Not only was Mayor Ed Koch one of the best mayors New York City has had, but he is also a philanthropist and has a great sense of humor. Today, Mayor Koch announced his support of DotNYC.net and DotNYC LLC for the .NYC gTLD. In addition to a press release, the team from DotNYC LLC, which includes CEO Antony Van Couvering, released a video of Mayor Koch, which can be viewed below.
Just received this notice and wanted to share it:
Washington, May 22, 2009 – The Internet Commerce Association (ICA) today announced that Thought Convergence, Inc. the owner and operator of the popular Domain Roundtable conference, taking place June 14-17 in Washington, DC, has graciously offered time during the Aftermarket.com premium domain auction to sell domains donated to the ICA by members and those wishing to support the advocacy group. The Aftermarket.com auction will be held during the conference on June 16th at 4p.m.EDT until 7p.m. EDT.
The ICA, a non-profit organization, is encouraging the domain community to donate domain names for this auction event. Applicants can submit their domains to the ICA by email to info_ica@internetcommerce.org. All of the proceeds from the domains sold in auction will go directly to supporting upcoming ICA initiatives, such as lobbying for domain owner rights in Washington and with ICANN. The domain donors who participate will receive a personal “thank you” on the ICA website and will receive an email from the ICA, confirming the amount received from the sale of their donated domain for tax purposes.
“The ICA was founded to protect and defend the rights of domain owners and developers. By participating in our first live auction event, each domain professional has the chance to directly affect the level of protection and pull that they have in Washington,” said Jeremiah Johnston, president of the ICA. “With the support of the Domain Roundtable organizers and those in the domain community who contribute, the ICA board is confident that a successful auction will help strengthen our resources and further our political progress.”
For those not attending Domain Roundtable, but who are interested in participating in the ICA Auction, www.DomainRoundtable.com offers an online platform, where potential buyers can register to bid. The ICA is also accepting private donations to support initiatives such as its Legal Defense Fund and the amicus briefs filed on behalf of its members’ interests. Donations can be made online at internetcommerce.org/donate or by check payable to Internet Commerce Association at:
Donations
Internet Commerce Association
1301 Pennyslvania Ave., NW
Suite 500
Washington, DC 20004
About Internet Commerce Association
The Internet Commerce Association, a trade group comprised of members who own, develop and operate domain names for the purposes of online commerce, is a leading voice for domain owners to ensure their rights are not affected by the politics of Washington, the policies of ICANN, or wherever threats to our membership exist. For additional information, please visit www.InternetCommerce.org.
I read Jamie’s post about the folks behind the “Free Credit Report .com” commercials and agree that it will be interesting to see what happens with their direct marketing campaign, which includes television and interactive media. If you didn’t read Jamie’s post – or are too lazy to click over, basically the Free Credit Report people can’t say that their product is free, as a result of the new credit card legislation. They also must link to AnnualCreditReport.com, which does provide the free annual credit reports.
One thing I did notice is that the company behind AnnualCreditReport.com seems to understand domain names and consumer behavior, as they have also registered typos, including AnnualCreditReports.com, AnualCreditReport.com, and AnnualCreditReort.com. I can’t definitively confirm this because the registrations are private, but all were registered around the same date, and all are hosted on the same name servers.
However, as smart as this company is, they are also pretty dumb. They bought the typo domain names, presumably for defensive purposes, but none of them resolve! Instead of forwarding the traffic from the typos, they go to an error page. This is a stupid mistake!
If you are going to buy defensive domain names, especially if they are typos and the visitor intended to visit the site, you should make sure they resolve to the right place! I suppose it might not be necessary if your defensive registration is something like AnnualCreditReportSucks.com or something like that where you just don’t want someone else owning it, but at least lead the way for the fat fingered potential customers/visitors who mistype your correct domain name!
Wedding season has started again, and I am in another one of my best friends’ weddings tonight. I am in Detroit (well, Dearborn), and from what I can see, Ford branded everything around here. Apparently the Mighty Ducks are staying at this hotel tonight… kinda neat I guess.
I think the WhyPark/Parked deal makes a whole lot of sense for both companies. They each have a very large number of domain names under their “control,” and both have different experience in monetizing these names. I don’t know any terms of the deal, but from the outside, it looks like they have created a stronger company.
Every time a huge world story hits, its amusing to see all the different variations of domain names that are created. On the domain forums, Ebay, and other venues, I can’t help but laugh at the long tail keyword swine flu names that are being sold and/or discussed….
