a business activity in a global world makes a TLD “.com” useful for global business.”
That’s all well and good, except that a guy named Nicolas Malo registered the domain name way back in 1999.
The company apparently ignored the need to show that the domain owner lacked a right or legitimate interest in the domain name in order to win a cybersquatting case. The fact that the owner’s surname is Malo meant this case was dead on arrival.
Panelist Piotr Nowaczyk wrote:
The Panel believes that the Complainant should have appreciated at the outset that its Complaint could not succeed. In particular, the Complainant has not demonstrated any circumstances indicating that it was being targeted via the Domain Name and that it would be able to prove registration in bad faith. It appears to the Panel that the Complainant only launched the Complaint after unsuccessfully attempting to acquire the Domain Name in the past. The Complainant suggests the importance of the Domain Name for its business claiming that “a business activity in a global world makes a TLD “.com” useful for global business”. In the Panel’s opinion, these circumstances point in the direction of a finding of RDNH.
Porta & Consulenti Associati S.p.A. represented Malo S.p.A., and John Berryhill represented the domain name owner.
Post link: Italian clothing company Malo tries reverse domain hijacking
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Radix brings LinkLab out of beta for link-in-bio tools
Users can replace ugly link-in-bio URLs with branded domain names.
LinkLab creates branded links for link-in-bio tools. These three creators use the tool.New top level domain name company Radix has released LinkLab out of beta.
LinkLab is a tool for people to upgrade their link-in-bio URLs with branded links.
For example, rather than have the URL linktr.ee/johndoe123 in their bio, someone can use johndoe.online as the link.
Many top level domain operators see link-in-bio as a growth opportunity. LinkLab is a clever approach for Radix to jump on the link-in-bio bandwagon without creating its own link-in-bio tool. It’s essentially offering forwarding links for other link-in-bio tools.
The company currently offers LinkLab links free for one year and throws in two free email IDs (e.g. collab@johndoe.online) as part of the package. Annual costs after the free year start at $29.99.
Customers don’t have to provide a credit card, but if someone puts the domain in their social media bio or starts using the email addresses, there’s a good chance they’ll pay to renew the service after the first year.
This strikes me as a great way to get actual usage of domains while gaining new registration customers.
Customers can choose any non-premium domain in seven of Radix’s domain names: .online, .site, .space, .store, .tech, .website, and .fun.
Post link: Radix brings LinkLab out of beta for link-in-bio tools
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ICANN finally approves transfer of Epik registrar to new ownership
But who owns it?
ICANN has approved the transfer of domain name registrar Epik to new ownership, the registrar said.
In a press release dated yesterday, the registrar said:
After a rigorous, months-long review process, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on Tuesday finalized the transfer of accreditation of the domain registrar Epik from the previous owners at Epik Inc to new ownership, operating under the name Epik LLC.
The registrar was sold in June last year, and ICANN said it could take several months to approve the transfer. It ended up taking half a year.
In the release, Epik stated:
No previous owners, including Epik Inc founder Rob Monster and late stage CEO Brian Royce, are involved in Epik LLC in any capacity [emphasis in original], including ownership interest in the business.
While this may comfort some customers, we still don’t know who owns the registrar now. And it surprises me that anyone would keep their domain names there without knowing, especially after the bizarre antics of the past month.
As an accredited registrar, Epik must post the names and positions of its officers on its website. They aren’t there as of time of publication.
Post link: ICANN finally approves transfer of Epik registrar to new ownership
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Searching for expired domains by keyword
How to find keywords to buy and how to find expiring domains with these keywords.
I have a confession: I rarely search for expired domain names based on keywords. Or, at least, that used to be the case.
Because I mostly buy closeouts and low-cost auctions, I keep an open mind to any keywords (or parts thereof) that make a good brandable domain name.
But I started playing around with keyword searches last year. It’s a great way to find domains that contain keywords that sell well in the aftermarket.
There are several sources of data for finding keywords:
- Afternic releases a monthly list of the top-sold keywords
- Sedo releases a monthly list of the most-searched terms (keep in mind this might not reflect the most commonly sold)
- Squadhelp’s Deep Keyword Analytics lets you search by keyword to find the sell-through rate and other metrics
- NameBio has data on over 4.8 million domain sales that can be searched by keyword
The domain industry’s go-to expired domain search platform, ExpiredDomains.net, provides keyword searching tools. But you need to know how to use them. In this video, I walk through the site’s keyword tools and explain how some fields are AND while others are OR.
