I just received the press release below announcing that WhyPark is now officially known as Domain Apps. If you are a WhyPark customer, there is some important information that you need to know in order to make the transition seamless. The full press release is below with all of this important information.

What do you think about the name change?

Press release sent to WhyPark customers:

Thank you for being a valued WhyPark customer. We continue to look for new ways to earn revenue for our customers while making domain monetization as simple as possible. Starting today, you will manage your account and domains through Domain Apps (www.domainapps.com) rather than WhyPark.

How This Affects You

The WhyPark dashboard has been retired and forwards to Domain Apps (www.domainapps.com). Login with the same email and password that you previously used on WhyPark.
The first time you login to Domain Apps, you will complete a very quick, five-step migration. When finished, all of your domains will be available to manage, view reports, etc. through Domain Apps.
Domain Apps Advantages

More monetization options; Choose to develop your content sites as you previously have through WhyPark, or monetize through traditional domain parking from one interface. You can switch back and forth at any time with a single click.
More payment options; receive payments via PayPal, check, direct deposit (US only) or International Wire Transfer.
New reports; view your estimated revenue for the current day, prior to any final stats being received by our advertising partners. Revenue from your parked domains and content sites are consolidated into a single report.
Future growth; we’ve laid the groundwork to enable even more monetization options to be added in the future.
New, but familiar; The Domain Apps brand more accurately reflects a wider range of monetization options than WhyPark. We feel we’ve outgrown the original brand with the launch of our apps in 2010 and our future plans. However, the Domain Apps interface and functionality will be very familiar to WhyPark customers.
What You Need to Do

The first time you login to Domain Apps, you will complete the migration process. That’s it! Your domains will remain unaffected and you will be able to quickly start managing your domains again. You will receive an email when the migration process has been completed. This can range from under 1 minute to several minutes, depending on the number of domains you have with us.
Nameservers

In order to take advantage of the ability to switch between parking and content sites, be sure to change your nameservers to use ns1.domainapps.com and ns2.domainapps.com. Please note that our existing nameservers will stay online. Your domains will continue to resolve without issue, but will not be able to be switched between content and parking. Any changes you make will continue to be live.
We’re Here to Help

Even though we feel these new additions will be a benefit to our customers, we also understand that change can be difficult. We’re here to help and answer any questions you may have. Please contact us through live chat in your account or at support@domainapps.com
Best wishes for a successful 2012!

In an effort “to stand up against SOPA,” Namecheap has pledged to donate $1.00 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation for every inbound domain name transfer initiated on December 29, 2011. The EFF is a San Francisco based non-profit, digital rights organization that protects the rights of Internet users around the world.

Namecheap has been able to capitalize on Go Daddy’s public support and then flip flopping on SOPA. According to Namecheap CEO Rick Kirkendall, between December 22 and December 25, over 31,000 domain names were transferred to Namecheap using SOPA-specific coupon codes. I would bet this number would have been greater had it not been Christmas.

Back in March, Namecheap was able to capitalize on another GoDaddy publicity issue involving a video of the hunting of “problem elephants” by GoDaddy CEO and founder Bob Parsons. Namecheap donated over $30,000 to the Save the Elephants organization  as a result of an effort similar to the one planned for December 29.

I think it’s very smart marketing by Namecheap.

The press release announcing the special offer is below:

On December 29th, 2011, domain registrar Namecheap.com will be spearheading a domain transfer initiative known as  Move Your Domain Day, prompted by the recent news of its competitor’s support of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

Namecheap has made an official statement on its company blog  openly opposing SOPA  and will be donating $1 for every domain name transfer made on December 29th to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Shari Steele, Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, stated, “EFF is pleased to support Namecheap’s efforts to bring attention to the proposed SOPA legislation and its consequences for Internet users worldwide. With the funds donated from the MoveYourDomainDay effort, EFF will continue to defend your right to free expression in the digital world.”

