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Overstock Unveils New O.CO Logo

Elliot Silver
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This isn’t really breaking news considering the previous reports about Overstock’s rebranding of its international sites as O.CO, but I think it’s pretty interesting for some of the naysayers to see.

In the opinion of some, the O.CO acquisition for $350,000 was simply an anticipatory investment to help the company acquire the highly prized O.com domain name when (and if) it eventually becomes available. The company filed for a trademark in that respect, and owning O.CO might be one way to reaffirm it’s rights in the “O” brand.

As someone commented in a previous article, Overstock has unveiled a new logo for its international division. There’s no longer any speculation about the brand – they are now fully known as O.CO internationally.

Perhaps this is because the term “overstock” doesn’t translate well in other languages, but the company still wanted to retain a similar branding. Maybe they wanted a unified international brand no matter which market their buyers are in?

Whatever the case is, the O.CO brand is here to stay, and I think this will help reinforce that .CO domain names are mainstream. Incidentally, there will be an auction for i.CO at Sedo Snapnames in the next few weeks.

I’ve mentioned this a number of times, but as a disclaimer my company owns a grand total of 6 .CO domain names (Bahamas.CO, cmm.CO, Elliot.CO, Torah.CO, Another.CO, and Beeb.CO), and .CO has been an advertiser.

Opportunity with SmartTVs.com

Elliot Silver
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I’ve been reading about CES in Las Vegas on mainstream news channels, technology blogs, and Morgan Linton’s blog, and the thing that I’ve come away with is that “smart televisions” are going to be big in the foreseeable future.

I see companies like Intel and Samsung have “smart tv” products, as do a number of other leading television companies. I think “smart tv” is going to be a big buzzword, and consumers will look to purchase these smart tvs, probably in greater number than those looking for 3d tvs (just my own opinion).

The domain investor in me did some research, and I saw that a longtime friend of mine (Page Howe) owns SmartTVs.com and has it listed for sale at Sedo as a “make offer” listing.  I spoke with Page, and he let me know that he currently has a purchase price of $75,000 for the domain name.

I can only assume the price will increase if consumers and distributors adopt the term in similar fashion to smart phones (Samsung owns SmartPhones.com). Perhaps now is a time for Sedo brokers to jump on the phone and get this name sold. Some may look at it as a gamble, but for many of these companies, it could be a very good investment.

Take the DNW Industry Survey

Elliot Silver
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Domain Name Wire’s annual survey is now online and ready for you to fill out, and I encourage you to do so in the next few days.

I think it’s the most comprehensive survey that primarily targets  domain investors, and your answers will help give a more accurate picture of the state of affairs in this business.

The survey should take no longer than 10 minutes to fill out, and you can fill yours out confidentially if you’d like. The more people who fill out the survey, the more statistically significant the data.

Ravella at Lake Las Vegas is Beautiful, Chosen Domain Name is U-G-L-Y

Elliot Silver
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Ravella at Lake Las VegasI just learned about a beautiful new hotel and resort that is scheduled to open at Lake Las Vegas in Henderson, Nevada next month. The Ravella at Lake Las Vegas has luxuriously well-appointed hotel rooms and suites, a fantastic golf course, meeting rooms, a world class spa, and a number of other wonderful amenities. It looks like a place I want to be right now.

Unfortunately for the Ravella, someone chose a horrible domain name for its website. Believe it or not, the hotel has opted to go with the heavily hyphenated ravella-at-lake-las-vegas-hotel.com.  Seriously. *** See Update Below ***

Unfortunately for the hotel, they didn’t even secure the non-hyphenated ravellaatlakelasvegashotel.com domain name. (I HIGHLY recommend readers don’t buy it either because you’re just asking for a UDRP or worse, a lawsuit). With such a beautiful hotel and website, it’s strange that they are opting for this cheap (and cheap looking) domain name.

