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Today I read few articles and comments about IDNs, ccTLDs, and dot-US ccTLD.

I have no doubt that IDNs will be important in some countries (not all though) but it appears IDNs still have a long way to go. Perhaps IDNs will catch on much faster when ICANN implements everything for the IDN domain names. But I will cover IDNs in more detail in a separate post in future.

This post is about ccTLDs, and the potential of dot-US country code domain extension.

Here are couple of posts about ccTLDs in today’s domaining headlines:

I wish I had taken ccTLDs and IDNs more seriously:

http://www.ricklatona.com

More than anything I like the ccTLD names and I’m kicking myself in the ass for not having more of them.

Fortunately, there are still many opportunities left for everyone.

I think Rick is right on the target. Given his experience in domain sales, I will take his words at their face value.

With respect to .us I do like the future prospects for the American country code and have a large portfolio of them, but I would have to temper the characterization of how I view them that was posted by someone else in Latona’s comment section. They said I have been talking “passionately” about .us though I’ve actually written very little about the extension. However, when asked about .us (as I was recently by Forbes Magazine) I will say that I see a lot of potential there.

http://www.dnjournal.com

I agree with Ron’s comments and I see exactly what Ron sees in the .us ccTLD i.e. “a lot of potential”.

Why?

Because you can not go wrong with the ccTLD of United States where you have:

Read More

You probably already read many headlines at various domain blog sites about lay-offs at Oversee.net which is the parent company of DomainSponsor.com, SnapNames.com, and Moniker.com

Apart from its famous domain parking monetization division DomainSponsor.com, Oversee.net is a diversified full service company in the domain industry.

Here are some of the headlines from various domaining blogs and other sites:

Oversee.net cuts staff, blames economy:

http://www.socaltech.com

Oversee.net cuts 10% of Employees:

http://www.domainnamenews.com

Economy hits domainer Oversee.net, Lays Off 10 percent of Staff:

http://www.washingtonpost.com

Analysis: Oversee.net cutbacks a sign of the times:

http://domainnamewire.com

I think Domain-Name-Wire has done nice analysis of why the downsize happened.

Apart from what has already been said at the above sites about what happened and why it happened, I think one other important reason could be the emergence of new players in the domain monetization business. No doubt domain parking companies are still the bread and butter of many domainers, but we have seen new companies launched in last year or so that has different monetization models than pure domain parking. Some of these new players are: Read More

Are we still in the early states of the internet?

Have we seen all the power of the web?

Well, if we go by a latest article published in the Guardian news site, you will understand why we ain’t seen nothing yet. In fact, we are still in the early states of the internet.

Here are some quotes from the article:

If you thought the internet was cool, wait until it goes space age 

A founding father of the web says it’s come a long way, but its potential for worldwide change can and will be greater still. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk

Well, Vint Cerf is the founding father of the internet who has these views about how internet will change the way we live today.

Just imagine: Read More

The latest news is that CAPTCHAS are not very effective in controlling spam anymore.

Both Google Gmail and Microsoft Hotmail are having problems controlling spam. In fact one headline says that Gmail spam has almost doubled in last one month and bots are also breaking Homail account registration CAPTCHAS.

Check out this quote from an article on the Computer World website:

March 10, 2008 (IDG News Service) Spam originating from Google Inc.’s Gmaildomain doubled last month, indicating that spammers are still defeating the CAPTCHA, the distorted text used as a security test to thwart mass registration of e-mail accounts and other Web site abuse……….

The new statistics are another nail in the coffin for CAPTCHA, which stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart……

Microsoft Corp.’s CAPTCHA, used for registering accounts on its Windows Live Mail service, has also been cracked. Websense believes that the same group of spammers are responsible for breaking both Google’s and Microsoft’s systems.

http://computerworld.com

Its amazing how these automatic bots designed to register email accounts and write comments on blog sites are getting smarter all the time. For a while we all thought that CAPTCHAS are the answer to the automatic spam problem but I guess not anymore

I do however think that Read More

Alright, I just came across this story of a struggling domainer with $1,000,000 dream.

