Month: May 2011

Categories
News Video Games

ModernWarfare3.com: Cashing in on the buzz of top-selling videogame franchise

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 concept art Sandman

Some companies just don’t get it when it comes to domain names.

Back in January I wrote about Activision missing out on Modern Warfare domain names.  Though the company does own ModernWarfare2.com, the company doesn’t own ModernWarfare.com and it missed out on a slew of other domain names early on. 

Not owning the exact match domain names hasn’t hurt sales, but it has certainly helped a few fans and domain owners cash in one way or another on the popularity of the first-person shooter game.   

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 Buzz

This week information and dates were leaked on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 to online gaming magazine, Kotaku.  Now, everyone is talking about Modern Warfare 3.  Though the buzz has been going on for several months, one might think Activision would buy the matching web address now that the cat is out of the bag.  Not likely.  

Even threats of killing a clown can’t change Activision’s mind as seen with ModernWarfare4.com – a controversy that made headlines. 

It doesn’t appear Activision has bothered registering any related domain names recently.  Besides, most have already been taken by other people- modernwarfarethree.com, codmodernwarfare3.com, callofdutymodernwarfare3.com and more, making it unlikely the company could find an easy-to-remember domain name specifically for Modern Warfare 3.

Then there’s callofdutymodernwarfare.com… 

The domain name is currently in a RedemptionPeriod status, meaning, the domain name expired, and the registry is waiting for 30 days as a precautionary measure before releasing it. 

But that doesn’t necessarily mean Activision will land the name.  You can bet hardcore Call of Duty fans are already eyeing it.  Since the beginning of May, several Modern Warfare domain names have been registered by individuals and organizations.  Here’s a sample: Call-of-Duty-Modern-Warfare-3.com, ModernWarfare3Fan.com, Modern-Warfare3.org, PlayModernWarfare3.com, NextModernWarfare.com, FreeCallofDutyModernWarfare3.com and ModernWarfarethree.com.

Categories
News

Reinvent’s Beat powers SoapOpera.com

Soap Opera

I reported back in early April that Kevin Ham’s Reinvent Inc had launched a new social media venture called Beat (http://www.beat.com/) shortly after announcing the shutdown of GoodNews.com, it’s group-buying service.

The idea behind Beat is to tell you how people feel about any topic, person, place or thing.   For example, what are your thoughts on what you can learn from soap operas?  One person commented that, “when you die…you don’t really. You can always come back as an evil twin.” 

If soap operas aren’t your thing though, there is plenty of other stuff to discuss on the site.  The current list of topics includes celebrities, do it yourself, music, secrets, self help, and over a dozen more.  

And Reinvent isn’t completely relying on visitors to click on the link from beat.com to leave their thoughts on soap operas, the company is using direct navigation.  Users who happen to type in soapopera.com, a URL that receives thousands of unique visitors per month according to Compete, will land on the beat.com soap opera web page [screenshot above].

With hundreds of thousands of category-killer domains at its disposal, Reinvent could rapidly grow traffic to Beat as it did with GoodNews.  At this point though, it appears Reinvent’s parked domains such as backpacks.com aren’t displaying any type of advertising for Beat.com.

While Reinvent works on developing Beat, the company has also been busy working on one of it’s more public acquisitions — ThreeWords.me.

Categories
News

Former SEAL operator lets several names expire like NavySEALTeam6.com

Navy Seal Team 6

According to his bio on the LinkedIn website, Mark Matzeldelaflor, was a SEAL operator with SEAL Team 5.  His skills include unconventional warfare, mobility operations, surveillance & reconnaissance, demolition, counter terrorism, wilderness survival and other military expertise. 

But along with his impressive military resume, are other interests like networking, business development, joint ventures, and other adrenaline inducing activities as he puts it.  

Mark Matz domain names

Although it’s not listed on his LinkedIn website, domain names appear to be another one of Mark’s interests, at a time when the popular Navy SEALs are getting a lot of attention from all over the world after Navy SEAL Team 6 killed the world’s number one terrorist, Osama bin Laden.

And it just so happens that Mark (who re-directs MarkMatz.com to his LinkedIn site) owns several Navy SEAL domain names, but the funny thing is, many of them have expired and are now pending renewal or deletion.

The SEAL domain names that expired on April 16, 2011 include: navysealteam6.com, ussealteam.com, sealteam4.com, navysealteamfour.com and even navysealteam5.com, the same team Mark served with up until 2009.

SEAL Team 6 is a hot property

I can’t imagine how a person could overlook renewing domain names like these, especially when news of the Navy SEALs has been on the front page of every website. 

But I’ll take a guess that they will be renewed before it’s too late.

I’ve reached out to Mark for comment and will update this post if I hear back.

Here’s a snippet of the Whois information of NavySEALTeam6.com,

Domain Name: NAVYSEALTEAM6.COM
      Created on: 16-Apr-08
      Expires on: 16-Apr-11
      Last Updated on: 17-Feb-11

Categories
News

Gambling.com’s mystery buyer revealed as KAX Media

KAX Media

The mystery buyer behind the highly coveted domain name gambling.com which was purchased in late April 2011 from Media Corp for $2.5 million is no longer a mystery. 

Now, just a week after the news was announced, eGaming Review has identified the buyer.  According to eGR, KAX Media is the new owner.

Chief Executive of KAX Media, Charles Gillespie, was quoted in the story saying: “It’s a classic private equity buyout where new management comes in and implements an aggressive growth strategy. KAX has an affiliate software platform that was purpose built to run this exact kind of site so the overlap with our current business and technology platform is nearly one to one.”

It doesn’t look like the sale of gambling.com, which sold for a fraction of the $20 million price tag that Media Corp acquired it for, is going to be make any domain sales charts in 2011, since the sale involved more than just the domain name.

As eGR writes, “Gillespie said KAX would now look to grow the portal business sold by Media Corp last week…”

[Hat tip goes to Eric Bianci of CalvinAyre.com]

Categories
News Trademarks Video Games

Next top ranking iOS game by Zynga, Hangman with Friends? Company registers hangmanwithfriends.com

Hangman with Friends

It appears gaming giant Zynga may have plans to develop the next top game to run on products like the iPhone and iPad.  

The name of the game – Hangman with Friends, which would follow its wildly popular Words with Friends game that was voted the #1 favorite app by Wired Magazine in 2009 and played by millions. 

Hangman, would likely work along the same lines as Words with Friends, the Scrabble-like word game that you can play with friends, but instead of Scrabble, players would compete by guessing a word or phrase one letter at a time.

Hangmanwithfriends.com

The company registered the domain name this week at GoDaddy according to Whois records.   Though the registrant information is hidden behind GoDaddy’s Private Registration service (Domains by Proxy), registrant information isn’t so private after all for customers paying for the service — as tweeted by Domain Name news in a recent Twitter message.  The same issue plagues many companies, not just GoDaddy.

GoDaddy’s account retrieval system currently displays a Zynga e-mail address (Email Address:****@zynga.com). 

Games with Friends

Newtoy, which was one of many companies acquired by Zynga, originally developed Words with Friends and Chess with Friends.  In October 2010, Words with Friends reached 10 million downloads on the App store.

Zynga looks to be expanding its Games with Friends brands.  In April, the company filed for a trademark on “With Friends” according to Trademarkia.