In a blog post and newsletter email this morning, the .XYZ registry announced "that over 2,700 (90%) of our variably priced premium domains have had their wholesale prices reduced for registrations, renewals, and transfers." With the news, the company released the list of domain names that had their prices reduced.

I took a look at the list that was shared by the registry, and it appears that all single letter .XYZ domain names are still available to purchase. There are just four single number .XYZ domain names available to purchase, since I believe the others were previously sold.

I wrote about the sales of 8.XYZ and 6.XYZ in November of 2015. Interestingly, at the time of that article, .XYZ Registry CEO Daniel Negari told me that the company was “considering offers of $250K+ for the remaining numbers individually.” I am not sure the sale prices of 1.XYZ, 2.XYZ, 3.XYZ, or 9.XYZ (assuming they were sold), but it looks like the recommended sale prices of the remaining single number .XYZ domain names is now $13,000/each. As → Read More

Neustar is in the business of helping brands with their .brand new gTLD domain name extensions. The company recently introduced a series of webinars aimed at decision makers responsible for implementing and managing .brand domain name extensions.

I want to share a video that was posted by Neustar "which paints a picture about the potential of .brand TLDs." There are probably companies who applied for their .brand extension or companies that are considering an application for a .brand, and this webinar series is aimed at convincing these companies of the utility and marketability of .brand domain names.

You are welcome to share your thoughts in the comment section.

 

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I am not a huge television watcher, but I was watching some TV last night, and I saw two interesting commercials. Each of these commercials featured a non .com domain name. One commercial was a tourism spot for Israel, and it used a .Travel domain name, and the other commercial was a movie preview that used a .Movie domain name.

Here's the Israel tourism commercial, which uses Israel.Travel for its domain name. We were in Israel for almost 2 weeks this past February, and even though it was a 30 second spot, it made me want to go back already. This commercial aired on ABC during primetime last night.



Here's the television commercial for a movie called Detroit. The domain name advertised at the end is Detroit.Movie. I am not sure what channel this was on last night, but the url that was used caught my eye.

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Google recently launched Hire, which is, according to TechCrunch, "a new service that helps businesses more effectively manage their internal recruiting process." After reading the headline on TechMeMe and clicking through to the TechCrunch article, I was very curious about the domain name that Google chose to use for this new service.

As I read through the article to learn about Hire, I wondered if Google had acquired the Hire.com domain name. I also thought that perhaps the company might use its Google-branded TLD for it - Hire.Google. Neither of those options were used by Google. Instead, the company is using Hire.Google.com for this new service.

It sort of makes sense that Google wouldn't go out and buy Hire.com. It looks like Hire.com is registered to a company called Authoria, Inc. Hire.com currently forwards to PeopleFluent.com, which appears to be how the entity rebranded in 2011. I am not sure if the registrant of Hire.com would sell Hire.com, but if the company was open to selling this domain name, my guess is that it → Read More

Living in the Boston suburbs, I am lucky to have an abundance of great beer in my area. I regularly have awesome beers from Tree House, The Alchemist, Bissell Brothers, Jack's Abbey, Maine Beer Company, Lawson's Finest, Trillium, and quite a few other exceptional brewers from New England and beyond. I am a big fan of beer - especially good IPAs.

The other day on Twitter, I noticed a beer company using a .Beer domain name. Evil Genius Beer Company, a brewery in Philadelphia, uses the EvilGenius.Beer domain name. Although the domain name forwards to its website found at EvilGeniusBeer.com, the company is advertising and promoting its .Beer domain name on its beer cans:

TODAY - TRUST THE PROCESS. Limited edition crowler & beer "The Process" starts at 2PM, w this brew tappedat 4PM. #evilgeniusonfront #thelab pic.twitter.com/Cwd1NNzIFd

— Evil Genius Beer Co. (@EvilGeniusBeer) June 22, 2017

In the wake of Amazon's pending acquisition of Whole Foods, it looks like Amazon has been buying grocery related domain names. Using a DomainIQ monitor alert, I was able to detect a number of recent domain registrations made by Amazon, most likely spurred by the acquisition. Most of the new registrations I noticed are new gTLD domain names.

As you can see below, the names I noticed that were registered have AmazonGrocery or AmazonGroceries in them with different extensions. The company has owned AmazonGroceries.com and AmazonGrocery.com since 2006, according to DomainTools Whois History tool. Smartly, the .com domain names both forward to the grocery section of Amazon's website.

Some of the domain names I noticed that Amazon registered in the past few days include: (more…) → Read More