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Sedo Announces Hiring of New CEO

Elliot Silver
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SedoSedo has hired Tobias Flaitz, previously with a company called Hubert Burda Media, as the company’s new CEO and member of the Board of Management. He replaces company co-founder Tim Schumacher, “who is leaving the Board of Management as of December 31, 2011 for personal reasons.”

Under Schumacher’s leadership, Sedo grew to become the largest domain aftermarket, and a large parking company as well. Schumacher is expected to continue an association with Sedo, as the company that owns Sedo intends to propose Schumacher as a member of its Supervisory Board.

Last August, it was announced that Sedo’s Jeremiah Johnston, was dropping his position as Chief Operating Officer to focus on starting a private legal practice. Johnston continues to be Sedo’s General Counsel.

I wish Schumacher all the best with whatever his next endeavor is.

Press Release:

The Supervisory Board of Sedo Holding AG has named Tobias Flaitz (40), previously with Hubert Burda Media, as the new CEO/member of the Management Board of Sedo. On February 1, 2012, he will succeed Sedo’s current CEO and co-founder, Tim Schumacher (35), who is leaving the Board of Management as of December 31, 2011 for personal reasons. At the next Annual General Meeting 2012 the Supervisory Board is due to be newly elected. In a proposal by United Internet AG, the Supervisory Board intends to propose Tim Schumacher as a new member of the Supervisory Board.

 

Tim Schumacher co-founded Sedo in 2001, together with Marius Würzner, Ulrich Essmann and Ulrich Priesner, and led the company to become the global leader in domain trading. In 2007, he was named “Entrepreneur of the Year” by Ernst & Young Germany. In 2009, he became CEO of Sedo Holding AG, which is comprised of Sedo’s domain business and ‘affilinet’, one of Europe’s leading affiliate marketing platforms.

 

Tobias Flaitz holds a degree in engineering and an MBA from the Universities of St.Gallen, Switzerland, and Berkeley, CA. He worked successfully for many years as a consultant for Accenture as well as Booz & Co. in the USA and EMEA. Since 2007 Tobias Flaitz held a management position in Strategy and Business Development with Hubert Burda Media in Munich.

 

“On behalf of the Supervisory Board, I would like to thank Tim Schumacher for the many years of excellent and trustful cooperation, for his personal commitment and the great accomplishments he has attained for the company. He founded and led Sedo from being a start-up to the world’s largest marketplace for domains and the leading domain parking company,” said Michael Scheeren, Chairman of the Supervisory Board. “We are delighted that Tim Schumacher will be available for further cooperation within the Supervisory Board. At the same time, we are delighted to have obtained the services of Tobias Flaitz, as an experienced manager with competence in digital business models and consulting expertise in strategy development and process optimization, who will drive Sedo’s further expansion during the coming years.”

 

About Sedo

Sedo, an acronym for “Search Engine for Domain Offers,” is the leading domain marketplace and monetization provider. Headquartered in Cologne, Germany and with offices in London, England and Cambridge, Mass., Sedo has assembled the world’s largest database of domain names for sale, with more than 15 million listings. The success of Sedo’s model has attracted a global membership base of more than 1 million domain professionals and end-users. For more information, visit www.Sedo.com.

Social Media Traffic to My Blog

Elliot Silver
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I had an email conversation with Shane, and we ended up briefly talking about social media traffic. When I looked into how much traffic Twitter and Facebook drive to my website, I was pretty surprised at the number.

I post links to my articles on my Facebook and Twitter feeds, often with commentary about the articles (well, as much commentary as you might expect). My blog has over 2,400  Twitter  “followers” and my blog has 220  Facebook  “likes.”    Before looking into it, I expected that there would be a good amount of traffic from Twitter and Facebook.

Upon closer inspection, it looks like I was wrong about that, and perhaps I should even stop spending time posting article links. Here’s the amount of traffic my blog received via Twitter and Facebook in the last 30 days, according to Google Analytics:

  • Twitter: 876 visits
  • Facebook: 764 visits

In total, just over 1,600 visits in the past 30 days. Considering my blog has received over 54,000 visits in the last 30 days, social media accounts for a  minuscule  amount of traffic (around 3%). I thought that number would be far higher.

