New ICANN Domain Transfer Policy Effective on December 1

Elliot Silver
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ICANN LogoDid you know there is a new domain name transfer and registrant change policy that is being implemented by ICANN on December 1, 2016? You can read the full transfer policy on ICANN’s website.

In addition,  OpenSRS published a blog post about the policy change. Here is how the company stated that these changes will impact its customers:

Any changes to first name, last name, organization or email address fields for the owner of any gTLD domain name will now start a trade process
The process involves obtaining explicit confirmation from current and new registrants before a change can be completed
After a change of registrant has been completed, previous and new registrant need to receive notifications about the change, with no option of reversing the change
After a change of registrant has been completed, the domain is by default locked for transfers to a new registrar for the following 60 days

I believe this change is going to impact many of us who regularly buy and sell domain names.

One of the most obvious ways this will impact my business is

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ICANN Comments on Contract Expiration

Elliot Silver
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There has been a ton of political and mainstream discussion about the expiring IANA contract between ICANN and the US government. Despite some last minute efforts to thwart the transition, the contract has officially expired. I am not into political discussion and debate, so I stayed away from writing about this topic.

I am on ICANN’s news distribution list (you should also  sign up for ICANN news), and I want to share the news release ICANN sent out this morning announcing the transition of the stewardship of IANA functions. You can also read it directly on the ICANN website. Personally, I don’t think Internet users (or domain investors)  will see any changes with this transition.

Here is ICANN’s email from this morning:

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Gregg McNair Launches Premium Traffic Limited

Elliot Silver
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ptlMonetizing my domain name traffic has never been a major revenue driver for my companies, but it is a big driver of revenue in the domain business. In fact, according to Dr. Gregg McNair, “In ten years monetization revenues have never been higher and they continue to grow.”

I received a press release over the weekend that was timed to coincide with the DomainFest Asia conference being held in Hong Kong. In the release, the launch of Premium Traffic Limited (PTL) was announced. According to the press release, there have been a number of different brands within the McNair Monetization Group, and those brands have all been consolidated into one unit called Premium Traffic Limited. I was told that this move has been in the works for over a year.

Gregg shared a bit of insight into the company. “Being ahead of the competition in technical development and traffic quality are our two primary advantages,” he shared via email. In addition to timing the news with DomainFest Asia, the company also made the announcement in advance of scheduled product launches. “New monetization products are due for release this calendar year so we had to do something about brand confusion,” Gregg told me. Finally, the company rolled up all of its units under one brand for scalability. “The scalability of the platforms now enables greater processing hence the more open offering than ever before,” Gregg also shared.

In addition to

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New Escrow.com Payment Address

Elliot Silver
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As you may have already heard, Escrow.com has moved its US headquarters to San Francisco. As a result of this move, the payment address for correspondence and wire transfers has changed.

For me, the most important aspect of this notification is that I need to update the address of Escrow.com in my wire transfer profiles. I am not sure if future wire transfers made using  the former  address will be impacted, but it is better to make this update than worry about them not going through.

Here’s a copy of the announcement I received along with the new address and current phone numbers:

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Divyank Turakhia on CNBC

Elliot Silver
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Last week, I wrote about the news that Media.net  was being acquired for $900 million. Although this was not explicitly domain name investment news, the fact that Media.net was founded by longtime domain industry veterans Divyank and Bhavin Turakhia made this noteworthy.

Shortly after the news of the acquisition, CNBC posted an interview with Media.net CEO Divyank Turakhia. The topic of the interview is “why the $900 million acquisition deal by a group of Chinese investors made sense.”

I just saw the interview, and I embedded the video below so you can have a look:

West.cn Launches West.xyz

Elliot Silver
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west.xyzChina-based domain registrar West.cn has launched West.xyz, a website  that appears to target the English speaking audience. The company will continue to operate its West.cn website separately from West.xyz. It is unclear to me whether they are two separate domain registrars or if West.xyz is simply another website operated by West.cn.

The news was announced by West.cn on Twitter this afternoon and retweeted by Shayan Rostam of the .XYZ Registry:

According to nTLDStats.com, West.cn owns the largest market share of registered new gTLD domain names. At the time of publication,

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