Voke.com will serve as the web site for Voke Entertainment Technologies, which currently displays a landing page with its company name and logo.

Although there were a number of great domains to choose from on the list, VOKE.com, a four letter domain, sold for $35,000 – placing the sale price higher than many three letter .COM domain sales, such as XMG.com, SUS.com, UDE.com and dozens of other sales reported in 2010.

VOKE.com was purchased by Voke Entertainment Technologies, a company that incorporated in March 2010. 

About Voke Entertainment Technologies

Based in New York city, the company provides Internet and Software, Internet services, packaged and custom software, web site development, and web site hosting services.

At the time of this story, nothing more than a 1-page web site is online.

VokeEntertainmentTechnologies.com was registered in January by a different registrant who currently parks the domain at GoDaddy. 

VokeEntertainment.com isn’t registered.

In April 2010, Apple released the iPad and has since sold millions of units. 

Good news for Apple, but bad news for Apple when it comes to domain names. 

The company’s only iPad domain: iPad.co.  A name the company acquired in July, but doesn’t use.

Instead Apple settles for using the web address apple.com/ipad – the top search result in Google for the keyword “ipad”.

Will Apple buy iPad.com?

In January, TechCrunch writer Robin Wauters wrote an article title “Apple Doesn’t Own A Single iPad Related Domain Name“, but despite all the attention the article attracted, nothing has changed.

Though Apple purchased the domain name iPhone.com for seven figures  from businessman Michael Kovatch months after it released the iPhone, there haven’t been any signs of the same happening with iPad.com.

For now, the owner of iPad.com continues to receive thousands of visitors per month, spiking well over 100,000 visitors some months.   Traffic that appears to be for the most part, type-in traffic.  As of today, ipad.com displays a Coming Soon page.

iPad.net is a developed web site, that hosts a blog dedicated to news, reviews, tricks, accessories, and more centered around the iPad.  It too, is not affiliated with Apple Computer in any way, but shows up on the first page of Google Search results for the keyword ipad.

Who knows what will happen with the .com domain? 

Maybe Apple has no interest in buying the .com domain, or maybe a plan is in the works to turn another domain owner into an instant millionaire as other writers and bloggers have suggested in the past.

Apple isn’t the only big company that doesn’t get domain names, as Mike Berkens points out in a story posted today, MySpace is another company that has difficulties.

The .CO registry tweets @dotco and regularly engages buyers and interested parties through social networking channels including Facebook.

The number of .CO web addresses registered to date has topped 460,000, edging closer to half a million registrations.  According to the registry’s home page (www.cointernet.co), the domain hit 468,435 registrations putting it on pace to surpass half a million web addresses by mid-September 2010.

In late July, .CO registrations passed the 300,000 mark.

The .CO Home Page

The .CO registry regularly credits news outlets and bloggers for coverage of the domain.  And it heavily uses Twitter and Facebook to reach out to .CO owners and interested parties.

The .CO Founders Program, an initiative designed by the .CO Registry to engage early adopters (called ”.CO Founders), continues to highlight Founder websites.  

One of the latest additions to be showcased on Opportunity.co includes Professional Makeup Artist Pamela Taylor who set up shop on MakeUpArtist.co.   

At 468,000+ registrations in a few short months, brings it closer to one of it’s domain rivals .US, which according to DailyChanges.com only has 1,743,690 web addresses registered in total.

Porn.co, a web address that has been enjoying type in traffic for months, has launched a web site branded as YouPorn.co.  Taking advantage of .com websites of the same name.

Porn.com and YouPorn.com are popular online adult destinations.  YouPorn.com has an Alexa Traffic rank of 67, making it one of the Top 100 sites on the web today.

In 2007, the domain name Porn.com sold for $9.5 million, in a deal brokered by Moniker.  The domain Porn.com was purchased by Detroit-based MXN Ltd., in a transaction that was covered by several news outlets because of the big ticket price.  

The website Porn.com receives monthly traffic in the millions.

The owner of Porn.co, also owns names like Xvideos.co.  Xvideos.com is another Top 100 website on the net, even ahead of YouPorn.com.

What will be the fate of Tweetup.com as a domain, is anyone's guess. But with the number of incubator companies and projects that Bill Gross is involved in, it wouldn't be surprising to see Tweetup.com be built into something else.

Bill Gross and Idealab have been busy making changes to Tweetup.com, a domain name the company acquired in March 2010 for an undisclosed amount. 

Today, Idealab announced that Tweetup.com was changing the company’s name to Postup.com, a domain name purchased on Sedo for $14,900 in early May following the launch of Tweetup.com. 

Idealab Doesn’t Pigeonhole their Business

The switch is more than just a name change.  Postup will include not only the best of Twitter, but it will also include the best of Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks.

Since the acquisition of the domain name Postup.com, the URL forwarded to Idealab’s home page. 