Clearly, I am not doing a great job utilizing social media. Perhaps it’s because I only follow 59 people on Twitter and should amp that up. Maybe it’s because I use Twitter to dispense my own links rather than using it to share links. Whatever the case, I am pretty surprised by the lack of social media traffic.

Top 10 People I Find Most Interesting on Twitter

Elliot Silver
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As of today, I only follow 58 people on Twitter. At one point a year ago, I followed many more people, but I found it too distracting and pared down my list so that I don’t miss a “tweet” from the people and companies I find the most informative. My twitter handle is @dinvesting.

I want to share 10 Twitter users I follow that I find the most interesting with respect to domain names and Internet news. Some of these are people I’ve never met or done business with, but their posts are frequently interesting and they also post links to articles I enjoy reading.

Who do you find to be the most interesting Twitter user as it relates to the domain business? Who should I follow that I am not following right now?

Could Syria .SY ccTLD Become Popular?

Elliot Silver
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If you like and/or collect fine art, you probably already know about Art Basel in Miami. It’s considered the most prestigious annual art show in the United States, and there are many serious collectors and artists who head to Miami each December for Art Basel.

I am moderately into art, so I’ve been reading up a bit on Art Basel, and a new website called Art.sy has been mentioned in a few articles I’ve read. According to its home page, “Art.sy is a new way to discover art you’ll love, featuring work from leading galleries, museums and private collections around the world.” TechCrunch covered the company a year ago and just last month as well.

As you can see, Art.sy uses a ccTLD domain hack, with .SY being the ccTLD for Syria.

It does not appear that a company needs to be associated with Syria to own a .SY domain name, although it was difficult for me to find domain registrars to purchase a .SY domain name. According to Marcaria.com, the cost of registering a .SY domain name is $400/year.

It seems that the biggest stumbling blocks for .SY to follow in the footsteps of the popular .LY ccTLD are the cost and lack of ease in registering .SY domain names since few registrars seem to offer them. Should either of these stumbling blocks be removed, I suppose it could potentially become a popular domain hack.

Of course, political stability may present an issue, although the same could be said about Libya and people still buy .LY domain names irrespective of that. You can learn more about the .SY ccTLD here:  http://tld.sy

I am sure you are wondering about the matching .com. Although the Whois information for Artsy.com is private, it does not appear that Art.sy owns Artsy.com, especially since it’s currently parked.

ICM Registry Reserves .XXX Domains

Elliot Silver
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ICM RegistryThe ICM Registry is the company responsible for managing .XXX domain names, which were introduced to the public in 2011.

Companies and trademark holders were given the opportunity to reserve their trademarks and brands, which would prevent anyone from using those domain names. Domain names that were reserved during this time period do not resolve, and they will not ever resolve.

Many domain names were specifically reserved by the ICM Registry, preventing anyone from purchasing these domain names. Some of these names were reserved for private auctions, which will be held at later dates, and others were reserved to prevent their registration. Some of these are religious domain names, geographic domain names, and other types of names.

Domain names that are reserved by ICM do resolve, but they feature a message on them: “This domain has been reserved from registration.” Inquiries about these domain names should be directed to the ICM Registry.

Picks from the Great Domains Auction

Elliot Silver
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Sedo is running a Great Domains auction beginning today, and I want to share some of my top picks for the auction. The auction ends on December 8, and many of the domain names have reserves.

Listed below are my favorites from the auction along with the reserve price range. Feel free to leave a comment with your favorite(s) from the auction.

  • Modeling.com  ($100,000 – 249,999 USD) – Can be used by a fashion model agency or by a statistical / database modeling company.
  • Stunner.com   ($1 – 499 USD) – Great brand name for under $500.
  • TCP.com ($5,000 – 9,999 USD) – Three good letters and LLL .com names are almost always liquid.
  • Orangutans.com  ($500 – 999 USD) – An animal name for under $1k is usually a good deal. Start a sports team 🙂
  • Accommodates.com ($1 – 499 USD) – May not be the exact match term, but for under $500 it’s solid.
  • Making.com ($5,000 – 9,999 USD) – Great action domain name

FYI, the link is NOT an affiliate link – it’s a tracking code I am not being paid for this post nor was I asked to post it I also don’t have any names in the auction nor did I do a Whois search to see who owns what.

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