Post link: Searching for expired domains by keyword
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Starboard continues to push GoDaddy to expand margins
Investor demands attainable growth targets with improved margins.
Starboard says GoDaddy is undervalued by price to estimated free cash flow compared to other moderate growth recurring revenue businesses. Chart from Starboard letter to GoDaddy, Jan 31, 2024.Activist investor Starboard has sent another letter (pdf) to GoDaddy’s (NYSE: GDDY) management and board, pushing the company to hit growth and margin targets.
The investor first revealed a 6.5% stake in GoDaddy in 2021. Last year, it sent an open letter to the company admonishing it for missing revenue growth targets and demanding that it make significant cost cuts.
In the letter, Starboard pats GoDaddy on the back for recent performance but says it’s closely watching the Q4 earnings call and March’s Investor Day.
It wants GoDaddy to target a 40% growth-plus-profitability measure for 2025, which it says is in-line with peers. At the same time, it doesn’t want to see a repeat of last year’s Investor Day, in which it set growth targets that it missed. (The letter referred to 2022’s Investor Day, but the letter it sent last year was about 2023 Investor Day targets, so it’s unclear which year it’s referring to. To be fair to GoDaddy, it was very difficult to forecast growth coming out of the pandemic, which saw unprecedented demand for websites and domain names.)
Starboard continues to push for margin expansion and cost-cutting.
Finally, Starboard recommends that GoDaddy continue to plow free cash flows back into share repurchases of GoDaddy’s “undervalued shares”.
Post link: Starboard continues to push GoDaddy to expand margins
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Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! 16 end user domain sales
A Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious week of domain name sales.
Mary Poppins will appreciate one of this week’s domain sales. Photo still from Disney.Sedo had a solid sales week led by PhotoBooth.com at €100,000. The buyer is not yet known.
But the domain I think deserves the most attention is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.com. An unknown buyer paid $20,000 for the domain, and I hope they only intend to get traffic through links, not type-ins.
This post is about end user sales, though. So, let’s look at the domains that sold at Sedo over the past week for which we know the buyers. You can view previous lists like this here.
Fun.chat $20,000 – Fundamental Design Lab has a handful of domains on new TLDs, including fun.app and fun.design.
Samon.com €12,000 – Samon sells gas detectors. It forwards this domain to samon.se.
Thailand.org $11,000 – Tourism.co.th acquired this domain. It owns a network of sites about tourism in Thailand.
XClinic.com €9,200 – Xchart is an automatic healthcare charting system for anesthesia. It is launching a new product called Xclinic in 2026.
EnergieQuelle.com €8,984 – EnergieQuelle is a renewable energy company. It forwards this domain to the matching .de.
Plages.fr €7,000 – Plages means beaches in French. Plages offers beach management software for booking beach spots.
Titronic.com $5,900 – Whois shoes Huntpark Investments Pty Ltd, an Australian property company established in 2021. The email address is for nexigen.digital, a digital marketing firm. It might be developing a site on behalf of Huntpark.
Axaar.com $5,500 – Axaar sells sliding windows for inclined surfaces such as roofs. It uses the matching .info domain name.
Strafrecht.net €4,750 – Strafrecht is German for criminal law. Lawyer Mirko Laudon acquired this domain.
Lighters .eu €4,250 – The owner of lighters .pl, a site selling lighters and vape products, acquired this domain.
H2Core.com €3,000 – H2Core is a green hydrogen system integrator. This domain was acquired by MARNA Beteiligungen, which is undertaking a takeover of H2Core.
Aniday.com $3,000 – Aniday connects a network of 10,000 headhunters with employers.
Farm-ing.com $3,000 – Farm-ING sells smart agricultural products, such as Robotti, an autonomous bot that does seeding, hoeing, spraying and fertilizing.
BluPlanet.de €2,999 – BluPlanet is a cloud software reseller.
Sonnenkönig.de €2,800 – This domain forwards to sonnenkoenig.org. Sonnenkönig is a renewable energy company.
HolyGifts.com $2,000 – Holy Gifts is a store in Minnesota. It forwards this domain to HolyGiftsOnline.com.
