Apparently the Soviet Union is still alive. Except for Soviet Union emblem t-shirts being a hot item in Russia now, Russian webmasters don’t want to break their connection to the shady communist past and keep fighting ICANN to protect the obsolete .su extension.

Read more on the matter here

ICANN is still attempting to delete the obsolete SU (Soviet Union) extension but having little success. While they have managed to decommission the .YU (Yogoslavia) extension successfully last year, they are finding rebellion among Russian webmasters, ISPs and the Registry itself. (more…)

A new interesting cover story on dnjournal

There are certain names that everyone in this industry knows, names that newcomers normally encounter within hours of entering the domain business. Names like Rick Schwartz, Kevin Ham, Frank Schilling, the Castello Brothers and others from a small band of pioneers who have reached the top of a mountain that thousands of others continue to climb. Most in that group became wealthy because they were visionaries who foresaw how valuable domain names would become long before they appeared on anyone else’s radar. (more…)

Here is some interesting information about the .in domaining space. .in domains became available for registration only in 2005 (there was .co.in before that, which is less popular now) and all the top names are taken by several individuals/organizations.

There are currently around 400k-500K .in domains registered. For comparison .asia which just started recently has a similar number of registrations and is perceived by many domainers as “quite useless” and .ca domains have just crossed 1 Million registrations.

Indian economy is growing fast and many companies are eager to establish their online presence. Only about 6% of Indian population have internet access and the potential for growth here is enormous. While the prices are still quite low it provides an excellent investment opportunity.

.in domains can be registered by anyone, no Indian presence required (in contrary to for example .ca domains, which are only for Canadian residents).

Cybersquatters beware .in registry imposes very strict rules to protect trademark owners. Offenders may face very high legal charges and fees.

The highest reported sale for .in domain so far was poker.in for $60K (check other high sales here), which to a western person makes perfect sense, but in fact poker is not popular at all in India so the may actually be much harder to monetize than it seems. As usually there are many high value unreported .in sales and the end user interest is quite high in these.

There are no 1-2 character .in domains, but the LLL.in and NNN.in are quite popular and are traded a lot. Premium LLL.in domains reach around $60-100 minimum prices and in my opinion they represent one of the best investment opportunities now. We’ve seen in .com, net, .org and even in .ca domains how 3 letter domains grow in price on the reseller market and have very good end user potential due to many possible acronyms. Indian domaining space is expected to grow significantly over the years and the value of these names should skyrocket!

Some historical registrations figures, available from INregistry

• Feb 17, 2005 - 24,000 domain names registered on first day
• Feb 21, 2005 - 75,000
• April 05, 2005 - 100,000
• Nov 7, 2006 - 200,000

Generic and GEO .in domains are almost impossible to get now as most are owned by several entities below.

• Indiaportals.org own an amazing portfolio, including some of the best generics. The best among these can easily go for 5 and even low 6 figures.
  bakery.in
bank.in
bar.in
beauty.in
books.in
box.in
buy.in
call.in
card.in
care.in
casino.in
casinos.in
cell.in (more…)

Pizza.net “auction” on TDNAM ended at $1,150,000 the highest reported .net sale yet if it gets confirmed.

Lets look at the previous high sales:

Porn.net $400,000 Jan 08 SnapNames/DomainFest
RealEstate.net $300,000 Feb 07 Private
Sex.net $450,000 May 06 Moniker/Traffic

and then we get that

Pizza.net = Porn.net + RealEstate.net + Sex.net (more…)

It was reported that Money.co.uk was sold for an astounding $2.4M!

Money.co.uk is a nice looking site, but doesn’t seem to have much traffic

The report remains unconfirmed and is only based on a digg article and a few blogs that picked it up, so it might as well turn out a hoax, or a joke.

Another record for .uk, after a month ago cruises.co.uk sold for over a million.