But over the past few days, the name stopped resolving altogether, before today when the company announced Tweetup is now Postup.

We regularly monitor certain domain names, both for stories and relevance, and Postup.com has been on the list for months.  Because we own Tweetups.com, tracking the progress of Tweetup.com has been of interest.  We were also the first website to report on the acquisition of Tweetup.com by Idealab.  In March, we received several substantial offers suddenly on our internet property Tweetups.com which we had acquired on the aftermarket in 2009.  The influx of offers made us curious to see what other Tweetup-related domain owners were up to, and when we typed in Tweetup.com, the URL redirected us to Perfect Market, a company of Idealab that helps publishers create value from their online content.

The domain name Postup.com sold on SnapNames in 2006 for $3,600 – so it was a decent return for the seller, who had an inkling the name would be worth something more someday.  And it’s certain to be worth a whole lot more with a business model behind it.   

Oddly enough, our story in May has a mocked up picture of Postup.com, that looks a lot like the site you see online today.   While we mistakingly guessed PostUp would be used for a “Best of Blog” search platform, Idealab has taken it much further, with the inclusion of several popular social networking sites.

What about @Tweetup?

Following the purchase of Tweetup.com, Idealab had also acquired the @Tweetup URL, despite Twitter’s TOS that forbids selling Twitter usernames. 

Idealab posted a message on the @Tweetup page earlier today, with the news of the name change to Postup.  However, instead of @Postup, the company has gone with @PostUpInc.

We’ve changed our name to PostUp as we start making some big changes! Please start following us on @PostUpInc for announcements and news.

Interestingly, Idealab chose @PostUpInc for the new company’s twitter username, but hasn’t registered PostUpInc.com – a name that is still available for hand registration at the time of this story.  While it’s not really necessary to own the name, spending a few bucks to purchase the domain that matches its Twitter username might be a good idea, since some visitors to the company’s Twitter page may type PostUpInc.com into their web browser.

Domains ending in UP

There have been a number of significant domain sales ending with the keyword “up” in 2010.  GearedUp.com and MailUp.com, both sold on Sedo in 2010 for about $14,000 each, neither name went to Idealab. 

Instead of creating a separate brand for targeting each social network, Idealab has gone the route of creating a single umbrella brand under Postup. 

As far as other relevant domains that could fit into Idealab’s brand, LinkUp.com is a popular job search engine that has appeared in publications such as PC Magazine. 

While FaceUp.com is owned by Mike Berkens of MostWantedDomains.com.

It’s interesting how many different types of domain names Frank Schilling owns. 

I’ve come across NA Media landing pages often when typing a web address directly into my browser.   It seems like you can’t stumble too far on the internet without encountering one of the hundreds of thousands of domains owned by Frank Schilling.

While doing some research on the Pizza.net story posted before, I stumbled across the news of Burger King showcasing their latest menu addition: The NY Pizza Burger.  

The Pizza Burger will be unveiled  at the WHOPPER(R) Bar location in Times Square that is opening in early September.

BK not too interested in domains off it’s menu

As many companies do, Burger King announced the news without actually owning the domain. 

PizzaBurger.com is owned by none other than Frank Schilling.  Not that owning a food product domain by a company like BK is all that important, especially considering that each slice of the pizza burger packs more grams of fat and calories than a regular burger.

In fact, many of the items on the BK’s menu aren’t even owned by BK, or for that matter registered.  At the time of this story, TripleWhopper.com, SideGardenSalad.com, even FlameBroiledBurgers.com aren’t registered.

The point is, it’s really amazing not only the number of domains owned by Frank Schilling, but the variety.

According to the website: Amazon Thunder produces and sells quality Amazonian fruit products to domestic and international markets on both a wholesale and retail level.

Todd Reum, the new owner of the Pizza.net domain name, is using the web site to cross-promote another website he owns and operates: AmazonThunder.com. 

Amazon Thunder, created in 2005 by Todd Reum and his wife Jeanette Reum, specializes in acai berry products.  According to the website’s About Us page, Amazon Thunder: “sells quality Amazonian fruit products to domestic and international markets on both a wholesale and retail level.”

Pizza.net

If you haven’t paid a visit to Pizza.net in awhile, the site is undergoing changes.  Though much hasn’t changed on the website from the previous owner’s content, a new banner appears on the home page with the catch slogan: EAT PIZZA - then detox with Amazon Thunder.

Media Options

Todd Reum acquired Pizza.net for an undisclosed amount, in a deal that was brokered by Andrew Rosener of Media Options. 

And apparently the husband and wife team have done well with their first business, considering the purchase of Pizza.net is rumored to be one of the top 5 .NET domain sales of all time according to Media Option’s Press Release.  And the couple stands to do well with Pizza.net.  Right now pizza.net appears on Page 1 of Google, for the search term: Pizza.