Post link: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! 16 end user domain sales
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It’s now free to connect a real domain to Ethereum Name Service
Smart contract enables Gasless DNSSEC to import domains to use on ENS.
Short numeric .eth domains are hot right now.Ethereum Name Service (ENS) has implemented “Gasless DNSSEC”, making it easier to use real domain names with ENS.
ENS is a blockchain-based system that acts as a web3 username. You might be familiar with names ending in .eth. These are ENS’s original implementation that is akin to domain names for wallet address. Instead of remembering a long wallet address, people could use a .eth name instead. It’s similar to how DNS-based domain names replace IP addresses.
People could use real domain names in place of .eth domains for a while, but setting it up (or making changes) could be costly because of Ethereum gas fees that could be as high as 0.5 ETH.
Now, a new smart contract eliminates the need for a large amount of DNSSEC proof needed to be saved to the Ethereum blockchain. Essentially, it will allow DNS records to be verified via an off-chain gateway and eliminate the gas fee.
This means you can use your real domain names in the ENS ecosystem for free.
Domain name owners will need to enable DNSSEC and add a TXT record, but will no longer have to pay gas fees.
Post link: It’s now free to connect a real domain to Ethereum Name Service
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Team Internet reports growth for 2023
The company generated double-digit revenue growth in 2023.
Team Internet Group (AIM: TIG), formerly known as CentralNic, previewed its 2023 earnings today.
The company said gross revenue was around $835 million, gross profit was $190 million, and its adjusted EBITDA measure was $96 million.
Topline growth clocked in at 15%, gross profit grew 7% year over year, and adjusted EBITDA was up 12%. Organic growth came in at 12%.
The Online Marketing segment, which includes domain parking and arbitrage, grossed $656 million compared to $575 million a year ago. It will be interesting to see how new European Union rules impact this business in 2024.
The Online Presence segment, which includes domain registrars such as Moniker and Hexonet, grossed $179 million compared to $154 million in 2023.
Full results and the audited annual report will be released on March 18.
Post link: Team Internet reports growth for 2023
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Universal Acceptance – DNW Podcast #471
The importance of Universal Acceptance, and what is being done to improve it.
Have you ever typed an email address into a web form and it wasn’t accepted because your address ends in a new top level domain? Or noticed that a domain name wasn’t linked on social media because the network didn’t recognize the top level domain?
These are examples of a lack of Universal Acceptance of all types of domain names. Universal Acceptance means that all valid domains and email addresses work in all software applications.
ICANN and the internet community have been working on Universal Acceptance for a long time, but there’s still a long way to go.
On today’s show, I’m joined by Sarmad Hussain, Senior Director of IDN and UA Programs at ICANN, and Nabil Benamar, a professor in Morocco and chair of the UA Steering Group Measurement Working Group. The pair talk about what has been done and the road ahead.
Also: UDRP stats, Epik controversy (again), closed generics and more.
Sponsor: Sav.com domain auctions
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone, or click play above or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)
Post link: Universal Acceptance – DNW Podcast #471
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Namecheap earnings: $336M revenue, 17.7 DUMs in 2023
Second-largest retail registrar continues strong growth.
Namecheap, a privately held domain registrar and services business, has released its 2023 earnings results to Domain Name Wire.
The company grossed $335.6 million in 2023, up 15.2% from $291.4 million in 2022.
Namecheap added 1.74 million domains under management in 2023 (11% growth over 2022), bringing its total domains under management (DUMs) to 17.66 million at the end of the year. Namecheap is the second-largest retail registrar worldwide.
This growth comes despite industry-wide headwinds in the domain name and webhosting markets coming out of the pandemic.
Customer growth is also strong. The company stated:
As we continue to invest in our industry-leading, 24/7 customer support team, our intuitive user experience and our growing product offering, we are very proud to have welcomed over 1.11M new customers onto the Namecheap platform during the last year. In addition to our domain business, our additional product portfolio continues to outperform prior years across the board. We launched a range of new products during 2023, including a variety of security, privacy, marketing and business formation solutions that aim to bring additional convenience and value to our millions of customers.
Namecheap launched its new Spaceship brand last year, and it says its initial focus is on organically attracting early adopters. The new brand hit 475,000 registrations and has generated over $2 million in revenue in its first year. The company promises lots of new features and initiatives with Spaceship.
