Domains Arena

Three-character domains never lose its value, even if they are numbers or mixed strings. The proof of this is the recent sale of 363.com (dificult to get one of these these days though), which was sold on SEDO this week thru SEDO for a total of 41.000 $.

But this is not the only sale of the week. Recently SEDO reported the following transactions vía their site:

completecommerce.com       14,000 USD
leadership-excellence.com          800 EUR
123sex.com                         2,000 USD
stackit.com                         15,000 USD
youjoy.com                         1,888 USD
medicalsupplysuperstore.com        1,200 USD
eboca.com                          2,000 EUR
kräutershop.de                    1,500 EUR
online-rabatt.de                   1,000 EUR
vanityunits.com                    6,300 USD
doorman.us                         950 USD
localeads.com                      2,000 USD
realestateparty.com             2,500 EUR
tvzine.com                         2,100 USD

Finally, after years of negatives and discussions, ICANN's general counsel has decided to consider the approval of the new .XXX that's intended to use for adult oriented websites. According to Kieren McCarthy words, the counsel announced a statement in which they declare the .XXX extension will be approved today .

This statement was read at the start of the public forum at ICANN's 38th meeting in Brussels by John Jeffrey, the organization's general counsel. 'The statement said that the Board accepted the results of an independent review panel that the Board had made the wrong decision back in 2007 when it denied the application.', announced Kieren McCarthy.

So, it seems finally we will have .XXX extension despite the big amount of oppositors to this name.

Success or failure?

A lot of new extensions have been launched in recent years and almost all them have been a complete failure (ever in my oppinion of course). Clearly .XXX extension has a real sense, but why a person would invest in a .XXX name when they can use the generic ones also for erotic websites.

Yes, most of big .com adult names are already in use but this also happens in the rest of topics and hasn't saved other extensions from failure. Definitely we will need to wait to see, but in my oppinion this extension (it reminds me too much the .MOBI one) comes too late.

SEDO has just announced the celebration of a Gambling specific auction where names as FireRoulette.com.com, GettingLucky.com, BingoGames.be or Bluffen.com will be auctioned. The Gambling/Gaming market stills growing every day and there have been reported some good recent sales, the best one being poker.org at one million dollars.

Some interesting names in action include:

bingoanima.com
bluffen.com
casinoinindiana.com
fireroulette.com
gamblingonlinefree.com
lottowindow.com
playstation2roms.com
bingocompany.co.uk
pokerexperts.co.uk
einzelwette.de
casinosinternet.es
casino€opeo.es
worldofpoker.org
buylotto.net
winload.net
yourbet.net
bingogames.be
rätsel.tv
apostar.tv
pokergames.tv
bettings.us

The auction is now open and you can place you bids at http://sedo.com/us/sedo/sedocomwager/

SEDO has just released their report for first quarter of 2010 where we can read they experienced an increase of 18,6% in their sales in comparison to the last quarter of the past year. A total of 11.942 were sold for a total of $23,177,253.

Is not strange that the king, dot COM, stays at the top with more than 42 % of all sales on SEDO, and it features also the 76% of all gTLD sales. Also, people has bought more domains than the past quarter.

And even more, dot DE sales have also increased comparing to the last report. The exact numbers: 1802 compared with 1775 during Sep-Dec 2009. The number of .CO.UK domain names sold also have increased by 46%. It seems the stronger ccTLD get even stronger.

You can find more details in the full report, which has been published by SEDO in this page .

A new Moniker and SnapNames auction is about to start. The pre-auction bidding is now open for the upcoming premium domain name auction that’s going to be hosted at DOMAINfest in Fort Lauderdale. The premium domain auction is going to start at 4:00pm EDT on May 13,2010. This is a real premium domain auction with some really good names such Dating.com, Jeans or WiFi.com.

Here are some of the featured names in the premium list:

Dating.com
WiFi.com
Hobbies.com
Jeans.com
Relationship.com
Safety.com
Arbitration.com
Therapists.com
Detox.com
TreasuryBonds.com
HardDrives.com
BoardGames.com
SecondMortgage.com
SingleWomen.com and SingleMen.com

You can visit the official website of the fest at www.domainfest.com

A Kurdish company has recently applied for the domain .KURD or .KUR generic Top Level Domain in order to represent the 35 million of Kurdish people who live around the world. This happened after ICANN started to take applications for new gTLDs, as informed in Domain Incite.

The vast majority of those 35 million Kurdish people live in Iran and Iraq, but there are also around 14 million Kurdish people living in Turkey.

The Kurdish society has been demanding the .KU domain during a long time, but this is a thing that was never expected to come true. Some other non-state organizations have received their own TLD as for instance the catalan community with the .CAT or the Palestinian one, which has a domain reserved by the ICANN, as well as an international telephone code, just in case they may need it in the future.