Last month we switched Fusible.com from a custom-built web site to WordPress, a much needed makeover.  The move to WordPress gives us access to hundreds of thousands of plug-ins and tools and gives us the flexibility to make changes without paying  for development costs to perform routine maintenance or upgrades.

This is a progressive task, that should take another few weeks as we manually upload hundreds of stories to the new platform here on WordPress. 

Everything will return to normal, including our coverage of the Domain Industry, once we have finished.

When we’re short on time, it’s challenging to get stories posted, so if you have ideas, send all your Domain Story tips to webmaster at fusible dot com or submit your story tip here.

Bill Kara's Virtual Pets - "The place for free, virtual pet gaming. If you like to Adopt, dress up, care for or play with your favorite zoo, farm, exotic, house and ocean pets, you can bet that we've got the games for you."

This week Bill Kara’s VirtualPets.com hit the first page of Google Search for the term “virtual pets” – a term that is searched nearly 50,000 times per month, globally.  

In late June,  Bill Kara launched a beta version of the website VirtualPets.com - a place where casual gamers can adopt, dress up, care for, or play with their favorite zoo, farm, exotic, house and ocean pets.  

According to Compete, type in traffic to the domain name was just over 2,000 visitors per month.  After being online for less than a month, traffic more than quadrupled as the site quickly rose in the search rankings.   The website VirtualPet.com reported over 70,000 visitors in July.

The launch of VirtualPets.com closely followed the successful launch of CookingGames.com – another casual gaming property that quickly catapulted to the top of Google Search rankings. 

And Bill Kara isn’t done. 

His next massive project is under way:  DressUp.com.

A Little Friendly Competition

Bill Kara, who runs Hallpass Media, the casual game company that acquires and develops killer game properties is enjoying a little friendly competition from another successful and likeable domain developer – Eric Borgos of Impulse Communications. 

AdoptMe.com versus VirtualPets.com

Eric Borgos’ website AdoptMe.com sits near the top of Google Search for the keywords “virtual pets” – a site that has hit as many as 60,000 unique visitors per month in the past year.  

Though AdoptMe.com doesn’t include any keywords in the domain name, Eric Borgos pointed out in a recent comment, that Google gives the site a lot of weight for other reasons:

What is interesting is that I have never done any SEO work for Adoptme.com. It has been online for 10 years as a leading virtual pets site, and Google seems to give a lot of weight to that. – Eric Borgos

Eric Borgos' Adopt Me - "a fun website where you can adopt free virtual pets such a dogs, cats, horses, turtles, monkeys, snakes, and fish, and then take care of them online..."

Eric even had an idea to sell an AdoptMe stuffed animal, so buyers could play with their virtual pet online and offline.  The idea became reality as he was able to get a plush toy in stores, but in order for stores like Toys R Us to keep it on the shelves, the toy had to be a hit as Eric points out, and unfortunately the idea was a little before it’s time.  Fast forward a few years later and companies like Webkinz that are based on the same model are a huge hit with kids.  

Eric’s story “How I invented a product and got it sold in stores” has the details.

Like Bill Kara, Eric also develops out casual gaming properties and properties like Dumb.com, and one of Eric’s most notable milestones, is his sale of Bored.com that included 170+ other sites for a grand total of $4,000,000. 

BuyBirdhouses.com – $5,000
SkinWrinkles.com – $5,000
DatingService.net – $7,000
CheapFlightsNow.com – $1,000
GetGlasses.com – $4,000
Thugsta.com – $750
LivePayments.com – $1,000
Audioaddicts.com – $750
Wecare4u.com – $500
AdsByOwner.com – $250
Babeshows.com – $3,500
FindBabyNames.com – $1,250
WebsiteNews.com – $300
SexyFashions.com – $1,500
GotoBermuda.com – $10,000
NutritionWatch.com – $2,500
SportsBets.net – $3,000

As for whomever the winner turns out be in the search engines, both Bill Kara and Eric Borgos demonstrate what domain names, development, and hard work can do for you.

The 4th iPad winner in Verisign's HowDoYou.com contest, a teacher at a school, writes they wouldn't be able to do their job without the Internet.

On June 28, Mike Berkens also covered the story. 

Since then, a voice over actor who uses Wiivoice.com, a man who started one site that turned into a network of 2,500 sites, a person who has connected with friends through new media, and other people have been the weekly winners of Verisign’s HowDoYou.com contest that is running until August 31, which gives people the chance to win one of ten iPads, $2,500, $5,000 or $10,000. 

Since mid June, one lucky winner has picked up an iPad for telling Verisign how .com changed their lives. 

To enter, all you have to do is submit a short video or essay. 

Verisign has offered an opportunity for anyone with a .com story to be heard – and to win some publicity and prizes in the process.