They’re almost as bad as the swine flu jokes I am seeing all over the place – one of the downsides of Twitter 🙂
Congrats to Moniker on selling Ad.com for $1.4 million. It goes to show that Moniker (and other companies) do work hard to get bids from people outside of the domain industry, as I’ve heard the bidder was a large advertising agency that wanted to rebrand. You can now see the auction of Ad.com in a video posted by Rick.
Sorry to keep this short, but I have to head out to lunch with the guys. What other quick hits did I miss from the week?
Some quick (and informal) hits from the last week.
On Thursday, I was thisclose to buying a ticket to fly to Las Vegas for the Domain Madness finale. If it wasn’t for a trip to New Hampshire in a week, a cross country trip in 3 weeks, followed by a trip to Michigan right after, I would be at The Palms with the Domain Consultant crew.
SES is a great show with a lot of information for developers. If you can make one of the many shows, it’s worth attending. If you can’t afford to pay for the actual show (or if you don’t want to pay), get a free exhibition floor pass and meet with some of the companies that exhibit.
There have been more times in the past 2 weeks than I can ever remember where I started to respond to an ignorant/misinformed/stupid post on a domain forum and ended up deleting my post before hitting submit.
If you own a geodomain – especially if it’s a city, state, or country domain name, you NEED to be in San Diego for the GeoDomain Expo at the end of April. If you want to develop it, there are no better mentors and advisors than those who will be at the Expo (ie Dan, David/Mike, Skip, Jess, Fred, Mark, Sara, Josh, Shaun, Nat). If you are looking to partner (or maybe even sell), these people are your primary targets. I mean, who else are you going to turn to – newspapers? LOL. The agenda should be posted in the next few days, but no matter what the panels are, it’s the informal events that are best.
I am not investing in any .tel domain names. I simply don’t get the concept behind why I would want or need to have a .tel domain name, and if people don’t want/need them, investing in them will probably be a fruitless activity. If I want people to have all of my contact information, I make sure they have it. If someone can’t find my phone number or other contact information quickly, chances are very good that I don’t want that person to have it.
Speaking of .tel, have you noticed that most of the people who talk about alternative TLDs like these (ie mobi, asia, tv…etc) have significant investments in them? I don’t want to be an ambassador for an extension. It shouldn’t be the job of registrants to pump a particular extension.
I was very surprised to hear about Monster Venture Partners closing its doors. This is big news that will impact domainers in more of a trickle down affect, as the company invested in domain names and partnered with companies that own great domain names.
Sean Stafford is at it again. Every few months, it seems that Sean is building something helpful to domainers, and I think his new service, ComWired.com can help domainers and domain developers.
The DNS service is billed as a way to split up a domain name’s traffic depending on where the traffic originates. For example, if you have a parked domain name that receives traffic from the US, Mexico, Japan, China and Russia, you can choose where to send traffic from each country, depending on where you find that it can be monetized better. This is a neat concept for domain investors, but it can similarly work for domain developers, too.
Portland.com is the online guide to Portland, Oregon. Being from New Hampshire, when I hear Portland.com, I immediately think of Portland, Maine. Knowing the brains behind Portland.com, I am sure they analyzed their traffic to know that its looking for information about Portland, Oregon rather than Maine, however, I am sure there is some traffic looking for information about Portland, Maine.
With help from ComWired.com, the owners can detect where the traffic is coming from, and if it’s coming from New England cities, hypothetically, they can send it to Portland.com/Maine, which would theoretically have a site all about the city in Maine. All other traffic can be sent to the main (ha ha) site where they would find information about Portland, Oregon. This could also be effective for country based geodomains.
I should add ComWired.com can only split up traffic by country at the moment, but they expect to be able to split it by city in a few short weeks. For now, the service is free to use, although that will probably change in the future.
A limited amount of advertising space may be available, although all banner spots are currently sold out. Email us to be placed on the waiting list. Learn More
DomainInvesting.com is an award winning publication covering the specialized business of domain name investing, domain investment news and strategy. The publication is a news source for domain name sales, domain industry deals, and other topics related to domain investing and domain name branding.
© Important Notice: Unless explicitly stated, Top Notch Domains, LLC does not endorse any advertiser on this website. Advertisements and links may take visitors to external websites. Top Notch Domains, LLC is not responsible or liable for products, services, or content found on any other website. See the DomainInvesting.com disclaimer for additional details and information as well as this website's Terms of Use. Copyright © 2007-2025 - DomainInvesting.com | Top Notch Domains, LLC
