Domain Name News

Waternight Returns at Traffic Vegas

Fundraising event in Las Vegas this month will benefit Water School. Water School, a non-profit that helps bring clean water to those in developing countries, will host its second WaterNight during TRAFFIC in Las Vegas this month. The group hosted the first WaterNight during WebFest in Santa Monica in February. It was more crowded than […]

iPad Case Maker Withdraws Boneheaded Domain Complaint

Makers of The Snugg are a bit slow, but I guess they finally got some good advice. Last week I wrote about how Charon International Trading Limited, maker of The Snugg iPad cases, was about to lose its second UDRP domain dispute. Technically, I was wrong. Perhaps realizing the error of its ways, Charon has […]

Rwanda: Ricta to Register 5000 Web Domain Names By 2016

The Rwanda Information Communication Technology Association (RICTA) targets to register about 5000 web domain names by 2016, following the re-delegation of Rwanda’s Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD), “.rw” from Belgium a couple of months ago.

Web.com, Owner of Register.com and Networksolutions.com, Reports Earnings

 Web.com Group, Inc. (WWWW), which owns the top 10 domain name registrars, NetworkSolutions.com and Register.com announced results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2013 on Thursday night. After reporting results shares of the company hit an all time high on Friday…

ICANN Passes 31 More New gTLD Bids

Another 31 new gTLD applications have passed Initial Evaluation in ICANN’s weekly batch of results. The applied-for strings receiving passing grades are: .gay, .statebank, .tkmaxx, .school, .app, .thai, .site, .democrat, .holdings, .room, .equipment, .alipay, .merck, .fls, .fire. .cloud, .rugby, .now, .news, .mtn, .bike, .estate, .auto, .gripe, .naspers, .deal, .xbox, .cars, .virgin, .insurance, and .art There […]

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30 More gTLD Pass: .xbox, .merck, .thai, .fire; .cloud; .news; .gripe; .virgin; .cars

30 more new gTLD applications passed Initial Evaluation (IE) today by ICANN. In all 245 new gTLD applications out of the first 300 reviewed have passed IE…

1,700 .ng Domains Registered Since Price Cut, .ng Domain Hacks On Sedo

97% price drop leads to more .ng domain registrations and a growing number of Sedo listings. Yesterday I wrote about how Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NIRA), the registry for .ng domain names, had slashed the price of second level .ng domain registrations by 97%. The new price is equivalent to about $95 USD; previously it […]

ARI Registry Services Drops .book New gTLD Bid

ARI Registry Services has withdrawn its application for the .book new gTLD. The application was one of nine for .book and is the first in the contention set to be withdrawn. The application lists Global Domain Registry Pty Ltd as the applicant, but all the contact information belongs to ARI/AusRegistry and its executives. ARI was […]

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Directi Fighting Massive .pw Spam Outbreak

Recently relaunched budget TLD .pw is being widely abused by spammers already, but registry manager Directi said it’s enforcing a “zero tolerance” policy. Anti-spam software makers and users have over the last week reported a “massive” increase in email spam from .pw domain names. Security giant Symantec reports that .pw jumped to #4 in its […]

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.xxx 1st Year Renewal Rate Tops 80%

According to figures released by ICANN tonight it looks like the .XXX registry had a renewal rate for its first year of over 80%. The ICANN transaction report for January for the .XXX extension show the registry having 113,773 domain names registered by the end of January 2013…