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Wooot the Hell?

Elliot Silver
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9

I was looking through a UDRP decision today regarding the domain name Wooot.com, which was filed by the company that owns the popular Woot website. It didn’t seem like a real surprise that the company won the decision, but the result of the decision was pretty surprising.

Having established all three elements required under the ICANN Policy, the Panel concludes that relief shall be GRANTED.

Accordingly, it is Ordered that the <wooot.com> domain name be CANCELLED

Instead of giving the domain name to the complainant (which happens almost all of the time when a UDRP case is won, the panelist (Hon Nelson A Diaz (ret.)) opted to cancel the domain name instead. To make things even stranger, there was no reasoning supplied by the panelist for doing this.

I hope the complainant is good at catching drops – or they don’t get this panelist on the next go-round if it’s picked up by another party.

Thanks to George for the tip.

I Am Giving Away Two FREE Tickets to the GeoDomain Expo

Elliot Silver
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Geodomain expo
Offering 2 Free tickets to the 2010 Geodomain Expo

I have an exclusive offer for readers of my blog: I am giving away two FREE tickets to the Geodomain Expo in New Orleans next week, April 28-30.   I can’t attend this year’s conference, so I am offering my tickets to my readers (I’m going on a vacation to Paris, so I can’t really complain).

The Geodomain Expo is one of the best domain conferences and I think it’s the best conference for networking. The #1 reason people attend the conference is to meet other successful domain developers and the GeoDomain Expo is the place to do it.   If you are interested in my tickets (and are sure you can attend) please post a comment in the comment section.

I will create a list of those who are interested in Excel and work with Associated Cities Executive Director Patrick Carleton who will use a random number generator to choose the people that will get the free tickets.   The winners will be chosen on Sunday, April 25th.

**Update**

I think it’s pretty obvious, but the only thing included is the conference ticket – no hotel, airfare, food or any other expenses :).   Also, this ticket can’t replace a previously purchased ticket.

Scottsdale.com’s “City in The Box” Platform Part of Major Development/Marketing Deal

Elliot Silver
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4

I’ve known about these plans for several weeks, and I am happy to share the press release from Fred Mercaldo and his team at Scottsdale.com, who have been working hard to make this a reality. This puts Fred and his company at the forefront of the geodomain industry, as they will have more pure city .com domain names under their management than just about any other company.

My company’s Burbank.com will be one of the first websites released under this marketing and development deal, and I am excited to be a part of it. I am confident Fred and his team will be able to drive considerably more revenue with Burbank.com.

Fred will be speaking at the Geodomain Expo in New Orleans at the end of the month, and he will be available to answer any questions city .com domain owners may have.

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GeoDomain Development Ventures, LLC announces development of over 40 Pure City.com Sites in Major Development/Marketing Deal

Scottsdale.com’s “City In The Box” Software to power sites; CitiesPlanet.com formed to Manage Advertising and Marketing Duties.

Scottsdale, AZ — April 21, 2010 — Fred Mercaldo, Managing Partner of Scottsdale.com, LLC and newly formed GeoDomain Development Ventures, LLC announced today a major software development and marketing deal that includes over 40 City.com sites.   “Our proven software platform (www.CityInTheBox.com) will power the sites; once they are launched, CitiesPlanet will perform all marketing and advertising functions, and will procure local partnerships and contracts that will monetize the sites.   We look forward to a successful launch, and our goal is to grow to 150 pure City.com properties under management within 24 months”

Based in Scottsdale, CitiesPlanet (www.CitiesPlanet.com) has worked with numerous creative technology and digital marketing specialists to develop a marketing platform that will successfully reach out to local business in each City.com area.   Combined with a robust CRM system, each business will receive a custom media kit with their specific company featured, giving business owners numerous advertising and partnering options with their local, official City.com branded site.   “Our success rate so far has been 15% to 30% response rate, depending on which Directory category is being marketed, which is incredible”, says Mercaldo.   “In addition, our system features a “nurture” campaign in the event a business has not responded to our first offer, and will automatically continue to send the opportunity to the business owner 3 additional times”.

The majority of the initial City.com sites are owned by State Ventures, LLC.   “Fred Mercaldo has the vision to foresee the future of local Internet advertising and the marketing talent to accelerate the shift of local advertising to city portals,” says Nat Cohen, President of State Ventures, LLC. “Fred is one of the stand-up guys in the Geo Domain industry.   We are very pleased to be partnering with Fred in helping him realize this vision for the industry.”

The City.com properties included in the initial launch feature a very diverse group of demographics and economies.   “Everything from Kalamazoo.com to Burbank.com to Sausalito.com to GreatFalls.com; each City will have its own distinct characteristics and opportunities.   We look forward to the challenge to make each City.com property a household name in each community” says Mercaldo.

