Alibaba to Spin Off Domain Registrar for IPO, Valuing Company at $500 Million

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Alibaba reportedly looking to spin off “Go Daddy of China” in an IPO valuing the popular Chinese domain registrar at $500 million.

Alibaba is a Chinese Internet holding company with a number of popular websites and companies.  Included amongst these companies is a popular Chinese domain registrar and hosting company,  HiChina.

Business Insider is reporting today that Alibaba plans to spin off HiChina for an initial public offering (IPO) in a US stock market. Fox Business is reporting that the IPO would value the domain registrar at $500 million. This would be a great ROI considering Alibaba reportedly bought an 85% stake in the company for $79 million back in 2009.

Prior to reading this news, I hadn’t heard about HiChina before, but the company looks fairly large. According to Business Insider, “has over 2.5 million registered users and more than 2 million domain names. It operates at least 1.7 million enterprise mail accounts and more than 2 million company sites and application. In addition, about 50,000 sites are using HiChina’s web construction service.”

There aren’t too many publicly traded domain registrars. Off the top of my head, I can think of Tucows, Web.com (Register.com and Network Solutions pending approval)  and Enom if you count them as a part of Demand Media. GoDaddy flirted with going public, but ultimately decided against it.

ICANN Notice Emails from Registrars

Tips on how to avoid a phishing attack or scam

Over the last week or two, I’ve received several emails from various domain registrars reminding me of ICANN’s requirement of keeping Whois information accurate. It’s important that you keep your information up to date, but it’s even more important to realize that some criminals use these mandatory emails as an opportunity for phishing attacks to steal account information.

Some of the subject lines from the emails are:

  • Action Required: Notice Regarding Your Domain Name(s) – Network Solutions
  • {MONIKER.COM} [Account xxxx] Action Required: Your Annual Whois Update Notification – Moniker
  • Important Notice Regarding Your Domain Name(s) – Go Daddy
  • Important Notice Regarding Your Domain Name(s) – Enom

If you receive an email from your domain registrar with a subject line like this, it’s probably a legitimate request, but here are a couple of ways to determine whether it’s real or not.

I think just about all registrars personalize these emails to you. They won’t say “Dear Customer” but they will say “Dear Elliot.” Please keep in mind that someone could specifically target individuals, so this is not the best indicator.

Most emails will have the names of domain names you own listed within the email. Again, this is not fail proof either because someone could do this manually and list a few of your domain names.

Finally, many registrars will list your account number within the email. This is likely the most difficult thing for a scammer to obtain since it’s more of an internal number than something someone could get elsewhere. It’s not fail proof either, as it’s possible for someone to find out this number if they’ve done business with you and had a domain name pushed from their account to yours.

Ultimately the best advice is to not click on the links in these emails. Visit the domain registrar’s website and there should generally be a link within your account or on the home page to ICANN’s update. If you keep your Whois information accurate, you should be fine.

Guest Post: Jacqueline Daly on Dynadot’s Website Re-Design

DynadotYou may have noticed that Dynadot’s website recently underwent a major overhaul. The following is a guest post from Jacqueline Daly, Marketing Manager for Dynadot, to discuss the changes.

Change and innovation are concepts that domain investors know very well. The industry as a whole is a constantly evolving landscape that our customers have to be aware of and adapt to. At Dynadot we are no stranger to innovation as it takes place behind the scenes on a daily basis. In order for us to maintain our commitment to innovation we thought it was time for our site to reflect the state-of-the-art technology that drives us.

In the process of redesigning our site, we focused on two things: making our site easier to navigate and having a site that conveys our core strengths and values. From our analytics and customer feedback we discovered that people would occasionally get lost on our site, especially on our homepage. With our new design, our goal was to make the most important parts of our site easy to find. Dynadot’s greatest strengths are making state-of-the-art technology look simple and providing friendly, personalized customer service when our customers need help.