Hey all,

I have a few auctions running at sedo, bid away.
GOXA.com
BEHY.com
GIHY.com

Popa.com just ended at sedo for 9700 euro, or $15,270 raising the bar that much higher for cvcv’s. Check out the prediction thread at DNF

.me is about to be launched. Sounds pretty good for a personal site. I think many people would like it and it has many cool possibilities, like kill.me, love.me, hug.me, pay.me etc. A tld that is also a word!

.ME Registry officials today announced the roll-out plan for .ME, the new domain name extension. .ME is expected to be utilized as both a personalized Web address and as a catchy business marketing tool around the world.

The registry will begin accepting .ME applications in May, for the start of what is known as the General Sunrise Period, a time when only trademark owners can apply. However, registrars who sign up before that time can start accepting Sunrise and Landrush applications and pre-registration requests, as soon as they’d like. As was the case with .ASIA, multiple parties will be allowed to submit applications for the same domain name. Domain names that receive more than one application will go to an auction process. .ME Registry officials today announced the roll-out plan for .ME, the new domain name extension. .ME is expected to be utilized as both a personalized Web address and as a catchy business marketing tool around the world.

The registry will begin accepting .ME applications in May, for the start of what is known as the General Sunrise Period, a time when only trademark owners can apply. However, registrars who sign up before that time can start accepting Sunrise and Landrush applications and pre-registration requests, as soon as they’d like. As was the case with .ASIA, multiple parties will be allowed to submit applications for the same domain name. Domain names that receive more than one application will go to an auction process. more

New DnJournal Report is Up:

Moniker.com closed the $850,000 sale of SkiResorts.com this week, a deal that ranks as the fourth highest sale reported so far in 2008. Moniker handled the sale for Rick Latona who sold two other domains that landed on our Top 20 chart through his own site, RickLatona.com. One of those, StCatharines.com, completed the top ten after going for $19,000. Sedo.com had a big week sweeping 11 of the 20 chart entries. Their roster was led by #2 Madrid.net at €28,000 ($43,920) while #4 Celibataire.com (”single” in French) and #5 Hoteles.info (”hotels” in Spanish) gave them three of the top five spots. Madrid.net banked €28,000 ($43,920) while Hoteles.info booked €19,500 ($30,607). Pool.com rounded out the first five with #3 Banks.ca (Canadian country code) depositing $41,000 in the year’s 8th biggest ccTLD sale.

By Ron Jackson

The AfternicDLS also had a solid outing with four names on the elite list including #6 ContemporaryRugs.com ($30,000) and #9 HowToInvest.com ($23,000). This was a strong week for non .com domains as they took nine places on the Big Board. Three of those were .orgs, two were .nets, two were .infos and two were ccTLDS. That trio of .orgs was led by #7 Compraventa.org (”purchase” in Spanish), sold at Sedo for €18,000 ($28,253)

LLLL.com Drops Reduce according this this graph posted over at namepros by Ergo

(click the  image for full page picture)

The reducing number of dropping LLLL.com’s should have a positive effect on the market pricing, because there will be less 4L domains on auctions while the demand stays the same, prices are expected to rise faster.

A recent interview with Rick Schwartz posted over at Search Feature:

Mike Dammann: How did you get the idea to start the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Domain Conference and Expos and how close are you to the search engine industry?

Rick Schwartz: It started as a 12 person get together at my home. When 35 wanted to come I hooked up with my Attorney, Howard Neu, and decided we needed a venue other than my house and an agenda of activities and discussions. When 135 signed up we got THRUST into the convention business. 6 months later we held our second TRAFFIC show in Las Vegas and this time 235 showed up. By the time we have another show in Florida a few months later, we were 350 strong. So it was never planned, it was needed and we just took the ball and ran with it.

After 10 shows we have established ourselves as the key event in the space and thousands of domainers and investors have come to one show or another.

As for the search industry, it is an industry having more and more in common with domain owners. In our show in May in Orlando we will have at least one SEO panel and in future conferences even more as our channels overlap more and more. (more…)