One of the primary goals of designating December 29th “Move Your Domain Day” is to heighten awareness of the potential dangers of SOPA, a bill that some say may potentially break the Internet as we know it.

The CEO of Namecheap, Richard Kirkendall said, “A free and open Internet is the only option that will continue the legacy of innovation and openess that stands for everything we all value in our modern society. However, if SOPA passes, the rights of every user on the Internet will be trampled, as the bill as proposed infringes on liberties, privacies, and freedoms without due process.”

On Move Your Domain Day, Namecheap will process transfers of any .COM, .NET, .ORG, .INFO, and .BIZ domain from any registrar for the below-cost price of $6.99. For each transfer made on this day, Namecheap will be donating $1 to EFF.

“We’re proud to have the Electronic Frontier Foundation supporting this important initiative, and are confident that our customers can help us raise a significant sum to help continue the fight against SOPA, PROTECT-IP, and other overbroad and ill-considered legislation,” said Kirkendall.

After significant public admonishment from the Internet community, Go Daddy has publicly declared it is opposed to SOPA as it is currently written. I think the scorn was deserved, but I am glad to see GoDaddy has changed its stance on the issue. The company’s press release is below.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (Dec. 23, 2011) — Go Daddy is no longer supporting SOPA, the “Stop Online Piracy Act” currently working its way through U.S. Congress.

“Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why Go Daddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation — but we can clearly do better,” Warren Adelman, Go Daddy’s newly appointed CEO, said. “It’s very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this.   Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it.”

Go Daddy and its General Counsel, Christine Jones, have worked with federal lawmakers for months to help craft revisions to legislation first introduced some three years ago. Jones has fought to express the concerns of the entire Internet community and to improve the bill by proposing changes to key defined terms, limitations on DNS filtering to ensure the integrity of the Internet, more significant consequences for frivolous claims, and specific provisions to protect free speech.

“As a company that is all about innovation, with our own technology and in support of our customers, Go Daddy is rooted in the idea of First Amendment Rights and believes 100 percent that the Internet is a key engine for our new economy,” said Adelman.

In changing its position, Go Daddy remains steadfast in its promise to support security and stability of the Internet. In an effort to eliminate any confusion about its reversal on SOPA though, Jones has removed blog postings that had outlined areas of the bill Go Daddy did support.

“Go Daddy has always fought to preserve the intellectual property rights of third parties, and will continue to do so in the future,” Jones said.

Follow & Friend Go Daddy on Facebook & Twitter.

About Go Daddy
Go Daddy is a leading provider of services that enable individuals and businesses to establish, maintain and evolve an online presence. Go Daddy provides a variety of domain name registration plans, as well as website design and hosting packages.   Go Daddy has a  broad  array  of  cloud-based products and services. These include products such as SSL Certificates, Domains by Proxy private registration, ecommerce website hosting, blog software, search engine optimization utilities, email marketing tools, website design services, website security software and online storage solutions. Go Daddy has more than 51 million domain names under management. Go Daddy registers, renews or transfers more than one domain name every second of every day. GoDaddy.com is the largest worldwide mass-market hosting provider by annual revenue according to Tier1 Research (Mass-Market Hosting Report-Winter 2011) and is the world’s No. 1 domain name registrar according to Name Intelligence, Inc. Go Daddy registered more than one-third of all new domain names created In 2010 for the top six generic top-level domains, or gTLDs, including .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz and .mobi.  

I heard about Voodoo through the grapevine, and I decided to give it a try a couple of weeks ago. If you haven’t heard, Voodoo is a new parking company that utilizes a Google feed. I don’t do much parking and it’s pretty early in this trial, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Revenue on my domain names seems to be significantly higher than when I was parking at a company that used a Yahoo feed. I earn under $100/month with PPC, so I am not even going to bother sharing the revenue % growth because it’s not statistically significant, but I am earning more money with my domain names.

