.Luxury Partners With Partners Trust With The Launch of PartnersTrust.Luxury

.Luxury, the company behind .Luxury extension, has partnered with Partners Trust in order to create custom-tailored marketing experiences for luxury properties.

 

You can read the press release after the jump :

“Partners Trust, Los Angeles’ most selective real estate brokerage specializing in luxury properties, has partnered with .LUXURY, the first Internet top-level domain dedicated to bringing together the luxury industry online, to create custom-tailored marketing experiences for luxury properties.

PartnersTrust.Luxury is the first destination website built to highlight luxury properties exclusively represented by Partners Trust to clients around the world.

“Luxury and technology trends change rapidly, and Partners Trust prides itself on not just keeping up with those trends, but staying on the cutting edge of them,” said Cindy Ambuehl, Estates Director, Partners Trust.

“.LUXURY has quickly become the destination for luxury online allowing brands a more relevant web extension to further define themselves within the luxury space. Our newly formed relationship with Partners Trust symbolizes a powerful partnership for the real estate market as a whole,” said Monica Kirchner, CEO, .LUXURY. “We’re tremendously excited about the launch of PartnersTrust.luxury.”

.LUXURY is part of the new top level domain program being rolled out by the global regulator of web addresses to introduce greater domain name choice and availability online. These new extensions, to the right of the dot in a web address, are emerging every week and will enable the Internet to be utilized in ways never before possible.

.LUXURY will offer more relevant and descriptive web addresses for brands to define themselves online, and create diversity for initiatives such as new product launches, unique service offerings and non-traditional marketing opportunities. The robust policies that underpin .LUXURY protect the interests of brands, including express prohibitions of activities such as counterfeiting and cybersquatting.

.LUXURY domain names are currently available for registration through retail registrars where traditional domains are sold. For an updated list of retailers please visit www.join.luxury.

ABOUT PARTNERS TRUST
Partners Trust is the most selective real estate company in Los Angeles and leverages its global network, media savvy and command of the market to provide clients with a discreet and peerless level of real estate service. Partners Trust associates are distinguished by their emphatic sales volume, and reputed for their integrity, market intelligence and a genuine connection to their communities. With offices in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Brentwood, Malibu, La Canada Flintridge, and Pasadena, Partners Trust has been on the Los Angeles Business Journal’s “Best Places to Work in Los Angeles” list for the past five years and is the exclusive Los Angeles area member of Leverage Global Partners.

ABOUT .LUXURY
.LUXURY is a new top level domain (TLD) whose mission is to provide a dedicated digital platform for all things luxury. Designed to meet the distinct needs of the luxury industry, .LUXURY offers product manufacturers, service providers, retailers and consumers a central place online to engage, transact and celebrate.”

Ebola.COM Domain Name Sells For $200,000

The owner of Ebola.com has recently revealed the selling price of Ebola.com . The owner sold the domain name for a whopping $200,000 in cash and stock.

 

An October 20th filing showed that Weed Growth Fund paid Blue String Industries $50,000 in cash and 19,192 shares of another company called Cannabis Sativa.Those shares worth about $170,000.

The owner of Ebola.com is Jon Schultz and he owns the domain name for six years.Schultz registered the domain name in 2008  for $13,500.He owns many othe disease-related domain names,including H1N1.COM and Birdflu.com.

According to whois records, the domain name was first registered in 1997.

Congratulations to both the seller and the buyer.

AFNIC : New Top Level Domain Names : Geneic TLDs Impacted

Afnic, the company behind .FR extension, issued the Octobe 2014 edition of the Industry Report on Domain Names. The report focuses on the impact of the hundreds of new TLDs on “traditional” players.

 

You can read the report after the jump :

“At month-end September, the contribution of “traditional” generic TLDs (.com, .biz, .info, etc.) to net market growth in 2014 was 45% against 75% in March 2014.

The massive influx of new TLDs on the market has raised a number of questions since 2012. How would the hundreds of new TLDs impact the existing ones? Would the reputation they have built up over the years be strong enough for them to resist the newcomers? To what degree would disposals between “traditional” and new TLDs have an effect?

Studying the contribution of the three main TLD categories to net market growth calculated at the end of each month from March to September 2014 has proved highly instructive.

