PALM BEACH – There has been a lot of talk in tech and domain circles lately about the company “Verisign” (NASDAQ:VRSN), its obvious monopoly in the .com domain game, and it’s long list of subsidiaries, but things really started to heat-up back in October 2018 when the company managed to renew its “cooperative agreement” with the United States Government through the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), minus long-standing pricing caps on one of … [Read more...]
Verisign Receives Regulatory Approval to Raise .COM Prices; Restrictions Deleted
NEW YORK, NY – Although many had hoped it wouldn’t happen, Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN), the company behind the registration and creation of .COM domain names, has been given the virtual green light by the US Government to raise the price of .com domain names by 7% in each of the last four years of a six-year incremental contract. Late Thursday, news broke that the “Cooperative Agreement”, an agreement between the National Telecommunications and Information Administration … [Read more...]
Alphabet Releases App to Prevent DNS Manipulation, Deter Online Censorship
NEW YORK, - Google’s Alphabet has released a new Android app called “Intra” which prevents “DNS manipulation”, a process used often by ISPs to redirect invalid domain name resolution to their own version of branded search results, usually accompanied by search engine ads – when used nefariously, it is also a tactic of hackers who steal and redirect users to phishing sites or to otherwise dupe them into downloading viruses and spyware. The app is made available by a company … [Read more...]
The Birth of ICANN: “The Green Paper”
NEW YORK - In 1997, the United States government under then President Clinton began processes to remove its control over the Domain Name System by creating research and dialog on how control of domain names and IP addresses should be handled in the future - by a non-profit organization in the private sector. This resulted in a document which has become known as "The Green Paper" originally named "A Proposal to Improve the Technical Management of Internet Names and … [Read more...]
A “PRIME” Example That .COM Leads in Necessity; nGTLDs Registered Defensively
NEW YORK, NY – It has been recently discovered, that the single word domain name Prime.com, which had been reportedly for sale in the seven figure range (Between $1M and $5M), at least since 2011, is now intellectual property of tech-giant Amazon. The name, which was originally registered in 1987, shows being parked since 2004 via archive. An exact ‘price’ of the domain is not currently known (although I am sure someone out there is working diligently to try and dig … [Read more...]
How to Become a ‘Rockstar Domainer’ by Developing Your Own Domain Assets
NEW YORK – Unless you have been living in a cave for the last few years, you’ve caught wind that parking your domain names is potentially the worst thing you can do to monetize them. Today, you need to DEVELOP your domain names into real web services to earn realistic profits from them, but development is not always easy, especially if you do not know how to do any of it yourself, as it can be VERY EXPENSIVE. Development involves an ‘idea’, planning, design, development, … [Read more...]
Just 2% of Top 100 Highest Priced .xyz Domains In Use for Bonafide Services
NEW YORK, NY - According to nTLDStats.com, a data provider offering statistics for new gTLDs, the .xyz domain has the highest number of registrations out of all new gtld domains available. Looking at the highest value sold .xyz domains in all reported aftermarket sales, 98% of them are not developed or show any signs by their owners for development in the future. Out of the 100 domains checked, just two (2) of them are developed with one (1), spring.xyz, looking like it … [Read more...]
Show Me The Money: Combined $22M+ in Sales Hiding Behind .com Numeric Domains
I have to admit I know very little about numeric domain names. They never made much sense to me but I know they are very popular in the Chinese market and within the Chinese investment space. The closest I ever came was owning for a short period of time, 7BJ.com which I was able to sell with minimal - minimal effort. What I originally thought was a very unusual domain was desired by many. If I remember correctly I sold it for a few thousand dollars nearly a decade ago. With … [Read more...]
80% of Top 100 Highest .club Domain Buyers Leave Parked, Redirected, or Failing DNS
Next up in a new series of top 100 development potential domains lists is the .club domain. In comparison to top 100 LLL .com Liquid Domains, top 100 .net, and top 100 .org, I wanted to take a look at some gTLDs to see what buyers are actually doing with them and .club comes to mind first. The team at .club has done a fantastic job in marketing their new gTLD and it will be interesting to see. Sales figures are one thing when valuing domains, but actual development shows … [Read more...]
There’s Pork In That Bill; DNA’s HDI Overreaching with Registry Handling of Copyright Infringement
NEW YORK, NY - The Domain Name Association (DNA), a new non-profit association “supposedly” (I just learned about them) representing the interests of the domain name industry, is suggesting in its “Healthy Domain Initiative” (HDI) four objectives for registry and registrars to participate in voluntary actions which are intended to protect and advance the evolution of the domain name system. Again, I use the word “supposedly” only because I just recently heard of this … [Read more...]
Measuring New gTLD Growth and Market Share via The DNS Zone File System
NEW YORK, NY - As should be no surprise, new gTLD growth and usage is on the rise exponentially. There are several tools available for measuring gTLD growth and market share which are ‘fairly accurate’ as they use the DNS Zone File system which maps domain names and IP addresses. One such tool which I originally thought was new is ntldstats.com, although the owner Stefan Meinecke was interviewed back in 2014 by TheDomains.com - so it is far from … [Read more...]
Domain Suspension – Registrant Information Verification Failure; It Could Happen to You
REMINDER: If you change either the first name, last name or email address on one of your domain registrations, you’ll need to verify the new information via email within 15 calendar days or you will be met with a page similar to this one in the below screenshot. This new policy took effect back in January of 2014 but this is how long it took for me to actually see one of these pages in action; it happened today. Not paying attention to those email verification … [Read more...]