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Disney & Marvel Make Domain Mistakes

Elliot Silver
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10

Dear Disney,

I grew up watching your movies and television shows and appreciate all you do for kids everywhere. Since you’re based in Burbank, California, I also did quite a bit of research on your company for my website, Burbank.com. However, some of your recent domain registrations are a disservice to children who will inevitably type them in incorrectly, and they will quite possibly end up seeing unrelated advertising offers at best, or pornography at worst.

Let me remind you about an incident involving typo domain names and children. Have a look at the Wikipedia page for John Zuccarini. There are people out there who will register typo domain names intentionally, and when they do, they can control what the visitor sees. Whether it’s pay per click advertising or porn, it will cost your company a fair amount of money to get those domain names back via the legal channel, when you can simply register the typos now.

I noticed that some of your new registrations contain not only one – but sometimes even two hyphens. By using these domain names, you are just asking for trouble. In addition, some of them are tough to spell and some have additional words that are more descriptive than actually necessary. For example, if you need to add “movie” to the domain name, do you really need “themovie”?   This is especially silly when both versions were available to register – and you only took one!

I know that good domain names are tough to find. However, if you settle on a long tail domain name that has hyphens, at least buy the same domain name without the hyphen – especially when it’s available to register for the same price.

Ordinarily, I would register one or more of the typo domain names to give to you at cost, but I don’t want to deal with your legal team who might think I have devious intentions. If you care about protecting children from viewing inappropriate material, and you’d like to know which domain names I am referencing, contact me.

Regards,

**

Update:

I spoke with someone in the Marvel Legal Department, and hopefully they will register the most concerning domain name ASAP.

GoDaddy Price Increase Announced for .Com & .Net Domain Registrations

Elliot Silver
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13

Godaddy LogoI just received an email from GoDaddy, the world’s largest domain registrar, and the email announced a price increase for .com and .net domain registrations. As of July 1, 2010, the price of .com domain names will increase 7%, while the price of .net domain names will increase by 10%. The email cited VeriSign’s price increase as the reason.

I am sure that other registrars will send similar emails to their customers, so keep this in mind if you want to renew and/or extend the length of your domain registrations prior to the price increase.

A 7% increase may not seem like a lot of money, but if you have a portfolio of 1,000 names at Godaddy and pay the full price of $10.69, a 7% increase means you will pay $11.44 per name, an increase of $750 for your entire portfolio.

Here’s the email that was just sent by Godaddy:

===

On July 1, 2010, VeriSign ®, the registry for .COM and .NET, will increase prices – .COM will go up 7%, and .NET by 10%.

The increase will be passed to registrars like Go Daddy and then, unfortunately, to consumers like you.

As of July 1, we will be forced to raise registration and renewal* prices for these two popular top-level domains.

If you wish to avoid this price increase, you can renew your domain names by June 30 and add another year to your current expiration dates. You have the option to register or renew for multiple years and lock in long-term savings. Of course, should you have any questions, please give us a call at 1-480-505-8821.

Thanks as always for being a Go Daddy customer.

HomeAway Acquires BedAndBreakfast.com & Inns.com for Undisclosed Sum

Elliot Silver
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4

Inns.com & BedAndBreakfast.com HomeawayTechCrunch is reporting that HomeAway has acquired BedAndBreakfast.com for an undisclosed sum. HomeAway is a vacation rental company that operates a number of web properties, including VacationRentals.com, VRBO.com, and several other popular websites. Homeaway has close to a half a billion dollars in funding.

BedAndBreakfast.com is a website featuring over 10,000 bed and breakfast properties found throughout the world. The website provides reservation services and reviews of its listed bed and breakfasts. According to Compete, the website receives over 370,000 unique visitors per month.

In addition to the BedAndBreakfast.com property, I spoke with a representative at BedAndBreakfast.com who confirmed that HomeAway also acquired Inns.com as part of the deal. Inns.com is similar to BedAndBreakfast.com, but it caters to clients looking for inns rather than bed and breakfasts. According to Compete, Inns.com receives somewhere around 10,000 unique visitors per month.

Both companies are based in Austin, Texas.

Oversee Announces DomainFest Prague

Elliot Silver
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7

Domain FestDomainFest Global is set become a fully “global” conference. For a couple of weeks now, I have heard rumors that Oversee was thinking about – or planning to have a DomainFest conference in Prague, Czech Republic, and this information has just been confirmed by the company. DomainFest will be held in Prague for two days, from October 6 – 7, 2010 at the Intercontinental Hotel.

I have been planning to attend the Traffic conferences in Vancouver in June and Hong Kong in November, and I may add this one to the list. Prague is a city that I’ve wanted to visit for quite some time, and now I should be able to make a “business case” to attend.

Full details can be read in the Oversee press release:

DomainSponsor ®, the domain monetization business unit of Oversee.net ® and organizer of the DOMAINfest ® series of conferences, said today that it will expand the highly regarded franchise into Europe with a conference in Prague, Czech Republic.

The two-day event will be held Wednesday and Thursday, October 6 and 7, 2010 at the landmark Hotel Intercontinental located in the heart of one of Europe’s most beautiful cities. Building on the success of last month’s event in Santa Monica, California, the October meeting will continue DOMAINfest’s focus on increasing the value of Internet real estate and will offer a rich setting for extensive networking involving topics relevant not only to domain investors from Europe, but also from around the world.

Subject-matter experts will be invited to facilitate the networking sessions on Wednesday, October 6th.   The first day will also include a Moniker ® Premium Domain Name Auction powered by SnapNames LiveTM technology.   Day 2 will be focused on social activities in and around Prague designed to provide the kind of shared experiences that can contribute to the building of long-term relationships between DOMAINfest Europe attendees.   Conference details, including the agenda and speakers, will be released in June, 2010.

“DOMAINfest Europe is an excellent opportunity for European publishers, online marketers, and domain-related service providers to meet and discuss ways to increase the value of domain names, which we like to refer to as Internet real estate, ” said Peter Celeste, Senior Vice President of Oversee.net and General Manger, Monetization Services. “The DomainSponsor team looks forward to becoming more engaged with the European domain investor community, and this forum is the perfect venue to exchange ideas and build relationships.   As with all DOMAINfest events, we will be offering affordable registration rates to encourage maximum participation from a wide range of talented professionals from both inside and outside our industry.”

In January, 2010, DomainSponsor hosted a highly successful DOMAINfest Global ® conference in Santa Monica, California that attracted more than 600 professionals from a variety of internet-related industries.   The conference included a variety of sessions over a three day period, including a keynote fireside chat with Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com. This recent DOMAINfest conference also featured a first-ever PITCHfest contest, structured networking sessions, and moderated general sessions with experts from the world of investment, advertising, and marketing. Videos of each session, including the keynote fireside chat, can be viewed at http://www.domainfest.com.

In November 2009, DomainSponsor announced the establishment of its European head office in Frankfurt, Germany with Joerg Schnermann as General Manager.

Johns Wu, Founder of Bankaholic, Interviewed on MO.com

Elliot Silver
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4

Johns Wu is most famous for building a website on Bankaholic.com and eventually selling it to BankRate for a reported $15,000,000. Wu is a well-known Internet entrepreneur, and he is knowledgeable about generic domain names. This afternoon, I read an interview with Johns Wu on MO.com, with considerable focus on domain names. In fact, there was one very interesting answer about an upcoming project:

“I’ve been working on getting a GRAND SLAM in the works. My idea of a grand slam is: category killer domain + SEO [Search Engine Optimization] traffic + monetization. In the next couple years, I’m hoping to build a web property in the same league as Hotels.com and Wine.com. I’ve been in talks with domainers who own valuable portfolios, so hopefully this will happen sooner rather than later ;)”

The interview offers a great looking into the entrepreneurial mind of Wu, and I recommend that you head over to MO.com to read it.

MO.com is a website that interviews entrepreneurs from across all industries around the world. The website focuses on the habits and methods of entrepreneurs, learning what makes them tick. MO.com is becoming a great resource for entrepreneurs to learn from each other, share what works and what doesn’t, and connect with other entrepreneurs in a mutually beneficial way.

Brian Null, the founder of MO.com is familiar with the entrepreneurial mind because he is a successful Internet entrepreneur and domain investor. Brian has owned, operated, monetized, helped broker, or sold domain names like OfficeSupply.com, GolfCourses.com, Dance.com, Hockey.com, Saws.com, and RestaurantReviews.com.

Planning to Attend the GeoDomain Expo? Better Book Now

Elliot Silver
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0

Have you been thinking about attending this year’s GeoDomain Expo put on by Associated Cities and scheduled to be held in New Orleans from Wednesday, April 28 through Friday, April 30, 2010? Today would be a good day to sign up, as the price will increase by $200 beginning tomorrow. Book now to get the early bird rate of $795.

In addition to the price increase tomorrow, it’s also important to keep in mind that the conference is being held during a very popular weekend in New Orleans. This year’s GeoDomain Expo coincides with the 40th anniversary of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Hotel rooms are being reserved quickly and the rates continue to increase.

The GeoDomain Expo is the most focused domain conference, and it’s one of the best conferences to network. One of this year’s keynote speakers is Hotels.com co-founder David Litman. If you own or operate geodomain names, this is a conference you should certainly consider – and now’s the time to do it.

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