Brilliant, Startup with a .Tech Domain Name, Raises $21m

Elliot Silver
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3

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, which was amplified on Techmeme this afternoon, a company called Brilliant “picked up a $21 million Series A round of funding led by August Capital.” When I saw the name of the company, I was curious about the domain name it is using because I know the company doesn’t own Brilliant.com.

I did a Google search for “Brilliant smart home,” and I saw that the company is using the Brilliant.tech domain name for its website. Off the top of my head, I can’t recall other companies operating on a .Tech domain name that have received this much funding. I think it illustrates that a company doesn’t need to have the exact match .com domain name to be successful.

One thing that might hurt a company like Brilliant is that the Wall Street Journal didn’t link out to Brilliant’s website, and I presume that will be the case with other publications. The news likely caused a traffic spike to Brilliant.com because people tend to assume that companies own the exact match .com domain name of their brand name. As a company in the tech space, Brilliant’s audience may know better to just assume that it has the .com domain name, but the general public tends to be .com centric. Unfortunately, Brilliant doesn’t own BrilliantTech.com, which was registered in 2006.

Brilliant.com is a domain name that is owned and used by

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LifetimeFitness.com Now Using Lifetime.Life

Elliot Silver
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23

Life Time Fitness, a large health club and fitness business with 127 locations across the United States and Canada, has changed its url. The company is now forwarding LifetimeFitness.com to LifeTime.Life. If you visit LifeTimeFitness.com, you will be forwarded to the new url. The company also announced it will be using the lt.Life domain name as well.

Here is the message on the homepage announcing the url change:

Lifetimefitness.com is now Lifetime.life
You may notice our email address is different. We are now using @lifetime.life and @lt.life.

Here is a screenshot of the homepage with the message across the top:

In my opinion, this change is a bit peculiar. The url the company has been using matches its Life Time Fitness brand name and the new url does not (you can see “Life Time Fitness” in that page title and about us description). My guess is that the company is trying to be simply known as Life Time rather than Life Time Fitness. At least that is the way it looks with the Life Time logo that doesn’t have “Fitness” in it.

The Lifetime.com domain name is owned by

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Should Equifax Gone With Equifax.Security?

Elliot Silver
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There have been quite a few mainstream media articles discussing how Equifax accidentally promoted an incorrect domain name for its recently activated security website, which was launched following a severe data breach. Apparently, someone created a look alike Equifax domain name, and the company (mistakenly) tweeted out that link instead of the authentic link.

Shortly after reading about the security breach in early September, I looked at Verisign’s DomainScope tool and saw that many Equifax domain names were just registered. I thought that this could be a concern for the company as well as the people seeking information from Equifax. Since my article was published, many other domain names were registered with Equifax or related terms within the domain name.

A couple of days ago, Daniel Negari tweeted that Equifax should have registered and used Equifax.Security instead of its reactively launched breach website, EquifaxSecurity2017.com:

Daniel’s company operates the .Security new gTLD extension, so had this happened, the publicity would have benefitted his company.

Does Daniel have a point with his tweet? It would have been much more difficult for cybersquatters to register similar .Security domain names because of the cost. For instance, GoDaddy is selling .Security domain names (such as Equifax.Security) for

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Reduced Prices on Single Letter & Number .XYZ Domain Names

Elliot Silver
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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 we all know, the market has changed in the last two years, especially in China.

Here are the current recommended retail prices for single letter .XYZ domain names along with the old recommended prices:

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Neustar Video: Potential of .Brand Domain Names

Elliot Silver
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3

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.

 

Couple of Non .com Commercials

Elliot Silver
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6

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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