CitiesPlanet will also handle all of the marketing and advertising responsibilities for Scottsdale.com, Chandler.com, Mesa.com, FountainHills.com, Tempe.com, and ApacheJunction.com, all of which have been launched and are connected within the Arizona market.   Mercaldo recruited former Travelocity and RazorGator executive Mark Wilson to head CitiesPlanet.   “Mark brings a successful track record of accomplishment to the table, combining both marketing expertise and technology capabilities, which is exactly what this project requires”, says Mercaldo.   The remaining City.com’s will begin launching the first week of May, and will continue to roll out through July until all 40 are established and successfully monetized.   Mercaldo states, “Our entire staff, led by Becky Kelley, has worked tirelessly this past 5 months to get all of these sites ready to go.   We are very pleased to be able to finally announce these partnerships, as it has been on the drawing board for quite some time.   We are ready to go!”

For more information on GeoDomain Development Ventures, LLC, contact:

Fred Mercaldo, 602-859-3786, fred@scottsdale.com

For more information on Scottsdale.com, LLC and “City In The Box” software, contact:

Becky Kelley, 480-343-3654, Becky@scottsdale.com

For more information on CitiesPlanet, contact:

Mark Wilson, 602-363-3345, Mark@CitiesPlanet.com

State Ventures LLC owns and develops many geographic domain names and web properties, including Maryland.com, OceanCity.com, Annapolis.com, Pennsylvania.com, Virginia.com, NorthCarolina.com, Missouri.com, and Minnesota.com.

Domain Intelligence: Domain Registrations Can Reveal Plans & Strategy

Elliot Silver
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0

One of the bigger news stories this morning in the mobile and social media space was that the popular Farmville game may be coming to the iPhone, iPad, and/or Android sometime in the near future. The impetus for these news stories? Apparently the company where Farmville gamemaker Zynga registers its domain name became the owner of farmvilleandroid.com, farmvilleipad.com, farmvilleiphone.com and farmvillesms.com.

Although it’s quite reasonable to think the domain registrations could simply be defensive in nature so cybersquatters don’t purchase them (like the parked and privately registered iphonefarmville.com appears to be), these domain registrations could give away valuable strategic intelligence to competitors. Likewise, it could also contribute to cybersquatters speculating further on a company’s online strategy, leading to speculative typo domain registrations even prior to launch.

With Domain monitoring tools from companies like Domain Tools, it’s getting more difficult for large companies to keep upcoming launches and product upgrades top secret. Instead of sticking to corporate domain regulations that many companies have that require them to register domain names at a particular domain registrar, it would be smart to buy them with privacy guard at other popular registrars like Name.com, Godaddy, or Register.com, where they would be lost amongst the millions of other domain names.

That is… unless they want the publicity and leaks for “top secret” plans and strategies.

Yahoo Buys Me.Me for MeMe.Yahoo.com

Elliot Silver
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1

Meme.yahoo.com

According to a press release that hit the wires this morning, Yahoo has acquired the domain name Me.me from the country of Montenegro’s .me ccTLD domain registry. The terms of the sale weren’t disclosed, but Sedo handled the transaction through its domain broker Jeff Gabriel.

Yahoo plans to use Me.me to enhance the brand and brand recognition of its social networking site meme.yahoo.com. Yahoo has been making a bit of news in the domain space of late, with some recent sales of domain names like MusicVideos.com, LookUp.com, and FreeComputers.com. In addition, Yahoo also sold Contests.com at a domain auction several months ago.

Yahoo does not own the domain name Meme.com, a domain name owned by a software company called The Meme Factory. Only time will tell if Yahoo decides to rebrand as Me.me instead of meme.yahoo.com, which could then make the Meme.com domain name all the more valuable. That would also seem to be good news for domain owners who have invested in good .me domain names (disclaimer: my companies do not own any .me domain names).

Yahoo does seem to have a tendency to use its primary Yahoo.com domain name for its projects like Kickstart, Shine, HotJobs, and others that all redirect to their own Yahoo subdomains.

Not All “Generic” Domain Names are Generic

Elliot Silver
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10

When I first started buying domain names in around 2003, I didn’t understand the legalities of registering domain names that contained trademarks. In fact, I registered a few domain names that were infringing on the marks of other companies. After getting a cease and desist letter from one company and giving the registration fee domain name to them, I decided I didn’t want to take a chance with this type of name.

In going through my portfolio to try and sell some names to end users, I realized that I have a few names that aren’t as generic as I once thought.

I own a number of city-keyword domain names, and I started looking through them to sell a few to end user buyers. I own quite a few cityMortgage.com and cityMortgages.com domain names. One is a city in Texas with somewhere around 100,000 people, and I am sure many of the city’s homeowners have mortgages, and there are a number of companies offering mortgages in this city.

In doing some research, I found that there is a bank in Maryland that uses the Texas city name + Bank (I don’t want to draw attention to the name I own, so I am leaving the bank name out). Without getting into legalities since I am not a legal expert, it would probably be okay to sell this City Mortgages.com name to a mortgage company in Texas, but if I pitched it to the Bank in Maryland, they could very well claim trademark infringement. I suppose they could do that anyway, but having an email from me offering to sell the name would make their case stronger.

Point of this post is that when you do reach out to end users to sell generic domain names, you need to be sure that the domain name is actually generic. I almost sent this bank an email assuming they were located in the city rather than using the name as their trademark, and had I not seen the Maryland area code on the site, I probably would have sent it.

There are many generic terms that are used by companies to form distinctive trademarks, and there is a whole lot of gray area, so use caution.

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