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News

Twitter buys the domain re-tweet.com: Plans to take on Tweetmeme?

re-tweet

Twitter is the new owner of the domain name re-tweet.com.

The popular social networking company took ownership of the domain from David Quinlan on June 13, 2011. 

Domain Name………. re-tweet.com
  Creation Date…….. 2009-02-07
  Registration Date…. 2011-06-11
  Expiry Date………. 2013-02-07
  Organisation Name…. Twitter, Inc.
  Organisation Address. 795 Folsom Street
  Organisation Address. Suite 600
  Organisation Address. San Francisco
  Organisation Address. 94107
  Organisation Address. CA
  Organisation Address. UNITED STATES
UPDATED DATE: 2011-06-13

According to Flippa, the name sold at public auction for $150 on March 28, 2011, then on March 29 the registrant information was placed behind GoDaddy WHOIS privacy.  On June 3, WHOIS privacy was removed and the name showed David Quinlan as the registrant. 

It appears the domain was acquired at Sedo, where the name was parked. 

Retweet.com (without the hyphen), once a service that aggregated Twitter stories, sold for $250,000 in 2010, also via Flippa.  The web site is now a video monetization platform, and shows no signs of its original platform.

Could this spell more trouble for Tweetmeme?

In 2009, Twitter launched its retweet feature that helps users quickly share tweets with followers.  Though the company has a Tweet button, it has yet to launch an official Retweet button to compete with Tweetmeme’s, which is currently displayed across hundreds of thousands of sites.

I’ve reached out to David Quinlan the seller for comment and will update this post if I hear back.

UPDATE: June 14, 2011 05:29 PM EST:  Matthew Panzarino, has updated The Next Web story.  Looks like Twitter has no plans for the name.  “Twitter has responded to this story to let us know that they have no current plans for the future of ‘re-tweet.com’. The owner of the domain offered to give it to Twitter and they now manage it as part of their ‘brand protection strategy’,” wrote Matthew in an update.

Discussion: TechCrunch and The Next Web.

Categories
Disputes News WIPO

Twitter finally files domain dispute over typo – Twiter.com

twiter

Micro blogging site Twitter has filed a domain dispute over the web address twiter.com with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) this week.

The domain has long tricked visitors who typed in the address by sending them to a confusingly similar looking site.  Currently when you type in twiter.com in your web browser, you’ll be taken to a website (screenshot above) that tries to lure you into giving your personal information.

In August 2010, twiter.com reached a high of 125,000 unique visitors according to a rough estimate by Compete.  Recorded traffic dipped after the URL began redirecting visitors to other sites.

According to DomainTools, the name was first registered in 2004, nearly 2 years before Jack Dorsey launched the site.  However, the registrant information has changed over the years.

The respondent in the case is currently hidden behind WHOIS privacy.

Registration Service Provided By: PBCRESELLER
Contact: +85.1234567

Domain Name: TWITER.COM

Registrant:
    PrivacyProtect.org
    Domain Admin      
    ID#10760, PO Box 16
    Note – All Postal Mails Rejected, visit Privacyprotect.org
    Nobby Beach
    null,QLD 4218
    AU

The only other case filed to date by Twitter Inc with WIPO involved twittersearch.com back in 2010, a domain dispute that wasn’t decided by WIPO,  but the company still was successful in having the name transferred. 

As I reported in February, though no decision had been officially announced by WIPO and the case was cancelled, the registrant of twittersearch.com is now Twitter, Inc.

Discussion:  Financial Post, TheDomains, Asian Correspondent, The Next Web, and the The Inquisitr.

Categories
News Video Games

Garry Chernoff: One $45 domain purchase, one $500,000 domain sale

gamegos

When I asked Garry Chernoff to share something special about his latest sale of adnet.com for $60K, he told me he purchased the domain from the previous owner for just $1,000. 

But if that doesn’t blow your mind, then maybe this piece of news will.

You remember the $500,000 domain sale of gamesforgirls.com reported earlier this year, don’t you? 

“Gamesforgirls.com was purchased from a drop catching registrar (Signature Domains) in 2001 for $10. + the $35 reg fee. $45. total,” Garry Chernoff wrote me by email today.

Gamesforgirls.com sold to Turkish casual game producer Gamegos, as I first reported here.  The sale is still in the top 5 publicly reported domain sales of 2011, currently tied for the #3 spot puzzle.com.

Categories
News Trademarks Video Games

Zynga gets smarter with trademarks and domain registrations, more secretive

Hanging with Friends

It finally looks like Zynga is getting a little bit smarter in terms of domain name registrations and trademark applications. 

Normally, a closely guarded secret by gaming companies, many of Zynga’s yet-to-be released and recently released titles are anything but secret.  But that’s now changing, as the social gaming giant has been on a buying spree of late and is planning for an IPO, it’s getting savvier with its domain name registrations and trademark filings. 

Trademark and yet-to-be released game titles

It’s European trademark filing for Rewardville pinpointed the company as the buyer of the matching domain, before the game was even launched to the public.  Other trademarks have backfired, like that of “ville” which broke here. 

For its latest launch of Empires & Allies, a combat strategy game, Zynga was patient.  The company didn’t file for trademarks in the United States until the same day it unveiled the game on June 1, 2011.  Its European trademark was filed June 2.

Before the Empires & Allies trademark filings though, the company filed other trademarks for unknown titles that news sites and blogs have yet to pick up — like the trademark applications for Mojitomo or Patentville. 

Adjusting the timing on trademark applications is one thing, but the company finally caught up on domain registrations too.

Zynga’s domain name hints

When I wrote in early May that Zynga registered the domain name hangmanwithfriends.com and I predicted a Hangman game on the iOS (which it launched a month later), the registrant information was hidden behind GoDaddy’s Private Registration service (Domains by Proxy).  However, the registrant information wasn’t so private after all — as tweeted by Domain Name news in a Twitter message, GoDaddy’s service needs some work. 

After using GoDaddy’s account retrieval system in combination with the domain, a Zynga e-mail address (Email Address:****@zynga.com) was publicly displayed.

It was the same story for farmvilleexpress.com. 

While GoDaddy might not address the issue with its Privacy service, Zynga has.  The company is sticking with GoDaddy to host many of its names, but its now using an email address with a “yahoo” extension.  If you check hangmanwithfriends.com or farmvilleexpress.com today, you’ll see this (Email Address:****@yahoo.com).

If you thought it was hard before to break a Zynga story, things just got a little harder as its more closely guarding its trademarks and domain registrations.

Categories
News

Looks like Fiverr was the buyer of Fiver.com for $70,000

fiverr

No big surprise here, but it looks like the folks over at Fiverr, the popular website that lets people sell gigs for $5, are the new owners of fiver.com.

Though the domain remains behind WHOIS privacy at GoDaddy, it recently started forwarding to fiverr.com, and the domain name is hosted on the same IP address.

Back in late May, Sedo reported the sale of Fiver.com for $70,000, which led to obvious speculation that Fiverr acquired the domain name.  

Fiverr hasn’t garnered much attention in the news lately, and traffic to the site plummeted according to a rough estimate by Compete from 260,000 visitors in March 2011 to just 80,000 visitors a month later.

Considering the amount of traffic fiver.com was receiving before the acquisition (estimated in the thousands), it may have been just what Fiverr needed.