« July 2005 | Main | September 2005 »

Domain Name Journal Hacked

Hackers have defaced the web site of Domain Name Journal, one of the leading news sources for the domain industry. The defacement, which included comments about domain hijacking and a claim of credit by an Iranian teen, was first seen Monday and remained online Tuesday morning. The hack of DNJournal.com comes days after distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on domain parking services including Sedo and ParkingSite.

  Posted by RichM August 29, 2005 | Permalink | Newsletter

August 27, 2005

With the net buzzing about GoogleTalk, the new IM and voice service from Google, the domain GoogleTalk.com is for sale, with listings at Sedo and AfterNIC. While Google owns the .net and .org TLDs, GoogleTalk.com was registered way back in December 2003 by "mossspot" of Apopka, Florida. Mossspot.com used to registered at that address, but is now owned by North American Internet, LLC of Knoxville, Tennessee.

Google recently recovered several domains based on misspellings of its name.

  Posted by RichM August 27, 2005 | Permalink | Newsletter

August 23, 2005

ICANN Watch notes that while the U.S. Department of Commerce is objecting to the creation of a .xxx top-level domain, the U.S. Patent Office has no problem accepting fees to issue a trademark for "sex.xxx." The registrant is Grant Media LLC, which owns sex.com and runs a pay-per-click advertising network.

  Posted by RichM August 23, 2005 | Permalink | Newsletter

Invention.com up to $650K on eBay

The domain name Invention.com is for sale on eBay, with a listed price of $650,100 with 13 hours remaining in the auction. It's hard to know whether this price will materialize, as all the bidding past $330,000 has been between a new bidder and one with two feedbacks. Nonetheless, there's been plenty of action, with 40 bids. If there's any serious last-minute sniping, the price could approach this year's top domain name sale of $750K (for website.com and property.com).

The seller, Tihan Seale, says in the listing that he has owned the domain for 79 days and it is averaging more than $5,000 a month in revenue from Overture ads. The previous owner was intellectual property attorney Michael Kroll, who continues to do business at invention.net (always register the additional TLDs for your brand!). The previous sale isn't listed among Domain Name Journal's top sales of 2005, so there's no way to know how much Seale figure to clear if the sale price holds up (i.e. the buyers have the money to back these huge bids).

  Posted by RichM August 23, 2005 | Permalink | Newsletter

August 22, 2005

Mark Cuban makes for good copy. But apparently not good enough for the New York Times, which clearly embellished a story about Mark Cuban and his investment in Register.com to make it seem as though Cuban was frothing at the mouth about Register's plan to sell itself to Vector Capital for $202 million. Sure, Cuban's not impressed with the deal, and will probably vote against it with the shares in his 13.2 percent stake. But the lead of the story observes that Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has a "reputation for screaming like a deranged fan from the sidelines during games." Author Andrew Ross Sorkin later closes by asserting that Cuban's "outrage - and that of his indignant followers - makes them all seem more like sore losers than corporate reformers." What's in between isn't much better.

If Sorkin had taken the time to read BlogMaverick, he would know that Cuban isn't shy about posting reporter's emails on line. Which he did, publishing the entire e-mail exchange with Sorkin, in which Cuban never appears deranged or even outraged. He's not happy with the Register deal, and he says so. But the "blood feud" between Cuban and the registrar was nowhere to be seen in his response to Sorkin's emails. Cuban sums up his reaction:

Read More

  Posted by RichM August 22, 2005 | Permalink | Newsletter

August 15, 2005

Domain Mart is offering a domain name investment service, modeled loosely on mutual funds that invest in stocks and bonds. Domain Mart's Alex Tajirian is offering to manage investments in domains and "domain-name based assets" (i.e. backorders) on behalf of clients with at least $50,000 to invest.

Until recently, domain name investing has been a specialized market in which the major players were industry veterans who practiced hands-on management. Lucrative deals for portfolios and individual domains have generated interest from venture capitalists and other outside investors, some of whom have staked Internet REIT to build a $250 million-plus portfolio. DomainMart's initiative offers a quick way into the market for investors who have substantial resources but limited experience buying and monetizing domain names.

That management service isn't free, however. Investors pay a 2% up-front "load fee" ($1,000 on a $50,000 account) plus a fee of $150 an hour for investment analysis (capped at $500 per investment). DomainMart also gets 5 percent of monthly revenue from the account. The domain names and assets are registered in the name of the account holder. See the prospectus (PDF) for additional details.

"Accounts are managed by experts in the field and each is tailored to the risk tolerance of the Account owner," says Tajirian, DomainMart President and CEO, who calls the service "a venue for high net-worth investors who wish to participate in the generous returns that domain name investments offer."

  Posted by RichM August 15, 2005 | Permalink | Newsletter

August 14, 2005

Go Daddy CEO Bob Parsons has taken exception to comments by Network Solutions CEO Champ Mitchell in an interview with news.com, which included comments about Go Daddy. Parsons has responded on his weblog, offering a different take on domain statistics for the two registrars, and challenging NetSol to a public comparison of customer counts:

Both Go Daddy and Network Solutions use the same public accounting firm. I challenge Mr. Mitchell to allow the accounting firm to examine both of our records and to provide a report we can make public, that will attest to our number of active customers. If Mr. Mitchell agrees to this challenge I think he will find out that the number of customers at The Go Daddy Group is far from "only a fraction" of those at The Network Solutions Group of companies.

  Posted by RichM August 14, 2005 | Permalink | Newsletter