Not only are we updating the aesthetics of our site we are also revolutionizing the user experience. The next step in this project is a new control panel that will be cleaner, faster, and more robust than our current control panel. We’ve been working close with some of our power users to develop a control panel that caters to our clients’ needs. Our new control panel will still have all of the capabilities of our current control panel; it will also include new features such as widgets so you can personalize your experience with the features you use most often. We want it to be the fastest, smartest, and easiest control panel in the industry. On top of the new control panel we will be launching new mobile applications as well as a desktop client. So stay tuned! The innovation is just getting started!

A special thanks to Elliot for giving us the opportunity to connect with you! As a thank you (for reading this far =p), take 15% off your next order to celebrate the launch of our new site. Use code: BACKinBLACK

*1 coupon per account. Excludes prepay orders. Offer expires 9/16/11 23:59 PDT

.XXX Sunrise Period A Opens Tomorrow

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ICM RegistryThe Sunrise Period A for .XXX domain names officially opens tomorrow, September 7, 2011. Companies like EuroDNS will support companies who wish to reserve .XXX for their brands during this first opening. Sunrise A, also referred to as “grandfathering,” will continue until October 28, 2011.

You can see Euro DNS’ press release announcing the opening of Sunrise A below:

Euro DNS press release:

EuroDNS (http://www.eurodns.com), announces the opening of the .XXX Domain Name Sunrise at www.eurodns.com.

EuroDNS, a leading Domain name Registrar specialized in International Domain extensions, is glad to announce that the Sunrise phase for the new .XXX extension was successfully opened and will be available until October 28th, 2011. Secure your .XXX Domain Name; register for the Sunrise at www.eurodns.com.

The progressive new home for adult entertainment online

The Internet is home to a wealth of content, suitable for a wide range of ages and values. The adult entertainment industry has, and always will, account for a large amount of this content and while it is enjoyed by some, it is not suitable, or of interest, to all internet users. Regardless of your views on adult content, it’s here to stay, so let’s be adult about it.

Increasingly, internet users are coming into contact with content that they do not wish to see and in turn, others finding it hard to locate exactly what they are looking for, due to a decrease in availability for precise and clear domain names.

The creation of .XXX will create a clearly signposted place where adult entertainment can be accessed and allow surfers to have a clear idea of the nature of the site before they click, rather than after.

.XXX isn’t just a helpful distinction. It’s the progressive new home for adult entertainment online.

As authorized registrar for the .XXX, EuroDNS is thrilled by the launch of this new and much talked about extension.

The .XXX registration timeline

The launch process will be done in specific phases based on the qualifications of both members and non-members of the Adult Sponsored Community.

September 7, 2011 marks the launch of the Sunrise period. This phase will run until October 28th, 2011 and is separated into Sunrise A (Opt-in) and Sunrise B (Opt-out).

– Sunrise A (Opt-in) is dedicated to members of the adult Sponsored Community with either verifiable trademark rights or owners of exact matching domains in other TLDs which is also known as “Grandfathering”.

– Sunrise B (Opt-out) – September 7, 2011 to October 28, 2011 – was created especially for non-adult Intellectual Property holders who are non-members of the adult Sponsored Community with verifiable trademark rights so they can block their domains in the .XXX space.

The Landrush period is scheduled from November 8, 2011 to November 25, 2011 while General Availability will kick of on December 6, 2011.

The Sponsored Community

The Sponsored Community consists of individuals, business, entities, and organizations that fit one of the following descriptions:

– Provide Online Adult Entertainment intended for consenting adults (“Providers”) (e.g. adult webmasters, performers, studios, store owners, club operators);

– Represent Providers (“Representatives”) (e.g. lawyers, agents, advisors, accountants, affiliates); or

– Provide products or services to Providers and Representatives (“Service Providers”) (e.g. adult domainers, manufacturers, delivery companies, caterers, distribution companies, merchant account services, make up artists, stylists, hosting services).

