Why I Like Writing About Go Daddy

Elliot Silver
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24

I like writing about Go Daddy, especially when the company is in the news. The new Jean Claude Van Damme advertising campaign  made the NY Times, Wall St. Journal, and many other news outlets. In addition, anyone watching the football game last Thursday saw the new tv spot. Because of the way the company has been marketed in the past, Go Daddy advertising changes make the news and are followed by the mainstream press in addition to advertising and industry publications.

When I write about the company as it’s being discussed by the public, it drives traffic to my blog, and oftentimes, it’s

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Blog Traffic Insight

Elliot Silver
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20

I thought I would take some time to share a bit of insight about my blog traffic. The information below is a mix of analytics from Google Analytics and Stat Counter. This is insight from the past 30 days.

Visit Information:

Pages per visit: 1.43
Average time on site: 24:16
Bounce rate: 8.66%

Operating System:

Windows – 59.25%
Mac – 17.4%
iOS – 13.29%
Android – 5.74%

% of Visits by Country:

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Nat Cohen’s Company Did Not Raise “$5 Million to Develop Google Glass Rival”

Elliot Silver
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1

I was reading through my Twitter feed this evening when the tweet above from journalist Paul Sloan caught my eye. According to an article on CNet, a company called Telepathy raised “$5 million to develop Google Glass rival.” The tweet got my attention because Nat Cohen’s domain investment and monetization company is called Telepathy.

After clicking through to the article, I could immediately tell that it had nothing to do with Nat’s Telepathy, but it was about another company that is also called Telepathy. Unfortunately for this startup, they are using the sub-optimal Tele-pathy.org domain name for its website. Interestingly, Telepathy.org is registered to a different company, but that domain name does not yet resolve.

Telepathy is a generic term, so there may not be trademark issues with this company using the Telepathy brand name in that particular vertical (I am not an IP expert). However, if their funding leads them to develop a popular smart glasses type of product and they market it under their brand name, there will surely be confusion when potential buyers visit Nat’s (long) developed website. If and when that happens, they will either have to buy Nat’s brand name for a lot of money (if he’d even consider selling it) or risk confusing consumers.

It’s an interesting brand decision from this startup.

HomeAway CEO: VacationRentals.com Domain Name Bought for $35 Million

Elliot Silver
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28

I read a report on The Next Web this morining, and it listed the sale of VacationRentals.com as the most expensive domain name sale of all time. I don’t recall hearing about the sale anywhere, but the embedded video confirms the sale price.

In the video, HomeAway Founder and CEO Brian Sharples mentions that the company primarily bought VacationRentals.com to keep it away from a competitor. From the looks of it, VacationRentals.com had been a very active website before the acquisition, although Mr. Sharples sounds like the purchase was a defensive measure primarily for the domain name: “The only reason we bought it was so Expedia couldn’t have that url.” (Start the video at about the 15 minute mark to hear it).

I am sure most people won’t update their list of the most expensive domain sales / purchases of all time, but it certainly is a big sale that should be noted.

Interestingly, TNW did not include the $35.6 million sale of Insurance.com or the $16 million sale of Insure.com. From my perspective, both of these domain sales are similar in nature to the sale of VacationRentals.com since they were active websites and weren’t exclusively domain sales.

Public Biotechnology Company Buys Cancer Vaccine Domain Names

Elliot Silver
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10

In the most recent DNJournal weekly domain sales report, Ron Jackson reported the sale of two cancer vaccine domain names: CancerVaccine.org sold for $18,000 and CancerVaccine.net sold for $10,000. According to the updated Whois records for both domain names, the company that acquired them is a publicly traded pharmaceutical company called Northwest Biotherapeutics (Stock symbol: NWBO).

Additional research led me to find that the company also acquired CancerVaccine.com as well. Up until August 1, the domain name was owned under privacy protection at Moniker, but the Whois lookup is now showing that it is owned by  Northwest Biotherapeutics at Go Daddy. Prior to its privacy protection in late 2012, it was owned by a domain investor in New Jersey.  It is possible the company had owned it at that point, and the privacy was removed after the transfer.

At the moment, it does not

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Back At It

Elliot Silver
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3

I took a little over a week off and went on vacation. I had scheduled several posts for while I was gone, and you probably didn’t even miss me!

I have a number of comments in the moderation queue and a ton of them in the spam filter, so I’ll be going through those later tonight and tomorrow. If your comment isn’t approved by tomorrow, please let me know so I can look into it. Sometimes it’s more efficient to simply delete all spam comments and hope nothing important was lost, but I’ll do a cursory check in the meantime.

If you’ve emailed me in the last week and a half, I will do my best to get back to you within a couple of days. If you’re trying to sell me a domain name and I didn’t reply, it probably means I have no interest in the name and haven’t had the chance to reply. If you’re looking for a domain broker, I don’t broker names, so you can have a look at a list of domain brokers. If you’re looking for domain consulting, my apologies, but I don’t do that either.

This was the first vacation I’ve had where I did almost no work. I checked email just a bit and tried to disconnect as much as possible. It was nice at the time, but I’m now playing catch up. Thanks for understanding.

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