Controversy Over Walmart.LGBT Domain Name
Lately there has been issued a complaint related to a domain address that points to Walmart brand and which was considered as damaging the group’s public image and therefore this lead to legal actions against the owner’s acquisition, which happened on the 10th of Ferbruary.
The website Walmart.lgbt is not being hosted on any server at the moment, but the situation will be examine ir order to see if the domain name is not easily confused to Walmart brand, if it was purchased in bad faith and if it was legally obtained. If this is the case, the domain will be transferred to Walmart.
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Significant Domains Acquisition for GoDaddy Portfolio
Internet domains market has been lately witness to several important sales between major companies that revolve their activities around this field of activity where important revenues can be obtained by buying the right url addresses at the right moment.
Such a business was reported to have happened recently in January between worldwide known domains reseller GoDaddy which purchased about 200 000 domain names from the mobile advertising company Marchex for the sum of $28.1 million in cash which was added to the $6.7 million in direct sales.
Marchex Chief Executive Officer, Pete Christothoulou, speaking about the reason behind the transaction, stressed their current focus on mobile advertising analytics: “Our complete focus is on establishing Marchex as the world’s leading mobile advertising analytics company. A significant and growing majority of the consumer engagement and sales driven by mobile advertising happens offline, such as through phone [1]calls. Narrowing our focus on this opportunity, while growing our balance sheet, strengthens our ability to continue delivering technology solutions that bring accountability to mobile advertising and transform business performance for our clients.”
On the other hand, the beneficiary of this deal seems to have bought some remarkably quality domains with an average price of about $140 for each of them. Senior Vice President and General Manager Mike McLaughlin at GoDaddy also made a statement about their future plans on the newly purchased domain names: “GoDaddy views this as a unique opportunity to acquire a large group of high quality names and make them available to businesses worldwide. These names have not been generally available to the public. This means we’re able to bring more visibility and liquidity into the market for businesses everywhere.”
According to ICANN reports, this deal follows another one that this group has made with Afternic, another premium domain provider, in September 2013, and in comes in line with their latest marketing strategy of increasing the number of premium domain names available in search results.
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$48m Domain Predictions with Minds + Machines
Great news for Minds + Machines shareholders – the group who has got into ownership 20 new gTLDs will start partnering on another four one, out of which 13 of them received 46 501 registrations at the moment of this update. A significant number of requests were for .work domain with 20 605 as compared to less than 10 000 for the others, while the most important development was recorded for .london with 62 143 registrations. All in all, Machines’s portfolio now includes over 63,000 registrations since the beginning of the current year.
The future strategy of the company now focuses on private auctions on contested domains about which they predict they can finally get to ICANN’s decision in the end if issues are not solved otherwise.
Predictions go further to anticipate an increase in registration revenues in the second part of the year based on the already announced domains launching such as .law and .abogado, domains renewals and the development of their Premium Name module.
Dwelling on the group’s current marketing results, CEO of Mind + Machines ANtony Van Couvering concludes:
“We believe the Group is strongly positioned to compete in the remaining auction rounds. We are encouraged by the Group’s ability to have grown its cash reserves since 31 December whilst completing seven top-level domain launches during that period. Our focus is now on the successful commercialisation of those domains already launched and the phased launch programme for our remaining domains to maximise the penetration of each in their given markets.”
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Rightside Increases New Domains Number to 39
Recently the world leading domains provider Rightside has announced the acquisition of three new addresses that will be available for their consumers: .FAMILY, .STUDIO, and .LIVE which are meant for better alternatives to .com. For examples the .FAMILY domain extension can be used for situations like planning reunions or family blogs or creating personalized e-mail addresses related to families. It is also particularly useful for those members that want to stay in touch with each other or for tracing family history.
As for the .STUDIO domain, it is meant for the users passionate about yoga, art, design, beauty and architecture and already have a website that would like to be easier to be remembered by their visitors.
The term .LIVE is connected to . NEWS, .SOCIAL and .VIDEO, therefore it is suitable for streaming concerts or interviews or any other applications that want to broadcast live events in real time for their customers.
About the trend in gTLDs domains, Rightside CEO Taryn Naidu declares:
“As companies find new ways to develop and extend their online presence across various platforms, we know that it can be challenging to maintain their brand identities. With .FAMILY, .STUDIO, and .LIVE, we believe that we have strengthened our portfolio of TLDs that gives users more memorable and descriptive domain name options to match their brand to each of their online activities.”
Rightside is known as being one of the companies which are interested in offering their customers a more varied way of presenting their businesses online. They are specialized in domain name services and their headquarters are based on three continents, Europe, America and Australia.
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New Security Measures on Chinese Domain Names
In a very strict and controlled Internet environment such as the one existing in China, there is no surprise that the Chinese government has only approved eight domain names companies and fourteen new TLDS ones.
According to their press release, stressing the big number of Internet users and customers, much stricter control is to be expected soon on their market. There is an announced participation from Brandma.Co’s representatives at the next ICANN meetings during the 21st and 25th event in Argentina where registries and registrars will have the possibility to interact and close deals.
These measures were announced on the website of China’s media bureau, called Cyberspace Administration of China, and are being motivated by the need to increase Internet usage safety for the Chinese users. They are expected to be implemented within a period of six months, starting from April this year.
Since there is a high pressure from the government to comply with this (registrars in China have already been notified, and well known extensions like .com, .org or .co and .me were told to make the necessary changes), and there has also been issued a recommendation from Mr. Ching Chiao, CEO of Brandma.CO that tells operators should develop new strategies for the new Internet environment, the websites domain names providers started to voluntarily modify the ones which are not allowed by their regulatory office.
According to Ms. Cathy Peng, an expert within Brandma, the newly implemented measures are compared to ICANN’s application process, only in Mandarin variant, requiring a proper understanding about their regulatory system. Thus, this concludes the waiting period from the Chinese government and leads to the proactive phase, the one involving knowing in a higher degree the organizations behind each domain name.
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