Post link: Namecheap earnings: $336M revenue, 17.7 DUMs in 2023
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A flaw in GoDaddy’s Whois contact form
The form doesn’t verify the email address. Shenanigans ensue.
GoDaddy’s domain owner contact form doesn’t verify the email address.Most Whois records are now private in the wake of GDPR. However, ICANN requires registrars to enable a way for people to send a message to domain name owners.
GoDaddy does this via a web form on Whois records. People can fill out a form with prefilled reasons for the contact, and it goes to the domain name owner.
But there’s a bit of a flaw in GoDaddy’s system: the sender’s email address is never verified, which means anyone can impersonate another person.
John Berryhill brought this up at last week’s Internet Commerce Association meeting. So this morning, when I received a message that said DomainInvesting.com author Elliot Silver (it was his email address) wanted to contact me because “Your domain name or the content on your website may be infringing on a trademark and/or violating local laws or regulations. It is important that you respond at the earliest,” I immediately thought John might be pulling one over.
I was nearly certain of this after reaching out to Elliot, who told me that he received a similar message from GoDaddy purporting to be from me.
There’s an easy solution to this problem: many forms and account signups require email verification via an emailed link.
Of course, perhaps this isn’t a widespread problem at GoDaddy. Maybe it’s only an issue when an attorney has too much time on his hands.
Post link: A flaw in GoDaddy’s Whois contact form
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Reverse domain name hijacking cases hit record high in 2023
Nearly one in five of denied complaints was reverse domain name hijacking.
UDRP denials and percentage found reverse domain name hijacking, WIPO and Forum. Chart courtesy John Berryhill.The number of cybersquatting cases filed under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) in 2023 hit a record. So did the number of cases filed in bad faith, commonly known as reverse domain name hijacking.
Attorney John Berryhill collated the numbers for last year at World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and Forum, the two largest UDRP providers, and found that 49 disputes resulted in a reverse domain name hijacking finding. (Others certainly should have been found that way but weren’t.)
The percentage of cases found in favor of domain registrants has been shrinking. At the same time, reverse domain name hijacking findings have been increasing. This led to nearly one out of every five denials being reverse domain name hijacking.
There are a couple of takeaways.
First, the denial rate for cases is decreasing, which is a good thing in context. In a perfect world, 100% of cases would be won because cases are only filed in clear-cut cybersquatting cases, which is what UDRP was designed to resolve.
Second, in those cases that are denied, there are more egregious cases being filed. I think some of the increase in reverse domain name hijacking can also be chalked up to better panelist education about the unnecessary cost that frivolous UDRP filings create for domain name owners.
Post link: Reverse domain name hijacking cases hit record high in 2023
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How to change Afternic listings to lease-to-own in bulk
Here’s how you can add lease-to-own to multiple domain names at one time.
Last year Afternic introduced lease-to-own (LTO) payment plans to Afternic listings.
After attending the ICA meeting in Las Vegas last week, one of my takeaways was to enable LTO on more of my domain names.
There are two ways to do this: painstakingly, one by one, or using the bulk price update feature in Afternic.
I’ll call it a “bulk update lite” for the purpose of setting up LTO. You can’t upload a list of domains and the lengths you want to set them for, but you can set an across-the-board LTO term for the domains you select. It also automatically reduces the term if the monthly payment dips below Afternic’s $100 threshold.
I put together a quick video showing how to do this. I’d appreciate your feedback on this type of video and if you’d like to see more like it.
Post link: How to change Afternic listings to lease-to-own in bulk
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TextMechanic owner tires reverse domain name hijacking
Panelist says the company should have known this case wasn’t winnable under UDRP.
The owner of a text manipulation tools site has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking.
Vantage Solutions, LLC, which operates TextMechanic, filed a cybersquatting dispute against knp376.com.
If that has you scratching your head about “confusing similarity,” you’re not the only one.
Vantage Solutions claimed that the domain pointed to a site that was a clone of its own site.
But UDRP isn’t built for cases where the domain name isn’t similar to the Complainant’s trademarks. So, panelist Dawn Osborne denied the case.
