Domain Name Blog

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Viacom sued Google and its online video subsidiary YouTube for $1 billion Tuesday, the first big lawsuit against the online video site and its parent for copyright infringement.Experts predict more lawsuits to come.

Wow, could this be the beginning of the end for Youtube.com? Other media firms, notably CBS, say they see promotional value in having snippets of their programs posted on YouTube, Viacom has led the charge against YouTube since it feels entitled to advertising revenues tied to viewing of its programming. YouTube typically serves more than 100 million video streams a day.

Are these the signs of a deal turned sour between Google and Viacom? Well, only time will tell.

Meanwhile the Share price of Google finished the day down by 1% following the announcement!

The mainstream media is beginning to take notice of the RegisterFly disaster. BusinessWeek reports that Kevin Medina has regained control of the company after he had been fired by his former partners several weeks ago:

In a legal decision that stunned even the lawyers for the victor, a U.S. District Court judge on Mar. 8 handed over the embattled Web registrar Registerfly.com to the executive who was running it when it began to founder. Judge Peter Sheridan ruled in favor of defendant Kevin Medina, who had been chief executive of the parent company, Unifiednames, before he was fired by two other board members on Feb. 12.

Medina’s partners, including John Naruszewicz, who temporarily took over as RegisterFly CEO, had accused him of embezzling company funds and of being the primary cause of all of the registrar’s problems.

Here are some questions to ask a potential broker:
1. What are some domains you recently brokered? (They may not be able to disclose this.)
2. What are your fees? Do I have to pay anything if you are unsuccessful selling my domain?
3. What are a few examples of companies or individuals you will approach about my domain?
4. Have you ever sold domains to these companies?
5. Have you ever sold domains in the same industry as mine?
6. Do you require an exclusive contract? In other words, if I sell my domain through a different venue while you are brokering it do I still have to pay you? (Don’t be alarmed if the answer is ‘yes’. It’s reasonable for a broker to require an exclusive sales agreement.)
7. What is the duration of our contract? (This is especially important for an exclusive contract).
8. What will you do to promote my domain? (You’re not looking for someone who will just post it for sale on various forums. You don’t need a broker to do that!)

I cannot recommend a particular domain broker, but you can find a number of them on DNForum. DNForum has a section for requesting a domain broker.

I know it has been a long time since I blogged but i am back to get those tid bits rolling again. I have taken a short break from business.

Today I would like to share with you a few tips about how to find domain names with ovt. This is a method that I have used in the past to search for popular searches and register domains based on those keywords. To start with you will need to make use of the Google Zeitgeist Archive. Take a critical look at the words depending on the country that you would like to focus on. Say I have a keen interest on the German market, then I would go the German keywords then identify a word. Next I would go to the overture tool (there are plenty of them available on the internet for free e.g. eovt.com, ovtd.com). Put an extension at the end of the keyword then enter it onto the search box and click search. Don’t forget to select a country flag depending again on your country search. You will get search results for the select keyword with overture score. If the search results have a value then today might be your day. Next go your favourite registrar (my favourite is Moniker) then see whether that domain name has been registered. When you search for availability of the name don’t limit yourself to only one extension. Even if your preferred extension is already taken, check for the availability of other domains using same keyword. But to avoid redundancy in your investment you may recheck for the ovt for these additional domains. Last but not least there are several options for you: you may park your domains awaiting development. Sit down and watch the daily revenue. Good luck with your domain search.

The DNForum was today hacked by an alleged 7-year old programming prodigy from Iran. It is not yet clear what was the motivation behind the hacking, however a message posted on the site by the hacker provided some leading clues. Whether a domain subject to controversial discussions at the forum was the reason for the attack, it is without doubt.

Some say that some domain names have greater value than others. There is no single week that the DNJournal will ever miss to report on domain sales at Sedo, Afternic among others. They have even gone as far as to say that a domain’s value does not just have to be judged from the parking revenue point of view alone. But I would still argue that parking revenue is a potential way of telling what is a generic domain’s value. Dan Warner the COO of Fabulous has elaborated more on branded and branded domains in this article. Domain names with little or no parking revenue at all have a teriffic branding potential. Capital market evaluators usually have difficulties in telling the exact value of a domain name if it doesn’t have any overture score. There are many tools out there to find the overture score of most of the major ccTLDs e.g. Eovt and OVTD. The concept of overture score is important and at the center of purchase and sale of revenue domains. A domain’s overture score with extension is a more practical way of assessing what could be the current market price for a domain. Overture score works under the principle that it able to provide one with the number of times a keyword is searched on the search engines. Overture score without extension is not reliable at all from experience as most domains that i have ever registered on this criteria rarely have they performed well.

I have one problem with parking revenue domains. A lot of domains have gone into waste down the drain as domainers park them earning measly monthly revenue. Think of search names like YouTube.com, Ebay.com and Amazon.com. We all know how much value these domain names have in the market currently because the owners have taken the huge step to develop and advertise them to develop both massive and reliant followers. There is a feeling that many domainers have that just any other name obtained at reg fee is worth several grands. I think this is an optical illusion for many domainers which is misleading. Domainers need to turn to the next niche on the internet which will be developing sites. Webmasters have been doing very well lately with contextual ads. I wont hesitate to mention my role model Shoemoney.com whose empire of sites on the internet mesmerizes me.

Registrars who support .com domain names will use the Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) system by October 28. From VeriSign:

VeriSign plans on making an EPP Automated Batch Pool will be available in parallel with the RRP Auto-Batch Pool beginning on October 3. The hostname for the EPP server will be epp-auto.verisign-grs.com.

The VeriSign plans on decommissioning the RRP Protocol will be decommissioned from the .com/.net Production and OT&E Environments during scheduled maintenance on October 28, 2006. This will include decommissioning the RRP Auto-Batch Pool, per the July 27 notification.

Registrars must use EPP following the October 28, 2006 decommissioning maintenance and will no longer able to perform transactions using the RRP Protocol.

According to the new regulations there will be an additional step when attempting to transfer .com domains among registrars. Specifically, a piece of information called an EPP code (aka auth code, EPP key, transfer secret) must be obtained from the current registrar and submitted to the gaining one prior to approving with the latter.

This is going to be a real inconvenience especially when one wants to transfers domains in bulk. Additionally the whole process is an incovenience in my opinion that only serves to hurt those people with massive portfolios. It is a pain for the high end players but less for the small players.

Google finally purchased YouTube for $1.65b. YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal. Subsequently the purchase has put to end speculation over the net over who was going to buy the company. Other media giants reported earlier to be interested in purchasing YouTube were Viacom, Yahoo and AOL. The next question might be who owns YouTube? To answer this question, you need to mention three young men who came up with the initial idea about the site. They are Chad, Karim and Steve.
Chad, Karim and Steve (YouTube Video)Chad studied studied at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Steve and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The domain name “YouTube.com” was activated on February 15, 2005, and the website was developed over the following months. The creators offered the public a preview of the site in May 2005, and six months later, YouTube made its official debut.

For more information, read here.