Rightside

Video: Annual “Vegas.NINJA Marathon”

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Apparently, December 5th is a holiday known as International Ninja Day. No, this isn’t something that Rightside made up to sell  .Ninja domain names, but their registrars and registrar partners have been using Ninja Day to promote  .Ninja domain names. On Twitter, I’ve seen offers from Enom, Domain.com, and Name.com offering .Ninja domain names for $1.00 or less (first year I presume).

This afternoon, I was sent a link to a humorous video about the annual “Vegas.Ninja Marathon.” The description under the video says, “Las Vegas Strip closed for annual Vegas.NINJA marathon. Don’t blink or you’ll miss it!Vegas.Ninja is a new travel website focusing on the city of Las Vegas. I had not heard of the website before, and after doing a bit of research using the footer copyright (1 Degree World Systems, LLC), it appears that Vegas.Ninja is associated with Howard Lefkowitz, formerly the CEO of Vegas.com. According to his LinkedIn profile, Lefkowitz is Founder & CEO at One Degree World, Inc. Joe Alagna also reported this last week.

It will be interesting to

Big Day for Rightside in New York City

The Rightside executive team is in New York City today, as the company will be holding its first investor day at the NASDAQ market in Times Square from 10:30 – 1:30. While in NYC for the investor day, Rightside CEO Taryn Naidu was interviewed by at least two financial news networks.

In the video interview embedded below, Jill Malandrino from TheStreet.com discusses Rightside’s new domain name extensions and the economics behind them with Naidu. In addition, Naidu met with Canada’s Business News Network to discuss some of the trends in the domain name sector (I was unable to embed this video, but you can watch it here).

This investor day event gives the company an opportunity to discuss what it does and how it makes money with Wall Street analysts and investors. There is an event webcast on the company website for those who can’t be there but want to follow along. According to a press release announcing the event, “in honor of the occasion, Chief Executive Officer Taryn Naidu will ring the Nasdaq Stock Market Closing Bell” at 4pm this afternoon.

Here’s the video of the interview that aired on TheStreet.com:

Name.com Wins Rightside Hackathon (Video)

The first company-wide Rightside Hackathon was held last month, and I was sent a link to a video of the winning team. A team from Name.com created the nBox, which helps a user create an “instant branded email.” The email address can be used for free for one month, at which point the user would need to pay for the email service in order to continue. There are also upgrades available to help them start a website.

This offering seems to be aimed at job seekers and others who may be using a less than professional email address to communicate with others for business purposes. nBox would give users a more professional-looking email, using an available new gTLD domain name offered for sale at Name.com.

Obviously, nBox is in

My Thoughts on Rightside Q3 Earnings Report

Rightside reported its Q3 earnings after the market closed yesterday, and judging by the after hours trading, investors were happy with the company’s third quarter performance. As of right now, Rightside stock (ticker: NAME) is trading at $12.53/share, which is up 33.16% from where it closed yesterday. There isn’t much trading volume in after hours trading, so we will get a better indication when the market opens this morning. This is an interesting  contrast to what happened to Web.com stock after its earnings were released.

You can read the full report on the SEC website, but I want to share three things I found interesting in the report along with why I found the information interesting:

Monte Cahn Back in the Domain Auction Business

I received a press release from NamesCon and domain name consulting firm RightOfTheDot, LLC announcing that there will be a live domain auction at the NamesCon conference. From my perspective, the most interesting aspect of this news is that it means Monte Cahn, founder of Moniker and its popular domain auctions, is back in the business of domain conference domain name auctions.

Bucking the tradition of a domain conference hosting a live domain name auction, NamesCon did not have an auction during its inaugural event in January. Yesterday, conference organizer Richard Lau cited the experience of Monte Cahn and Mike Berkens with domain auctions in announcing the news. According to Lau, “We were initially reluctant to offer a domain auction, but the 15 years of domain auction experience, strength, reputation, and relationships that ROTD presented convinced us that their auction will contribute to the distinct and diverse activities and sessions that NamesCon is known and respected for.”

While at Moniker, Monte played host to some of the most exceptional domain auction results, including the TRAFFIC auction that famously sold $12.4 million worth of domain names. Since that auction in 2007, the domain space has changed quite a bit. Subsequent auctions produced much more modest results, and I think conference organizers have been less focused on the domain auctions, which were once considered the most anticipated aspect of conferences.

I think Monte and his team became known for hosting exciting domain name auctions. In addition to the buzz generated with large sales, there seemed to be more excitement in the room. I can recall many times when Monte  was  standing on the stage whooping up the crowd. I presume he will bring this back and hire auctioneers who will liven up the auction floor.

This is not the first domain auction Monte will have presided over since his Moniker days. During the Summer, ROTD oversaw the successful .Global auction in London that saw 35 .Global domain names sell for $63,780. This will be the first domain conference auction for Monte though.

I reached out to Monte to ask a few questions to learn about the upcoming auction and his expectations for it. He was kind enough to respond, and his answers are below.

B. Riley & Co: 20 Million New gTLD Domain Names by 2016

Earlier this week, Sameet Sinha, Sr. Equity Research Analyst at B. Riley & Co., published a research report on the new gTLD business and Rightside. The report, which is available to B. Riley clients and subscribers, made some projections about the new gTLD domain names and the impact they will have across the board in the domain industry (from registries to registrars to service providers…etc). In addition, Mr. Sinha initiated coverage on Rightside (ticker: NAME) with a Buy rating and $15 price target.

Mr. Sinha’s report offered an extensive overview of the domain name space, as well as a history of the new gTLD program. It was quite comprehensive, and I think it will give readers a greater knowledge about the technical aspect of domain ownership and operations. If someone were to ask me for a resource to  explain the gTLD program, I think this report would give them all of the information they need to learn about its genesis and future.

I thought Mr. Sinha’s report was quite interesting, especially because it comes from someone  outside of the domain investment space.  With Mr. Sinha’s permission, I want to share some excerpts from the report as well as a few projections that were made:

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