Osborne noted that the Complainant has successfully filed a UDRP before and should be familiar with what’s required to win a UDRP. The panelist wrote:
The Complainant is an established business which has successfully used the Policy before in an unrelated case to obtain the transfer of a domain name, because in that unrelated case the domain name did contain the Complainant’s mark. In this case the Complainant has not provided any evidence of trade mark Rights sufficient to properly call for the transfer of the Domain Name which bears no relation to the Complainant’s trade mark. On balance the Panel believes that exercising reasonable skill and judgement the Complainant must have realised that whilst it may have a right to challenge use of the Domain Name using other channels such as an Internet Service Provider takedown or the Courts it had no right to call for the transfer of the Domain Name in this case under the UDRP and this Complaint was bound to fail. The Panel makes a finding of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking.
Resonate IP, LLC represented Vantage Solutions. The domain owner didn’t respond to the dispute.
Post link: TextMechanic owner tires reverse domain name hijacking
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Epik boots Kiwi Farms, vows to boot “absolutist free speech websites”
According to the company’s Twitter account, it no longer wants some domains on its platform.
Domain name registrar Epik is back in the spotlight, this time after suspending the domain of Kiwi Farms.
Kiwi Farms is a controversial website that, according to Wikipedia, “facilitates the discussion and harassment of online figures and communities. Their targets are often subject to organized group trolling and stalking, as well as doxxing and real-life harassment.”
The operator of the site complained on Twitter on December 12 that Epik seized the domain for Terms of Service violations. (He subsequently moved the domain to NameSilo, and now it’s at Namecheap).
On January 22, Epik’s Twitter account posted:
It’s a rather conflicting tweet.
In a since-deleted tweet posted yesterday, Epik’s Twitter account said the cancellation was due to doxxing and that the site hosted child pornography. The tweet included a screenshot of the alleged violation and read:
Here’s the complaint received that violated our TOS for doxxing. We believed this to be underage porn also. Regardless, Epik doesn’t want to do business with websites like this. If we misread this we apologize. Did we make the right choice in cancelling KF?
The Kiwi Farms operator says the person in the image was 19.
And today, Epik’s Twitter account posted a survey and said it will no longer harbor “absolutist free speech websites.”
In other tweets over the past few days in response to the controversy, the company first stated “We were forced to help the owner switch to another registrar by US authorities…”
When Kiwi Farm’s owner said that involvement of law enforcement was a lie, Epik responded, “I think you caught us. It was woke liberal employees here cancelling you because they didn’t like the hate speech on your site.”
In another tweet, the company stated:
“Yeah. We’re not really into “free speech”. The old owners were. That’s not our thing. We offer .25 over cost domain registrations. 9.99 .com’s initially and upon renewal. Did we handle your situation badly? Yes. 100%. You had child porn on your site. We’re sorry We have no agenda.”
But then it relented a bit:
“We screwed this up many different ways. And are learning. We are trying to establish better processes and guidelines so that we don’t have employees go rogue on us. What is CP? 5 employees see it differently, so we are undergoing some hard questions to try to get better. sorry”
The series of tweets is all rather confusing, and it’s not entirely clear where Epik stands and what types of domains it will allow.
Epik, long known for harboring controversial domain names and websites, was acquired in June of 2023 after running into financial difficulties. The new owner is unknown.
Kiwi Farm’s founder has threatened to sue Epik as a result of the suspension.
Post link: Epik boots Kiwi Farms, vows to boot “absolutist free speech websites”
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Categories: Domains
A dozen end user domain sales up to $38,000
A skincare brand, a motorcycle accessories company, and a digital design firm bought domain names.
Here’s a list of end user domain name sales that just completed at Sedo. You can view previous lists like this here.
G2M.com $38,000 – This domain forwards to the website for GiG Media, an iGaming lead generation company.
Aksi.com $15,000 – The buyer is creating a Shopify store.
Cruised.com $12,500 – This domain forwards to SuiteGuru, a luxury hotel site. So, Cruised might be another travel site the company plans to build.
EchoWater.com €8,900 – The buyer is creating a Shopify store. There’s a logo that plays off of H20 in ecHO.
Vernetzt.de €5,000 – Volksbank Backnang eG bought this domain and forwards it to vrnzt.de. The domain is German for networked, and I believe this is a site to connect people to local businesses.
Billiet.com €3,999 – This domain forwards to the website for Cosy&Trendy, which sells home goods. I believe the owner’s last name is Billiet.
Oteria.com $3,975 – Oteria is a skincare brand.
