PALM BEACH, FL - Michael Gargiulo, best known for his acquisition of three-letter blockbuster domain VPN.com in which he is an “end-user” for his “VPN” business looks to have something else “pretty big” on the horizon; a domain name brokerage business. Although Gargiulo and I had talked before, I first learned of his brokerage business when I had the pleasure of meeting him “in-person” in Ashville at Rick Schwartz’s domain name gathering at The Omni Grove Park Inn (an … [Read more...]
Twitter Needs Pro-Active Feature to Block Unwanted Followers Automatically
NEW YORK, NY – Twitter, one of my favorite social networking websites, lacks an important feature which should be added to the service, preventing users from certain counties following you, automatically. I have no idea why this is not part of the service already. Why is it that there is only a feature to block users, after they have already followed you, creating work and time to do. Why aren’t there any auto-blocking features available, so that you can block users from … [Read more...]
Single Word nGTLD Domain Names That Have Expired Within Last 24 Hours
NEW YORK, NY - Here is a list of single word English dictionary nGTLD domain names that have dropped (expired) within the last 24 hours (according to ExpiredDomains.net). One thing I do not understand is why a new domain registry would charge premium fees on domains that someone has already decided to let expire. For instance, love.xyz is $1,299.00 at Godaddy. If registries want to off-set their registry losses as much as possible, they would allow buyers to register these … [Read more...]
Donuts Acquisition of BudURL Makes Good Use of New Top Level Domain Names
NEW YORK, NY – Donuts Inc, the company behind hundreds of new domain name extensions has acquired a link shortening service formally known as BudURL, and rebranded it as BL.INK. The service had been around for ten years and was founded by Andy Meadows. The acquisition took place sometime in 2017 according to a company press release, yet Donuts had been operating it in “stealth mode” quietly building in key features which will enhance the services ability to customize URLs … [Read more...]
Battle to Take-down Backpage.com Ends in Seizure, Criminal Indictments of Ownership
NEW YORK – A long-time battle to remove Backpage.com from the Internet has ended with the indictments of ownership and government seizure of its domain Backpage.com, which hosted a popular online classifieds site similar to Craigslist which allegedly was used heavily by escorts and massage providers far-bending the envelope between casual encounters, prostitution and human trafficking, according to investigators. Since 2010, Backpage.com has come under fire for its alleged … [Read more...]
The Question Is Not “If” You’ve Been Compromised; It’s How Many Times?
NEW YORK - If you haven't done business with one of the companies in this extensive list, you probably do not live on planet Earth with the rest of us. In other words, if you are reading this article, more than likely, despite all of the precautions you might take, your personal information has already been compromised. Below is a list of 245 instances of data breaches all over the world; those that have been reported. Keep in mind that many data breaches are never … [Read more...]
If I Had Just Started With Domain Names Today, I Don’t Think I Would Make It
NEW YORK, NY – When I started in this industry it was the year 2000. The Internet looked very different than it does today, and people were just starting to get acquainted with Google. Search engine optimization was a lot easier to do with most people not having even heard of the term “SEO”. Back then, as a website owner, you were able to take advantage of certain techniques which could easily put you ahead of the majority. Compared to today, there was little competition … [Read more...]
Top 100 Highest .org Domain Sales Indicate Strong Interest, Desire by End-Users
As a follow up to yesterday's look at the largest .net domain name sales in history and what use is actually being put towards these domains from end users, .net appears hurting in actual business owner belief in what these domain assets are worth when building a foundation for business. Today, we're looking at .org - and holy smokes is it a different story with .org buyers; many more develop and launch their projects on them. The list below ($6.2 million dollars in domain … [Read more...]