In case you are wondering, the much shorter, easier to recall, and better looking on stationery domain name, Ravella.com, is owned by domain investment pioneer Gary Chernoff. To make it even easier for the hotel to try and acquire, the domain name is conveniently listed on Sedo, a leading domain brokerage and marketplace. They must keep in mind that Chernoff has owned Ravella.com for nearly a decade, so it obviously is an expensive and valuable asset.

I strongly recommend that the proprietors of the Ravella work out a deal with Gary to buy the Ravella.com domain name.

*** Update ***

I was just made aware that the hotel is marketing RavellaVegas.com to consumers, and it forwards to Ravella-at-Lake-Las-Vegas-Hotel.com. I was not aware that marketing materials use the shorter (and easier to remember) domain name.

Lorenzo International Limited Takes Aim at Tucows’ Lorenzo.com

Elliot Silver
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According to the  World Intellectual Property Organization’s website, it appears that Lorenzo International Limited has filed a UDRP for the generic, first-name domain name, Lorenzo.com, which is owned and operated by Tucows.

From the outset and without any specific information related to this case, I believee Lorenzo International Limited will have a difficult time proving it’s case.  At the present time, Lorenzo.com is being used by Tucows as a vanity email service, and the domain name appears to be a part of the company’s  NetIdentity suite of first and last name domain names. In fact, it wasregistered to NetIdentity prior to Tucows’ acquisition.

Tucows has already successfully defended a number of similar cases, including UDRP filings for:

Tucows has lost a few similar UDRP filings, perhaps giving hope to Lorenzo International Limited. In the  Aubert.com filing, there was a dissenting opinion. The  Ricard.com UDRP and the  Weidner.com UDRP were lost as well. The  Dunlap.com UDRP was terminated due to a lawsuit filed in Ontario.

In the Walls.com UDRP linked above, the company successfully defending its ownership while citing its use of the domain name in question, which to me, also seems to be applicable for Lorenzo.com:

“Since 1996, NetIdentity had been providing personalized e-mail blogging and web-hosting services through a collection of personal surname addresses.    NetIdentity had acquired thousands of surname domain names such as <smith.net> and including the disputed domain name <walls.com>.  Customers with hosted websites with NetIdentity are given third level domain names corresponding to their own first name and surname, e.g. <bill.smith.net>.    Netidentity had this secured over 70% of US surnames as domain names.”

Considering the similar circumstances between the Lorenzo.com domain name and the Walls.com domain name, I don’t see why the company shouldn’t retain the rights to Lorenzo.com.

In my opinion, it’s upsetting that a company can so easily try and claim rights to a generic domain name that is being used by another company for its business operations. Of course Tucows can easily afford the legal fees in such an instance, but it’s upsetting to me that Tucows needs to defend this domain name.

Did Zynga Acquire Rewardville.com?

Elliot Silver
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Rewardville.com source code

According to the latest domain sales report put together weekly by Ron Jackson over at DNJournal, Rewardville.com was sold last week on Sedo for $4,500.

If you visit the current Rewardville.com website, it forwards to a subdomain on Zynga.com. Zynga is the company behind popular social games such as Farmville, Cityville, Frontierville, Petville, and many other games (some of which don’t have the “-ville” moniker.

Although the website is not resolving, when I visit Rewardville.com, I get an error message that says “The webpage at  http://rewards.zynga.com/ might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address.” To me, that looks like the domain name is being forwarded to this Zynga subdomain, which does not appear to be resolving.

I am unsure if this is related, but there was  an article on TechCrunch at the end of November about American Express and Zynga teaming up. According to the article, “American Express is now allowing its customers to exchange their ‘membership rewards’ points for virtual goods and/or ‘game cards’ that can be redeemed for Zynga’s in-game currency.” Perhaps Rewardville.com will be used in relationship to this special partnership.

The domain name is currently privately registered, so there is no confirmation yet that Rewardville.com was actually acquired by Zynga. However, it would be strange for another entity to forward this newly acquired domain name to the Zynga website.

Thanks to David Bleaman for the tip.


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