Louis.it €3,500 – Motorcycle products company Louis bought this domain and forwards it to louis-moto.it.
3fo.com $3,500 – 300FeetOut is a marketing firm. It uses the domain name 300feetout.com. This was a smart purchase at a good price.
Insurancy.com €3,000 – This domain is used for an insurance lead gen site.
TheGreenRoad.com $3,000 – Digital design firm GREEN-i acquired this domain name.
Mycho.com €2,690- The buyer has an email address handle “sirmycho”. I’m unsure if it’s a nickname, business name, or other.
Post link: A dozen end user domain sales up to $38,000
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ICANN board nixes “closed generics” in next new round of TLDs
Applicants will not be able to use generic terms exclusively.
ICANN’s Board of Directors has confirmed that it will not allow so-called “closed generics” in the next round of top level domain name expansion.
Closed generics are generic/dictionary terms that one company wants to own but not offer to the general public. Think Google getting .search and only using it for its own purposes, or Amazon exclusively using .book.
These types of TLDs weren’t initially forbidden in the 2012 expansion round but were retroactively banned after applications were received.
In a January 22 letter, Tripti Sinha, Chair of the ICANN’s Board of Directors, confirmed (pdf) that the board is squashing closed generics in the next round, too.
There was a bit of a loophole in the original ban: companies could continue with their applications as open domains but never launch them. That’s the case (so far) with .search and .book, which are still sitting on the shelf. The companies can’t exclusively use them but can keep them out of the hands of others.
If they want to use them exclusively, they could also launch them with very high registration prices to keep other users at bay. I wonder if some current owners of unlaunched generic TLDs were hoping for a retroactive reprieve in the upcoming round. Now that that’s off the table, they might launch their domains with high prices.
Domain Incite has done an excellent job chronicling the closed generics fight.
Post link: ICANN board nixes “closed generics” in next new round of TLDs
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What you missed at the ICA meeting in Las Vegas
Internet Commerce Association held its second annual member meeting in Las Vegas last week.
The winners of last week’s ICA pickleball tournament, AKA Kubba Kup (L-R): Andrew Allemann (third), Steven Kennedy (first), Ammar Kubba (second).Last week, the Internet Commerce Association (ICA) held its annual member meeting in Las Vegas. It was equal parts fun, networking, and business.
The event kicked off Wednesday night with an outing to The Sphere to watch Postcard from Earth. My flight was late so I missed the show, but I heard it was a great time.
Thursday kicked off with a meet and greet and broker breakfast, followed by social activities: your choice of a Red Rock hike, TopGolf, a lion habitat ranch, the Mob Museum, or pickleball.
Ammar Kubba organized the pickleball tournament, aka Kubba Cup. It was more exercise than I was expecting during a trip to Las Vegas, but a ton of fun. Steven Kennedy took first place, Ammar took second, and I rounded out the top three. I’m sure this tournament will return next year.
Later that evening, Squadhelp and Hilco Digital sponsored the opening reception at a restaurant in the hotel. Ryan McKegney organized a poker tournament later that night. We had about 20 players; big winner Steven Kennedy took first. I finished just out of the money in fourth place. You can expect a poker event to come back next year, too.
Friday was all business. ICA General Counsel Zak Muscovitch provided a policy update that was followed by a member town hall. Later, domain investors could ask Squadhelp founder Darpan Munjal and GoDaddy President of Domains Paul Nicks whatever they wanted during AMAs. (My big takeaway and action item is to enable payment plans on more of my domain names. From hearing from Munjal and Nicks, it’s clear that payment plans lead to a significant increase in sell-through rates.)
The afternoon included breakout tables and a legal discussion with John Berryhill.
The evening reception included a touching tribute to this year’s Lonnie Borck Memorial Award winner, the late Jason Sheppard. His sister was in attendance to receive the award.
And the night (officially) concluded with an excellent magic/mentalist show.
There were more discussions on Saturday morning before the show officially concluded.
I’ve said it before, but if you’re a domain name investor or cater to investors, it’s worth joining the ICA to attend this event.
It’s a high-quality audience. The small size (about 150 people attended this year’s show, up from around 100 last year) makes it possible to say hello to everyone. It’s held at a great venue. The programming is balanced between fun and business.
So mark your calendar for next year. And join the ICA today.
Post link: What you missed at the ICA meeting in Las Vegas
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