The .KURD / .KUR proposal is being driven by Aras Noori, a German citizen. Noori wrote to ICANN's CEO and president Rod Beckstrom in April 2010 applying for for either .KURD or .KUR intended to use by the the Kurdish community. Noori declared that they have not decided which gTLD to apply for yet.

Noori also wrote that "a domain extension for the Kurdish people has been a dream of many communities like ZKURD , KurdITgroup , KOSC and others. We, with support of many Kurdish groups and communities are committed in making a domain extension available for Kurd people."

You can find more info about the proposal at their official website: www.dotkurd.org.

The exclusive .EU no reserve auction celebrated at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. ended yesterday and the results are putting in doubt if investing in such secondary ‘continentTLD’ is worth it. The sales talk by themselves, some good premiums were on the list, that featured 50 .eu domain names, but only 10 of them were sold.

Here, the results:

Interpreters.eu 700 €
Progressive.eu 600 €
Teeth.eu 600 €
Professional.eu and Professionals.eu 600 €
Apples.eu 500 €
BuyGold.eu 500 €
EasyLoans.eu 500 €
GolfResort.eu 500 €
SellGold.eu 500 €
Diapers.eu 500 €

The registry operator for .tel, Telnic, choosed HHY.tel as the tel domain of the week. The pourpose of this sort of ‘contest’, launched by Telnic, is intended to demonstrate how useful the .tel extension can be and what you can do with it.

Dot tel domains where presented as a new and innovative alternative to dot MOBI, but a big part of the domain community has troubles seeing its utility.

Although, the numbers are not that bad. A total of 200.000 .tel domains were registered during the General Availability period, that started two months ago.

Some other names were considered interesting by Telnic, and these are the following:

telmasters.tel – Free .tel-related tools and services
fotokonkurs.tel – Reference of photographic contests in Russia
kentschools.tel – Schools in Kent, USA, with individual .tel pages for each
arthurguy.tel – Freelance developer
blpre.tel – Brokerage solutions for Boston's luxury properties
ambasade.tel – Embassies in Romania
nairobi.tel – Nairobi business directory
kravmaga.tel – Schools of Krav Maga, Poland
avg-directorio.tel – City council of Vitoria-Gasteiz, Basque city in Spain
thedrinksareonme.tel – Pub chain in the UK, promotional campaign .tel
komsitravel.tel – Tourism in Romania, publishes deals on .tel
powai.tel – Local directory for Powai, Mumbai, India
haitiearthquake.tel – Info and donations for victims of Haiti earthquake
nganhang.tel – Directory of banks in the Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
BeautyCall.tel – Hair & Makeup in England and Wales

This week's highest sale has been achieved by Software.de that went for 235.025 EUR at Sedo. Another dot DE domain that sells for a such price, demonstrating the excelent health of the german domain afermarket. The second highest sale of the week corresponds to business.tv, sold for $100,999 also at SEDO. It seems that finally dot TV is starting to have the consideration it deserves, despite some will say that this is a ridiculous amount for such a keyword.

Anyway, all other high-priced sales this week at Sedo are dot com and include :

gr8.com $16,000
iwant2.com 15,000 GBP
kleding.com 14,362 EUR
clickandgo.com $14,000
conjugasion.com 11,001 EUR
carpictures1.com $10,500
goalbet.com 10,000 EUR
reson8.com $10,000
creditimmobilier.com 9,750 EUR
hxjq.com $8,900
urbanjunkies.com 7,700 GBP
simplyjobs.com $6,750
festgeldkonto.com 6,100 EUR

Here we have another WIPO procedure won by Google over a domain name in a clear trademark infringement. The domain was vietnamadwords.com and Google, represented in this case by Ranjan Narula, won the procedure over the previous owner.

Google has offered advertising services under the mark Adwords since 2001. Therefore,they contended in the complaint that the domain name is confusingly similar to its trademark. But not only this, they also declared that the respondent registered and used the domain name in bad faith.

• "Respondent had Complainant and its ADWORDS mark in mind when registering the Domain Name. The former prominent use of the word Google on Respondent’s website makes this conclusion virtually inescapable."
• "Respondent’s conduct constitutes an intentional attempt to attract, for commercial gain, Internet users to Respondent’s site by creating a likelihood of confusion between the ADWORDS mark and the Domain Name."

The respondent failed to provide a response in this proceeding and the complainant managed to demonstrate all the elements needed, and the Panel decided the disputed domain name be transferred from the respondent to the complainant. As everyone expected, of course...

To see the full decision you can visit this page.