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Time to sell your domains?
Tuesday, September 16. 2008
With the current financial crisis, the question a lot of domain investors are asking themselves is: "should I sell?".
It's easy to understand people getting jittery, but there really are no reasons so far to suspect that domain values will crash. Sure any meltdown of the magnitude that we're seeing right now in the banking industry is bound to have repercussions in all markets and sectors. But domain fundamentals shouldn't be affected that much.
Pay-per-click revenue could suffer to some extent, as all types of advertising take a hit, but it will remain one of the cheapest and most precise ways to reach your intended customer base. I worry a lot more for TV advertising execs than I do for domainers right now.
As ever in times like these, those who can stay calm and collected today will probably be the ones making obscene amounts of money tomorrow. I think DNW has a very good point saying that when the DotCOM bubble burst at the turn of the century, those rare (and brave) investors that bought all the good .COM names are the ones that have since become domain millionaires.
So is it time to sell your domains? I'd actually be tempted to say yes! Sell them to me at a much reduced price… and let me sell them back to you for a huge profit in a few years' time.
.TEL ramps up PR ahead of 2009 launch
Tuesday, September 9. 2008
Expect to hear a lot about .TEL in the next few days. Registry Telnic has been promoting the suffix at San Diego's Demo conference this week. The result is a string of news stories in papers like the Financial Times.
I really like the concept of a unique identifier behind .TEL and the clever way in which it takes an existing system – in this case the DNS – and gives it a new twist. But I have to admit that the benefits of .TEL aren't easy to explain to non-domain experts.
So Telnic are right to get the general media to explain it for them. Outside of our closed world of domain name professionals, people tend to talk normally instead of slipping a juicy bit of jargon like "zonefile" in every other sentence. That can only help everyday Internet users who don't care about what makes .TEL work and just want to get the best out of a good product.
.MOBI alive and kicking
Tuesday, September 9. 2008
DomainesInfo is running a little scoop today. They've learned from mTLD, the .MOBI registry, that the extension has now reached the magic ton, i.e. a million domains.
I have to put this in the context of another story I read on .MOBI a few days ago. Writing for the ClickZ Network, Rebecca Lieb argued quite simply that .MOBI is already dead!
How ironic, then, that days later the registry is set to officially publish registration numbers that most of the world's Internet suffixes can only dream of reaching one day.
The rationale behind Lieb's statement does, however, kind of click. She says that the latest mobile navigation devices such as Apple's iPhone make .MOBI redundant. Because users can upload standard web pages on such devices and therefore don't need specific web content designed for them, it's simpler for them and website publishers to stick with just the one extension (use only a .COM for example instead of having an additional .MOBI for small screens).
Is this really the case? I have an iPhone and I must admit I have never used it to go to a .MOBI website. But it's also true that many a time while browsing the web on my iPhone, I have wished for iPhone-specific content. Despite the iPhone's clever technology and big screen (for a phone), you're still not accessing the web in its natural environment.
So there it is. I think there's a clear case for .MOBI and that it's actually one of the most useful concepts for a new extension because it has a well-defined purpose. What do you think?
Les dangers des registrars américains
Wednesday, September 3. 2008
En mars, ici même, je posais la question de savoir si les noms de domaine enregistrés par le biais de registrars américains sont en sécurité. Une question amenée notamment par un cas de reprise arbitraire de noms liés à Cuba sur ordre du gouvernement américain.
Cette question semble plus que jamais d'actualité, comme l'illustre une récente chronique publiée par Cnet et écrite par un iranien. Derrière le titre "le cyber Iran, le pays le plus incompris et calomnié du monde", Reza Hashemi livre des informations fascinantes sur le quotidien des iraniens sur Internet.
Au-delà des blocages dont les Internautes de ce pays font l'objet de la part d'un nombre impressionnant d'éditeurs de logiciels, qui ne permettent pas le téléchargement de mises à jour par exemple, on y apprend que les noms de domaine détenus par des iraniens sont susceptibles d'être repris à n'importe quel moment s'ils sont enregistrés auprès de registrars américains.
L'auteur cite notamment des cas de "reprises" de noms gérés par GoDaddy, eNom et Network Solutions.
Toujours ces histoires de "listes noires" de l'administration américaine, qui obligent les sociétés sous juridiction américaine à ne pas traiter avec certains pays. A ma connaissance, aucune action de reprise de ce type n'a jamais été constatée en Europe…
Domain name comedian
Wednesday, September 3. 2008
Ill winds
Monday, September 1. 2008
You sometimes have to wonder about the world we live in. As Gustav prepares to pummel the very places that Katrina wrecked only 3 years ago, scam artists are already looking for ways to profit from other people's hardships.
Having noticed several new domain name registrations centered around hurricane Gustav in the past few days, the American authorities are warning people against potential email scams or phishing attacks.
Louisiana's Attorney General has even issued an advisory against a spam campaign currently ongoing and asking people to confirm their account information in preparation for Gustav.
The silver lining here is that domain names and the Internet are now well enough integrated into our daily lives that hopefully people can spot a scam of this kind a mile away and not get duped.
