Rick Schwartz

Bill Hartzer wrote an article about a report issued by a group called Digital Citizens Alliance that was critical of domain investing. This is not the first time this organization took domain investing to task. In fact, Andrew Allemann wrote an article about it in 2020.

When looking at the report and the organization’s website, I noticed the Executive Director of this organization is Tom Galvin. The website notes that “Prior to founding 463 Communications, Tom served as Vice President of Government Relations and Communications at VeriSign, where he was responsible for driving strategy with policy makers regarding homeland security, Internet security and telecommunications policy.”

This caught my attention because of a recent NTIA release that alluded to prices charged by domain investors and domain registrars. “We also recognize that prices at both the wholesale level and downstream, including prices charged by resellers and substantial markups by warehousers, need to be addressed,” the release stated.

My opinion is that VeriSign is unhappy when a discussion about competition to manage the .com registry comes up, and the company would prefer to have the focus be on (unregulated) domain investor and domain registrar pricing.

Rick Schwartz has long been an outspoken domain investor. From creating the popular TRAFFIC industry conference to writing Rick’s Blog to sharing on Twitter, the “Domain King” has never been shy about sharing his opinions and offering advice about domain investing.

I would imagine that most serious domain investors who are on Twitter follow Rick’s account. People may not agree with everything he believes or posts, but I look at Rick as an industry leader. Rick was an early adopter of good .com domain names, bought many great domain name assets, sold a handful for a great deal of money, monetized his portfolio with PPC advertising, and he retained enviable portfolio of domain names to this day.

This afternoon, Rick announced that he is going to cap his Twitter followers at 10,000 (he currently has just shy of 9,500. He plans to privatize his feed so only followers will be able to access what he tweets about. As you might imagine, Rick shared this on Twitter along with his rationale:

I caught a LinkedIn post from Rick Schwartz this morning announcing a special domain investing segment on Clubhouse called “Domaining ‘Shark Tank’.” The event will be held this evening, and it will offer participants the opportunity to “pitch” a domain name or project during the Clubhouse event:

Domain investor participants leading the Clubhouse room will be Rick Schwartz, Kate Buckley, and Krista Gable. Krista let me know the event was created by Lady T –  @natina_jenkins on Twitter.

The Clubhouse room begins at 6pm Eastern time tonight (July 31, 2022). The LinkedIn post has a link to the Clubhouse room. I am not sure if you need to be approved in advance to participate / pitch, nor do I know what is required of speakers/participants.

It is generally assumed that operators of websites on non .com domain names will lose some traffic to the .com domain name. Even savvy Internet users can accidentally navigate to a brand matching .com domain name instead of the correct domain name. Depending on how the .com is being used, lost traffic can either be a relatively minor issue to a big problem.

A couple of days ago, Rick Schwartz shared some data involving one of his .com domain names where a non .com TLD is being used by another entity: