Archive for March, 2011
Biggest domain sale of 2011 nearing completion – Media Corp announces year-end results, Gambling.com update
Perhaps the biggest domain name sale of 2011, Media Corp’s gambling.com, is getting ready to make headlines.
Just hours ago, Media Corp announced its final results for the year ended 2010 through a press release.
While the company showed a better overall performance for its business than the previous year, and gross profit increased by 456%, what’s on the minds of many in the domain name and gaming industries, is what’s going on with the auction of gambling.com?
According to the press release, here’s what Media Corp had to say about gambling.com.
- 2010 Business highlights– Removal of the Gambling.com Google penalty, Re-launch of Gambling.com website
- Online Publishing–The business of the publishing division has continued to be challenging during the year. As announced post year end we are undertaking an auction for the sale of Gambling.com. There have been a number of bidders and the Directors anticipate the auction process to be nearing completion at which point an announcement will be made. The Board is also considering the sale of other underperforming publishing assets and this review will continue through 2011.
- Current trading and prospects– The Directors are hopeful of a successful conclusion to the auction process for gambling.com which should strengthen the cash position and balance sheet of the Company and provide capital for further expansions.
Gambling.com, the auction process
Though it’s not 100% official, the sale of gambling.com will almost certainly be more than a pure domain sale. A website has been established on the domain since 1997. Gambling.com has even sold before in 2005, when Sedo brokered the blockbuster deal for $20MM.
Media Corp put the domain gambling.com up for sale in November 2010, as it says, to fund acquisition opportunities following approaches from a number of online gaming companies. In hopes of getting the best sales outcome, the company appointed Sedo, the World’s leading domain marketplace, to handle the sale.
Media Corp announced its first quarter 2011 results at the end of January, and indicated that a sale for gambling.com would complete during the second quarter of the financial year (which, it didn’t).
However, expect a lot more news on an impending blockbuster deal in the very near future.
One potential buyer, who had been rumored to be interested, is billionaire Calvin Ayre who acquired the domain name slots.com in 2010 for $5.5.
Amazon tablet to be called Scratchpad? Domain name registered [UPDATED]
There have been lots of rumors of an Amazon Android tablet.
TechCrunch has been speculating for months that Amazon could very well be working on their own device to compete in the tablet space. Last week, Amazon’s Android App store launched, and shortly after, TechCrunch argued that Amazon needs to get cracking on its own tablet.
Well, things looks more promising for an Amazon tablet.
According to the latest domain registrations by Amazon’s Legal Department, the device may be called the “Amazon Scratchpad”.
Created on…………..: 2011-03-25
Expires on…………..: 2012-03-24.
Record last updated on..: 2011-03-25.
http://whois.domaintools.com/amazonscratchpad.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/amazonmwsscratchpad.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/mws-scratchpad.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/mwscratchpad.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/mwsscratchpad.com
News of these domain registrations hasn’t come out before now.
Here’s a look a the Whois record for amazonscratchpad.com.
[UPDATE Mar. 30th, 2011, 7:25PM EST: The original story above has set off a flurry of activity on major technology blogs and news sites. Shortly after it went online a reader had already indicated "Scratchpad" was being used for Amazon's Marketplace Web Service in the comments, but that didn't stop a number of major sites running the story and crediting this site.
Story credits included CNNMoney, The Next Web, and Business Insider (ran two stories). SlashGear and Gizmodo also chimed in.]
[UPDATE 2 Mar. 29th, 2011, 9:41 PM EST:. The Next Web writes, "The fact that these tools have been around for years and the inclusion of MWS in the name is a dead giveaway: if Amazon does release a tablet, it won’t be called the Scratchpad — unless their legal department has just pulled off a clever stunt in misdirection."]
[UPDATE 1 Mar. 29th, 2011, 9:35 PM EST:. Reader Brent Nau said in the comments, "Looking into this a bit, "MWS" refers to Amazon Marketplace Web Service. Looks like the reference to "scratchpad" is geared to a sandbox area to run tests against the API possibly"...]
Google Inc. files domain name dispute over Google TV typo — googletg.com
Google Inc. has filed a complaint over the domain name googletg.com with WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization.
The domain name appears to be a typo of Google’s own googletv.com, which re-directs to the Google TV home page located at http://google.com/tv. According to Compete, a site that provides free information for every web address on the internet, the typo doesn’t even get enough traffic to be statistically relevant.
A look at Whois records shows the name currently registered to a, xuyecheng.
Over the years Google has filed dozens of cases at WIPO and won. As far as back as 2000, Google won wwwgoogle.com, but the company also goes after its other brands like vietnamadwords.com which it won in 2010.
Googletv Domain Typos
A number of variations of googletv.com such as googletv.info and googletv.org are registered to Google, however, many of the typos are not.
The Domain Typo Finder provided by DomainTools, gives a clue as to what has been registered by individuals or organizations other than Google.
Once you type in the url googletv, results show dozens of typos already registered, and in many cases, to the same registrant.
For example, “Song Bin”, is the registrant for wwwgoogletv.com, gogletv.com, googetv.com, gooletv.com, and gooogletv.com.
Another possibility for the domain dispute, if not over a typo of googletv.com, is over it’s country domain google.tg, for the country of Togo.
Stradivarius.com sold: New owner pays 60,000 euros ($84,000+ USD) at Sedo
A Stradivarius today can be worth worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars.
In 2006 for example, a Stradivari Violin sold for a record $3.5 million at Christie’s N.Y. The 1707 Stradivari violin known as “The Hammer” set a new auction record for a musical instrument of any kind, according to Bloomberg.
Now today, Sedo GreatDomains is reporting the sale of the domain, stradivarius.com, for approximatley 60,000 euros.
While the sale of the domain name, stradivarius.com, won’t necessarily set any records, as of today, the sale lands itself in DN Journal’s Top 100 YTD sales for 2011, near the top-10 of the year.
Notable instrument-domain sales
There have been other notable “instrument” domain name sales in the past. In 2008, trumpet.com sold for $35,000 and Piano.net sold for $29,000.
However, it’s guitar-related domain names that appear to fetch some of the highest prices on the aftermarket. Ultimateguitar.com, which was purchased by the operators of ultimate-guitar.com, sold for over $100,000 in 2007. In recent years, sales have included: electricguitars.com ($42,700.00), usedguitars.com ($35,000.00), bassguitar.com ($30,000.00), electricguitar.com ($25,000.00), and plenty more.
Buyer of Stradivarius.com
It’s unclear what will become of the domain name, stradivarius.com. The new registrant shows as the owners of krescendo.it, according to DomainTools.
KRESCENDO Multimedia, which operates the domain krescendo.it, is a web design company.
Whether the domain will be used to brand the company as a signature of “excellence” for its services or whether the domain is being managed for a client, at the moment, the stradivarius.com website shows nothing more than an “Under Construction” page.
MilitaryGamer: After losing out on “Game of the Year”, Activision doesn’t renew domains: gameoftheyear.com [More]
Dotweekly Editor Jamie Zoch wrote an interesting article this week about spying on company domain names using DomainTools. The story got me thinking about looking at the name servers of companies like Activision so I could post an article on my other blog, militarygamer.com.
I found something interesting, while doing some research on activision.com. The company has let several of its domain names expire: gameoftheyear.com, thegameoftheyear.com, computergameoftheyear.com, pcgameoftheyear.com, and game-of-the-year.com.
As I pointed out on MilitaryGamer, gameoftheyear.com was first registered in 1999, and now the domain name appears over on the Pending Deletes List provided by Pool.com. Thegameoftheyear.com is still registered to Activision, but the status of the domain is set to ”Redemption Period”, meaning the name has about 30 days before its released by the registrar and either available for public registration or sent to one of the drop-catching services like Pool.
Activision has yet to win a Spike VGA Game of the Year award.
And while one has nothing to do with the other necessarily, had Activision won “Game of the Year”, renewing the domain probably wouldn’t have been overlooked.
According to a rough estimate provided by Compete, the domain gameoftheyear.com does receive a few hundred visitors per month in the latter part of the year.
A look at Archive.org, shows that gameoftheyear.com had a fully developed website online at one point, that was operated by Vivendi Universal Games, which eventually merged with Activision.
You can read more over at the MilitaryGamer blog post.
Anyone who wants to learn more tips and tricks, should pay a visit to DotWeekly. Jamie Zoch the Editor, has been in the domain industry since 2004 and writes helpful guides on domain names.
Garry Chernoff posts another top-10 domain sale in 2011 with BlueJeans.com selling for $150,000
On the heels of the top domain name sale of 2011 that saw gamesforgirls.com sell for $500,000 to Gamegos, Garry Chernoff has confirmed by email today that he has sold another domain name which cracked the Top-10 year-to-date sales chart tracked by Ron Jackson’s DN Journal.
The domain name, bluejeans.com, changed hands earlier this week on March 24, and, no, it wasn’t sold to Levi’s.
The domain which fetched $150,000 by Garry’s NetIncome Ventures, was sold to Blue Jeans Network, a start-up that provides cloud-based conferencing services. Blue Jeans Network has been using bluejeansnet.com as its site’s web address.
“Blue Jeans” is probably not the first thought that comes to mind for cloud-based conferencing services, but for branding purposes, owning the domain should certainly help the company’s online efforts to run a business online.
Garry Chernoff 2011 Domain Sales
Gamesforgirls.com and bluejeans.com aren’t the only domain names that Garry Chernoff has sold in 2011 that rank in the top 10 sales of the year, so far to date.
In early March, Garry sold the domain, doorhardware.com, for $85,000 to Dynasty Hardware.
How would you prepare for the end-of-the-world? Someone buys the domain for $20,000
While some people are saving up enough money to last them until December 2012, someone has spent $20,000 for the domain name, endoftheworld.com according to Sedo GreatDomains.
The domain name is currently in Sedo’s Transfer Service, so it won’t be known for some time what’s in store for the name. But it appears a lot of people are interested.
The Google Adwords: Keyword tool, a free service that shows the number of actual Google search queries, reports that nearly 100,000 searches for the exact keywords “2010 end of the world” were performed last month alone. Over 60,000 searches were performed for “end of the world” and roughly 33,100 searches were performed by people for the phrase, “the end of the world”.
The “2012 phenomenon” suggests the end of the world will occur on December 21, 2012 (which is the end of the Mayan calendar), but that hasn’t stopped people from buying domains.
In July 2010, the domain name 2012.net, sold for a whopping $49,999 at AfternicDLS. 2012.org, sold for $10,000 via Sedo in 2010. And what of the fate of the domain 2012.com? Registered to a Sunil Gupta in Paris, France, the web address doesn’t resolve.
Mike Berkens’ Worldwide Media reports new sales activity: Lovemybody.com, Freewarranty.com, and more
Mike Berken’s Worldwide Media publicly reported sales of five new domain names totalling nearly $100,000 USD.
The reported sales include a pair of domains, electronicsignature.com and electronicsignatures.com, for $50,000. Electronicsignature.com was purchased for $1,298 in 2006 at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C East 2006/Moniker.com Live Domain Auction - the very same auction where Flowers.mobi was purchased by T.R.A.F.F.I.C co-founder Rick Schwartz for $200,000 and the three-letter domain, own.com, sold for a mere $115,000 to National A-1.
While flowers.mobi went onto sell for significantly less money in 2010 at just $6,500, if own.com went up for sale, it would likely sell for a tad more than $115,000 now that Oprah Winfrey has launched the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) on own.tv. According to a rough estimate provided by Compete, site traffic to own.com jumped from a few thousand visitors per month to well over 50,000 unique visitors in January 2011 when Oprah launched her network.
Worldwide Media’s other new publicly reported sales included lovemybody.com for $20,000, freewarranty.com for $15,000, and nationalart.com $6,500.
Just counting publicly reported sales, Worldwide Media has easily reached its target of $750,000 – the cost of the company’s estimated domain registration fees in 2011. The company’s top two recent domain name sales (within the last 4 months) include visitberlin.com for $230,000 and visitstockholm.com for $77,000. Worldwide Media also reported the sale of discountbags.com earlier this year for $50,000, tying it for the #3 top domain name sale with electronicsignature.com/electronicsignatures.com.
Symbolics.com: The first .com domain in the world turns 26-years-old Tuesday, March 15
This Tuesday the domain name symbolics.com will be 26-years-old.
While news of the anniversary isn’t frontpage this week, last year at this time, symbolics.com was celebrating its 25th birthday and was the subject of much discussion. News outlets ranging from Wired to BBC covered the story. To commemorate the anniversary, Verisign even set up a website (http://www.25yearsof.com/) and threw a .com gala event in San Francisco in May that celebrated the impact 25 years of Internet innovation had on society.
XF.com Investments
In 2009, XF.com Investments, a domain holding and development company run by Aron Meystedt purchased the domain, making the milestone even more exciting for the domain name community.
Aron has a track record of acquiring some amazing domains.
In late 2010, XF acquired tablets.com for an undisclosed amount. Tablets.com is well positioned to become one of the most valuable domain names in 2011. Over the weekend, Apple reportedly sold nearly one million iPad 2 tablets. ”Gartner research reported this week that tablet sales will grow from 15 million in 2010 to 54 million in 2011 and that laptop sales will slow down dramatically”, reported CNET.
More Birthdays
Since last March, a number of other .com domains have celebrated their 25th anniversary including: bbn.com, think.com, mcc.com, dec.com, northrop.com, xerox.com, sri.com, hp.com, and bellcore.com.
More domain names will celebrate their 25th birthday this year. Here’s a look:
03/19/1986 IBM.COM
03/19/1986 SUN.COM
03/25/1986 INTEL.COM
03/25/1986 TI.COM
04/25/1986 ATT.COM
05/08/1986 GMR.COM
05/08/1986 TEK.COM
07/10/1986 FMC.COM
07/10/1986 UB.COM
08/05/1986 BELL-ATL.COM
08/05/1986 GE.COM
08/05/1986 GREBYN.COM
08/05/1986 ISC.COM
08/05/1986 NSC.COM
08/05/1986 STARGATE.COM
09/02/1986 BOEING.COM
09/18/1986 ITCORP.COM
09/29/1986 SIEMENS.COM
10/18/1986 PYRAMID.COM
10/27/1986 ALPHACDC.COM
10/27/1986 BDM.COM
10/27/1986 FLUKE.COM
10/27/1986 INMET.COM
10/27/1986 KESMAI.COM
10/27/1986 MENTOR.COM
10/27/1986 NEC.COM
10/27/1986 RAY.COM
10/27/1986 ROSEMOUNT.COM
10/27/1986 VORTEX.COM
11/05/1986 ALCOA.COM
11/05/1986 GTE.COM
11/17/1986 ADOBE.COM
11/17/1986 AMD.COM
11/17/1986 DAS.COM
11/17/1986 DATA-IO.COM
11/17/1986 OCTOPUS.COM
11/17/1986 PORTAL.COM
11/17/1986 TELTONE.COM
12/11/1986 3COM.COM
12/11/1986 AMDAHL.COM
12/11/1986 CCUR.COM
12/11/1986 CI.COM
12/11/1986 CONVERGENT.COM
12/11/1986 DG.COM
12/11/1986 PEREGRINE.COM
12/11/1986 QUAD.COM
12/11/1986 SQ.COM
12/11/1986 TANDY.COM
12/11/1986 TTI.COM
12/11/1986 UNISYS.COM
Charlie Sheen gets control of CharlieSheen.com domain name, launches website
A week ago, I was the first domain blogger to write about the celebrity domain name, charliesheen.com and celebrity domain disputes, since the former star of Two and a Half Men had begun his public meltdown.
As I had written in the story, Jeff Burgar of Alberta Hot Rods, was the registrant of the name, and had been involved in a number of celebrity domain disputes.
Now, Jeff Burgar no longer owns the name, Charlie Sheen does, and he already has a website online.
Jeff Burgar had been involved in a number celebrity domain disputes. Cases had involved Pamela Anderson who won pamanderson.com, Ashley Judd who won ashleyjudd.com, catherinecookson.com (transferred), ianfleming.com (transferred), direstraits.com (transferred), tomcruise.com (transferred), larryking.com (transferred), jrrtolkien.com (transferred), and michaelcrichton.com (transferred).
The web address charliesheen.com (according to DomainTools) is registered to Evan Spiegel of LAVELY & SINGER PC (Attorneys-At-Law) who represents other Hollywood celebrities.
Earlier today, the celebrity gossip news (blog) Celeb Dirty Laundry, wrote a story about the unveiling of the new site. As Celeb Dirty Laundry pointed out, Charlie tweeted about gaining control of the domain name on Twitter:
Charlie Sheen online achievements
In case you missed the recap of some of the recent Charlie Sheen online antics/achievements that was posted in my previous story, here they are again. Now you can add winning control of charliesheen.com to the list.
- Twitter: Since joining Twitter on March 1, 2011, Charlie Sheen who tweets using the name @charliesheen, has nearly 2 million followers at the time of this story. Guinness World Records announced he set a new record for fastest time to 1 million followers, which he achieved in just 25 hours and 17 minutes.
- Prank: CharlieSheen.com for $275,000: A person posted a video of himself fooling his friend into believing that he registered charliesheen.com for $12, then tricking him into thinking they’re selling it for $275,000. Watch how it unfolds.