Here is part of what his press release says:

A once-failed domainer has announced his new business model to make a living entirely from buying and selling domain names at Seminarist.com.

“People are keep telling me to stay away from my computer, which apparently has given me nothing but a dumb and dumber look on my face. They all say that Internet won’t make you enough money to support a living. There is no way you can feed your family with just a dead typewriting machine with monitor and a telephone cable.” Said the struggling domainer.

Ever since he began his journey as a new domainer years ago, he lost thousands of dollars due to miscalculation on his domain name portfolio investment. However, he chose not to quit his dream job just yet. Now he’s starting all over again from the very beginning with his brand new blog, Seminarist.com. With 50% of the proceeds go to Kiva, one of the leading micro lending organizations on the Internet, he planned to raise $1 million completely from domaining.

http://www.prurgent.com

Well I can’t help but feel his pain. At the same time I like his humor and he is courageous enough to admit his failures.

I can imagine 1000s of domainers having big dreams like these. It is great to dream big. Every great invention was once dreamed by someone.

But at the same time, we should also be somewhat realistic. There is no harm in asking high prices for your domains. I do it all the time because my experience is that if Read More

Domain Industry is enjoying some good domain sales this year but parking income has declined significantly over the last one and half year. Many people have seen their revenues decline almost 50% from the old highs.

I have just finished reading this nice article by Sahar:

All in all, things are good, could be better, will be better.

And a piece of advice to Domainers, to those who are unsure what to do today. Back in 01 many thought the web was doomed. Few forgot to get the memo, got heavily into the domain business, bet the house, and won big. If you think the web is doomed it is time to stop investing in domains (as Franky says, “domain names ‘are the Internet“) however, if you believe in the internet, in advertising on the internet, in the Search industry and in the value of a click, maybe you too should bet the house today?

http://www.conceptualist.com

That is well reasoned yet pretty bold argument/question above.

I am of the view that if you can afford the renewals, then go ahead acquire some good domains. This is a great time to buy some more.

But if you are already feeling the pinch from the revenue declines, then Read More

The blame game has begun!

Check out the following from a story from the wired blog:

Despite a recent high-profile vulnerability that showed the net could be hacked in minutes, the domain name system — a key internet infrastructure — continues to suffer from a serious security weakness, thanks to bureaucratic inertia at the U.S. government agency in charge, security experts say. ………..

“The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, an agency of the Department of Commerce, is the show-stopper here,” Woodcock said…….

“If the root isn’t signed, then no amount of work that responsible individuals and companies do to protect their domains will be effective,” Woodcock said.. “You have to follow the chain of signatures down from the root to the top-level domain to the user’s domain. If all three pieces aren’t there, the user isn’t protected.”

http://blog.wired.com

While Bill Woodcock, research director at the nonprofit Packet Clearing House, may be right but that’s not the whole story. Something else is going on here. NTIA is saying that it is doing what it can and at proper speed.

We wrote about this massive security risk almost 3 weeks ago: http://dnblogger.com

One must wonder that why is it taking so long to fix this problem, especially when the Read More

Google has just posted a nice little article on their blog, sharing some simple tips about starting a website in multiple languages.

Have you ever thought of creating one or several sites in different languages? Let’s say you want to start a travel site about backpacking in Europe, and you want to offer your content to English, German, and Spanish speakers. You’ll want to keep in mind factors like site structure, geographic as well as language targeting, and content organization.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com

Then the artcile clears up some good points in these three main areas of web design and development:

1. Site structure

2. Geographic targeting vs. Language targeting

3. Content organization

The simplified key points are as follows: Read More

Here is how it goes:

Top-level domains: if you or I can, do we need Icann?

THERE WAS a time when the internet didn’t just have a father or a godfather: for a brief period, it had a fully fledged god. The god died and a private company, Icann, took his place. Now it’s time we asked – do we even need that?

http://www.irishtimes.com

Now that is such a powerful quote that it just sums up what most domain registrants think about ICANN.

ICANN have been a subject of lots of criticism from various constituents including domain registrants because of so many weird decisions it took, inefficiency it displayed, and how it failed to protect legitimate domain registrants from greedy corporations reverse hijacking their lawfully obtained domain names. While no one should register trademark infringing domains knowingly, at the same time there are almost no penalties against those who abuse the UDRP process to snatch away domains from their legitimate owners.