The three main categories are:

    nTLDs: TLDs created since the end of 2013 and introduced to the market as of the onset of 2014; as of September 2014, there were 408 nTLDs;
    gTLDs or “legacy TLDs”: all 18 of them are generic TLDs created between 1985 and 2011. This category includes the .com, .net, .biz, .info, .org TLDs, to name the best-known;
    ccTLDs (country-code top level domains): these are geographic TLDs for national territories, e.g. .fr for France, .re for Reunion Island, .de for Germany, etc. There are approximately 270 ccTLDs to date, as the list varies according to the changes made to the ISO 3166-1 table. For our study, we considered 32 ccTLDs of more than 500,000 domain names, which represent almost 90% of the domains registered for a fee under geographic TLDs.

In all, ccTLDs represent approximately 44.5% of all the domain names registered in the world at month-end September 2014, against 54.5% for gTLDs. nTLDs only represented about 1%.

The histogram below highlights the fact that the contribution of ccTLDs, though moderate, rose from 10% in March to 27% in September 2014, and the figures that show that ccTLDs are not significantly affected by the new TLDs. The latter naturally underwent a very strong increase in 2014 due to their massive introduction to the market, rising from 17% of net growth to 35% at month-end September. The remainder, i.e. the contribution of gTLDs, still represents most of the net growth, while having significantly decreased from 75% to 38%.The visual effect provided by the diagram is even more telling than the figures: while they remain “heavyweights”, the impact of the competition of new TLDs on gTLDs is significantly higher than on ccTLDs. This can be explained by various factors:

    the status of the various gTLDs is highly contrasted, since some have succeeded in finding a market and securing its loyalty, while the others are hit hard by the disposals carried out in favor of nTLDs by domainers and trademark holders who are “cleansing” their portfolios by deleting defensive domain names that are considered useless;
    on the other hand, this competition is unfavorable to gTLDs, inasmuch as they are fee-paying domains, whereas the nTLDs with the highest volumes are often boosted by aggressive promotional strategies (free of charge), sometimes even by their respective registries carrying out massive registrations through their own subsidiary registrars. As a result, this volume-based phenomenon reflected by the histogram above is partially distorted, and may be mitigated, if strategies offering domains free of charge or almost free of charge disappear;
    gTLDs that favored strategies encouraging domain name creations without seeking to consolidate their renewal rates are particularly vulnerable to nTLDs, which are impacting them both in terms of domain creations and renewals. This may be wherein the greatest strength of ccTLDs lies, most of which have renewal rates that are relatively higher than those of gTLDs. Although the momentum in domain creations for ccTLDs is certainly being affected by the upsurge in competition, the portfolios of domain names have been built over time by domain holders who have voluntarily opted for their country-code TLD, to which they attach an importance that a bargain price cannot easily compromise. This kind of loyalty demonstrated by domain holders is probably the best defense that ccTLDs have against new TLDs.”

ICANN Issues Statement Saying Considering Postponing Marrakech Meeting

Following a report in the Moroccan Le360 (French), ICANN have issued a statement regarding speculation their 52nd public meeting scheduled to be held in Marrakech, ICANN has issued a statement to say they are currently discussing options with the hosts.

The statement says “ICANN is considering postponing the meeting in Marrakech scheduled for 8-12 February, 2015 as the likelihood of travel restrictions being imposed on nationals from African countries would reduce participation in the meeting.”

The full statement is below:

Statement on ICANN 52 Meeting in Marrakech, Morocco

Following Morocco’s recent request to postpone the Africa Cup of Nations football tournament because of possible African travel restrictions, ICANN is in active and ongoing discussions with our ICANN 52 Marrakech hosts.

ICANN is considering postponing the meeting in Marrakech scheduled for 8-12 February, 2015 as the likelihood of travel restrictions being imposed on nationals from African countries would reduce participation in the meeting. ICANN’s multistakeholder, bottom up model relies on the broad, active participation of communities across geography and society.

ICANN staff is working closely with the ICANN Board and its Community representatives.

No decision has been taken yet, however ICANN understands the importance of providing timely updates and path forward on the status and location of ICANN 52.

Nominet Announces Greater Security For Online Services

Following a successful pilot, two-factor authentication access is now available for registrars via Nominet’s online services.