For more information on the related Sponsored Community Validation Process check out http://www.eurodns.com/top-level-domain/Generic/Xxx

.XXX registration fees

EuroDNS will charge its customers €74 annual registration fee (ex. VAT) for each .XXX domain name registered unless such domain name is allocated during the Sunrise B period (Opt-out), in which case EuroDNS will solely charge you with a €195 fee (ex. VAT) for a 10 years period.

In addition to the €74 annual registration fee, the following fees apply:

– “Adult Trademark” Sunrise A (Opt-in): €98 validation fee, on top of the annual fee (ex. VAT)
– “Adult Domain” Sunrise A (Grandfather): €55 validation fee, on top of the annual fee (ex. VAT)
– “Landrush” Period, open to anyone but with potential auction: €55 on top of the annual fee (ex. VAT)

No annual registration fee is added to the “Blocking” Sunrise B (Opt-out) which has a flat validation fee of €195 (ex. VAT) including a 10 years /blocking period.

For more details on the various period go to http://www.eurodns.com/top-level-domain/Generic/Xxx or

Secure your .XXX Domain Name

As of September 7, 2011 the Sunrise is open. Whether a trademark owner or a member of the adult Sponsored Community (Sunrise A), or on the contrary if you are not a member of the adult Sponsored Community but wish to protect your name from any future .XXX use (Sunrise B), now is the chance to register the corresponding .XXX domain name.

For more information on .XXX visit the .XXX TLD page on http://www.eurodns.com/top-level-domain/Generic/Xxx and http://www.eurodns.com/eurodns-news/article/secure-your-xxx-now

“Let’s be adult about it” and register your .XXX on http://eurodns.com now!

About EuroDNS
EuroDNS is a Domain name Registrar specialized in International Domain extensions. Based in Luxembourg with branch offices in Europe, the USA and Asia with AsiaDNS, EuroDNS serves a large variety of clients ranging from SMEs to some of the world’s largest Domain Investors and offers dedicated naming solutions to Trademark holders. By strongly participating in leading industry forums including ICANN and the International Trademark Association, EuroDNS seeks to promote e-Commerce and wider Internet adoption. www.eurodns.com

Enom No Longer Adding .CO Domain Names to Shopping Cart

Shopping Cart

Last month, I reported that Enom was adding .CO domain names to customers’ shopping carts without their checking off the box or requesting it (in addition to other products / free trial offers). Of course the buyer could pretty easily remove these items from their shopping cart if noticed, but it was annoying when trying to race through the checkout process.

I hand registered a domain name a couple of days ago (CollegeFootballMemorabilia.com if you care to know), and I noticed that the only thing in my cart was this one domain name. There was no .CO domain name, .mobi free trial, or privacy protection automatically added to my shopping cart.

Since I was logged in to my account, I can’t be sure whether this was taken care of system-wide or if they simply removed those from my account, but whatever the case, it was nice to see them listen to feedback and remove this annoying speed bump.

Next time you check out at Enom, let me know if they are still adding it to your account. Hopefully, it’s something they changed for everyone and not just my account.

Domain Name Coupon Codes & Discounts

Buying cheap domain names is something we all want. Why pay the price listed on various domain registrar websites when you can use a promotional code or coupon code to get a special discount price for your new domain names.

Here are some tips to get discount or promo codes from top registrars, including GoDaddy, Network Solutions, Register.com, Name.com, Dynadot, Enom, Moniker, Fabulous, NameCheap, 1 & 1, and other leading domain name registrars:

  • Search Google for “domain name coupons,” “domain name discounts,” or other similar term
  • Be more specific and search Google for “Godaddy coupon” or “Network Solutions promo code”
  • Sign up for domain registrar newsletters to receive special offers
  • See previous emails from domain registrar to take advantage of offers
  • Visit the domain registrar website and see if they have a tab for special offers
  • See if partner sites like Paypal or hosting companies have coupon codes
  • Find coupons on auction sites like Ebay

Read a more comprehensive article I wrote about domain name coupons.