Run Off for THE Domain Conference Awards

Elliot Silver
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Howard Neu sent me an email last night with an update about THE Domain Conference Awards. There is going to be a run-off vote for this year’s awards, and Escrow.com will be collecting the votes.

Here’s what Howard told me:

The response to our Primary Election Ballot has been tremendous. Our thanks to Brandon Abbey and Escrow.com for receiving, tabulating and reporting the results. No one person or company received 50% or more of the votes in any category, so attached is the Official Run-off Ballot. Every person who received 10% or more of the Primary vote is in the run-off. Voting closes on Tuesday, September 1st at 5 P.M. PDT.

I was very surprised to see my name as one of two finalists for Domainer of the Year, along with Ali Zandi. I can think of people who are much more deserving of this award, but I certainly appreciate the nod. I was also listed in the run off for blogger of the year with other people I respect greatly.

If you want to cast a final ballot in the run off, the votes are due by tomorrow (September 1st) at 5pm Pacific time. I am sure many of the nominees would appreciate your support, especially as it could have a positive impact on their businesses.

Here is the ballot:

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Ammar Kubba’s Next Project is AutoBio

Elliot Silver
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Ever since Ammar Kubba’s company divested Agreed.com, Aftermarket.com, and Trafficz, I wondered what Ammar would have planned for his next venture. In asking friends and family for feedback on the finalists for a logo design contest, Ammar shared his next business idea, AutoBio.

Although AutoBio is completely unrelated to the business of domain investing and domain names, it is an online venture. Here’s how Ammar described the business, although he mentioned that the concept is still being refined:

“AutoBio is a social network (think Facebook), informational resource (think Wikipedia, Zillow, car forums), and discovery app (think Pinterest) for car enthusiasts. AutoBio will have the world’s largest index of vehicles, i.e., every year, make, and model of every car ever built. AutoBio’s mission is: 1) to spread the love of cars, and 2) to improve the experience of buying, owning, and selling cars. AutoBio’s slogan is ‘for the love of cars’.”

Judging by a Historical

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DomainTools Whois “Service Unavailable” (Updated)

Elliot Silver
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If you use DomainTools as much as I do, you have probably noticed that Whois searches on the platform return a “Service Unavailable” message. This service outage is impacting current Whois lookups as well as Historical Whois lookups.

DomainTools responded to an inquiry about the outage a little while ago via Twitter, telling attorney John Berryhill, “We are working around the clock with the provider to fix!” Several hours ago, the company tweeted that “ETA is a few hours out,” and it seems that the issue is still being addressed.

The company did share a tip to access Whois records, although I presume this doesn’t help with Historical Whois records:

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.Net 30th Anniversary Infographic

Elliot Silver
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I knew that .com was celebrating its 30th anniversary / birthday, but I did not realize (or think about) that .net has also been around for 30 years. In celebration of this, Verisign (the company that operates the .net registry) published the infographic below with some neat facts about .net and .net domain names.

Four of the more interesting call outs in the infographic include the following:

  • Largest public sale was Mobile.net for $500,000
  • 15 million .net domain names registered
  • Find was the most common keyword in .net domain names registered in 2015
  • There are 63 registered .net domain names that contain the maximum 63 characters

Check out the infographic below to learn more about .net:

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NameJet Changes Bid Increments

Elliot Silver
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Although I don’t recall actively participating  on a six figure auction on NameJet, I have been an observer on quite a few of them. One thing I found peculiar is that an auction could be in the half a million range and bidding would increase by just $100 per bid. This was a bit frustrating considering the auction is extended by 5 minutes for every bid placed in the final moments of an auction.

I just learned that NameJet has changed its bidding increments for auctions over $25,000. The new bid increments for auctions above $25,000 are below:

Current NameJet Bid Increments:

  • Less than $1,000 – $10
  • Over $1,000, but less than $25,000 – $100
  • Over $25,000, but less than $50,000 – $200
  • Over $50,000, but less than $100,000 – $500
  • Over $100,000 – $1,000

I asked NameJet General Manager Jonathan Tenenbaum to share the rationale

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Was Registering 30,000 LLLL.net Domains a Good Idea?

Elliot Silver
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I received Giuseppe Graziano’s weekly domain brokerage newsletter this morning, and I was a bit surprised by  one of his observations.  In going through some recent domain industry developments, Giuseppe opined that “the most impressive development that I have seen is the registration of the remaining 30,000 Chinese Premium LLLL.net.”

Giuseppe later continued with some back of napkin calculations on why he felt this was a shrewd investment:

“Chinese Premium LLLL.com (also called “chips” – credit: Tim Schoon) have a current floor price of approximately $300, but their trading range is more in the $400/$600. If we play by the book and assign a value of 5-10% of the corresponding .com for each .net domain, we notice that, even if using the conservative 5% figure, all these LLLL .net should have a minimum value of ($300 * 5% =) $15 each. If someone registers a premium .net for $8, then they should be instantly able to turn a ($15 – $8) $7 profit per domain. Therefore, whoever invested the supposedly $240,000, should have an instant value capture of approximately ($7 * 30,000 =) $210,000, which is not a bad return for a day (or one hour) of tiring work”

In my opinion,

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