Price increases of various domain extensions is another constant problem under ICANN which always turns its back to domain registrants and cozies up with registries.

Here are some of the main concerns I always have about ICANN: Read More

Just came across this nice news article:

ICANN has just published a paper from its contractor PowerAuctions LLC, regarding the use of auctions to award new Top Level Domains (TLD) strings in case of contention.

I can understand what ICANN wants to avoid. In the past, it has been criticized for using the “beauty contest” model with the redelegation of the .net TLD. It was finally “redelegated” to its incumbent operator, although it was obvious to many industry observers that other bidders were as good, if not better on several points. There was a large part of subjectivity in the decision, simply because beauty criteria are a very personal matter.

 http://www.circleid.com

Even though it is a good first step, but still it doesn’t appear to be the only criteria to award the new generic top level domain extensions. ICANN can still ask for other things from the applicants. Given the track record of ICANN, I won’t be surprised to see them ditch this auction or at least make it irrelevant to overall gTLD selection process.

ICANN has shown the domain registrants how it can ignore them when it renewed the dot-com registry’s contract at a huge Read More

I just watched an IBM video about mobile web. It says that this is the first year ever when mobile users have passed the land phones worldwide. The mobile growth rates are stunning so far and also projections for the future are just amazingly great.

Lots of mobile sites are being launched worldwide including dot-mobi sites.

One thing that caught my attention is that slowly but surely, more and more mega brands Read More

A while back I made a couple of suggestions to ICA. I forgot all about those until today when I came across an old email from Michael Collins of ICA. I have thought over and refined my suggestions and I am going to list them in this post.

I would like to see what others think of these ideas and may be we can get few more suggestions from other domainers.

We all know that ‘Internet Commerce Association’ is looking after the interests of domain investors who have invested a lot of their time and money in making domaining as their business and livelihood. ICA is at the fore front of protecting the domain investors from the over-reaching greedy corporations and bad UDRP decisions which are taking the legitimate domains away. ICA needs funds to keep fighting for what is right. ICA needs funds to bring balance to the ridiculous UDRP/WIPO processes which overwhelmingly favors the complainants.

Here are some of the suggestions for ICA to raise funds: Read More

There have been a lot of discussion on domain forums and blogs regarding ICANN’s plan to open up the Internet domain system and let people create any kind of TLD they can think of. Some people said its a good idea to allow all kind of extensions, while majority said its only going to confuse the web surfers when you have un-limited number of domain extensions. ICANN’s plan to introduce “dot.Anything” is perhaps another way to raise more funds for it. No one knows how its all going to play out for sure.

I have just finished reading this interesting article by ECommerceTimes. Athough overall the article is well written with lots of content and research, yet I must say that some things are over exaggerated.

Here are some quotes from the article:

The latest ICANN plan to allow the global populace to assemble an entire domain name like www.yourname.yourname as their free choice is a revolutionary and timely decision. This now opens doors to cyber-brands like “my.ibm,” “hotel.chicago,” “it.jobs,” “play.poker,” “fly.usa” or “go.dell.” Applicants will submit a non-refundable fee of US$100,000 to $500,000 for each name idea, and businesses are already jumping to get started.

A new study estimates that this new registration process would create $33 billion in fees in the first three years. The prime beneficiary will be ICANN, which operates as a not-for-profit organization, but it still would have to deliver a highly structured, high-speed service  and meet global needs.

I have no doubt the ICANN is going to be a main beneficiary. But it appears that the $33 billion fees in 3 years’ figure is grossly over-estimated. There is no way this new extension process will raise $33 billion dollars. I hope its just a typo

Here is another interesting quote Read More

I have been trying my hands on developing to slowly add other revenue streams to our domain portfolio in addition to just domain parking. One other trend that caught my attention recently is drop-ship business model where people sell a product via a manufacturer/distributor without actually ever touching the product. That’s is quite a smart way to make money and caught me thinking about the possibilities.

Lately, I have been reading some success stories of domainers and others who have Read More