One thing I’ve noticed is that there seem to be far more actual clicks with Voodoo than previously. There aren’t nearly as many searches, and that seems to mean more revenue. One name of mine has had 32 visits and 55 clicks in the last 4 days. I don’t remember seeing a CTR that high with my names before.

I know a lot of people have moved names over to Frank Schilling’s Internet Traffic parking company. According to Daily Changes, Internet Traffic now has just over a million domain names on its DNS (1,026,898 total). Voodoo has 158,949 domain names on its DNS.

Voodoo seems to be a new parking provider you may want to check out.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen quite a few television spots for 1&1 on different channels and at various hours, which likely means the company is spending a lot of money on advertising.  I had heard of 1&1 before, but I don’t know a whole lot about the company, aside from knowing about it’s domain registration division.

The Pennsylvania-based company is a domain registrar and web hosting company, although it seems to be promoting it’s website building tools for small businesses. I suppose once a business builds a website, it’s more likely they will become long term customers. There’s certainly more money in web hosting than in domain registrations.

I did some research to see how 1&1 ranks in terms of number of domain registrations, but I didn’t see the company listed on  WebHosting.info’s top registrar list. Research led me to the 1&1 FAQ page that stated, “Schlund + Partner registers domain names for 1&1 Internet.” WebHosting.info ranks Schlund + Partner as the 5th largest domain registrar in the world, with just under 5.2 million registrations, although I don’t know if they exclusively work with 1&1 (Schlund.de forwards to 1und1.de though.

A bit more research showed me that 1&1 is related to Sedo. Both companies are owned by a German company named United Internet AG. You can see the affiliation on  Sedo’s website  and also on  1&1’s history page. United Internet AG also operates Mail.com. You can read about United Internet’s other brands on its  corporate website.

One thing I was disappointed about given the relationship between 1&1 and Sedo was what seems to be a lack of a relationship between the two companies when searching for domain names at 1&1. When I performed a domain search using a domain name I own and have listed for sale at Sedo, there was nothing that indicated that I could visit Sedo to make an offer for the domain name. Perhaps 1&1 caters only to companies that will quickly buy unregistered domain names instead of having to wait out a negotiation process.

I am sure they’ve considered this, and it would be interesting to know why these sister companies aren’t working together in a more obvious way.

Travel Shark, the company previously known as SwiftRank, has made 80 additional city Hotels.com domain name and website acquisitions, and the list of  acquired  domain names is simply awesome. Included in the purchase are BeijingHotels.com, SingaporeHotels.com, BangkokHotels.com and KualaLumpurHotels.com.  The acquisition price was not released, but I would be willing to bet that it was seven figures.

Travelshark CEO, Sue Heilbronner  provided some insight into this  acquisition. “We made this investment in these domains in support of the new consumer products TravelShark is building to enhance the quality and usability of our hyper-local content.  We know consumers will find high-quality sites more and have more confidence in those sites based on the strength of these excellent domains.  So this is a long-term decision that crosses our entire strategic plan.”

When it was known as SwiftRank, the travel company made other significant domain name acquisitions. It purchased SydneyHotels.com from Rick Schwartz for a reported $100,000, and it also purchased domain names from Frank Schilling’s Name Administration. Most of its acquisition prices are private, but the company has shown a willingness to pay significant sums of money for domain names that fit into its business model.

At present, the company currently operates many websites in markets across the world. Instead of relying on one primary website like most travel companies, it builds smaller portals focusing on niche markets. For instance, it operates LasVegasHotels.com,  BostonHotels.com, JerusalemHotels.com, CapetownHotels.com, VancouverHotels.com, and many more in regions throughout the world.

The next time you’re looking for  Las Vegas Hotels, Beijing Hotels, or  Kuala Lumpur Hotels, you should check out Travel Shark’s websites to book your trip.

More information about the company’s most recent acquisitions can be found in the press release issued today.