In June ICANN had announced that it was bringing on board Thomas Spiller in their Brussels office as a VP for the European Region. He was supposed to start this week. Apparently he changed his mind. So far ICANN has not made an announcement as to who is going to take his place and according [...] Continue reading →

The World Federation of Advertisers has become the fifth major coalition of advertising big-spenders to ask ICANN to rethink its new gTLD program. Stephan Loerke, managing director of the Brussels-based organization, wrote to Rod Beckstrom, to “strongly urge ICANN to abandon the program in its current form”. The letter (pdf) explicitly echoes statements first made [...] Continue reading →

Is the world ready for the new generic top-level domains program? Is ICANN ready? It’s been well over two months since ICANN approved its new gTLD program, and the initial sense of excitement and purpose in the industry seems to have given way to virtual silence from ICANN and a profound lack of audible enthusiasm [...] Continue reading →

I don't normally make predictions, publicly. Ok, maybe I have a couple of times. This one is a bit more bold, though. Perhaps it's because I work with so many search engine guys at our website broker service that's helping me form this opinion. Or maybe it's the press releases from companies like Bankrate where [...] Continue reading →

Another week, another set of end user domain name sales. As I do weekly, here’s a look at a sample of end user sales through the Afternic platform… A client of brand management company MarkMonitor bought Stumblers.com for $6,000. Could the buyer be StumbleUpon? Accessories company Sprigs, which uses the domain name sprigsville.com, bought sprigs.com [...] Continue reading →

Given the hunt for stores of value these days that are unaffected by currency debasement, I thought it would be interesting to look at what the "market cap" is for various short domains? Here are the results (in $ millions) when market cap is determined by median sale price. Graphing [...] Continue reading →

European registrar Group NBT has a pretty great domain for its new generic top-level domains consulting business: gTLD.com. Under its NetNames corporate registrar brand, the company is targeting the “.brand” market, like so many others, judging by its recently relaunched web site. Its services include pre-application consulting, help with applications, and ongoing management services, provided [...] Continue reading →