It’s early morning on Leap Day and it got me wondering . . . “If I register domains today does that mean I don’t have a renewal date for next year ? Do I get 4 years for the price of 1.”

I received an email, right after I posted about the TRAFFIC auction results. “Don’t sound the alarm ! The ship is not sinking.” Seriously though. No. It wasn’t that dramatic but it did remind me of the scene from the Titanic movie, where the band keeps playing. The email referred me immediately to Michael Berken’s post on his blog about his take on the auction.

Given that my previous post about the auction simply stated “Making comparisons to past results and using the data we gathered, the results of this auction aren’t very impressive,” I was admittedly surprised at this quick damage control by the sender. So, I took a little time to read Mike’s post and a few others across the web and add my further commentary below (and after the jump). Berkens points out several factors that contributed to the eventual results of the TRAFFIC auction and seems to be unfazed overall. . . .

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Domains that are worth over $100,000 are essentially unique, branded small businesses. You can choose to ignore them and leave them idle, or place an enormous amount of resources on each, or somewhere in between. In any case they are ongoing business concerns which should be respected and managed accordingly.

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According to Justin Carder’s blog (Director of Blogging), Marchex (Nasdaq: MCHX) is going to be conducting a trial with neighborhood blogs for Seattle, which are going to be run under the MyZip brand. The company is currently looking for one local blogger for each of the Seattle zip codes. At a later time, the trial is to be expanded across the US.

Justin writes: In my new job, I’m working for Seattle-based Marchex to create a system that gives people the tools they need to write great neighborhood blogs and the financial incentive for the writers and their communities to keep it going. For Marchex’s local search and advertising efforts, creating an environment rich with neighborhood content is good for business. For neighborhood bloggers, MyZip is the best way to create something that will last and not get lost in the swirl of life. […]

Through the course of the trial, we’ll give you advice and tips to create useful posts and we’ll reward you for your effort — each participant will receive $50 per month through the duration of the trial. We also hope our trial bloggers will stick with us and stay with the network as our long-term incentive plan goes into place and we add in a non-profit giving element.

The sign up form for interested bloggers is a small survey.

Since their purchase of zip code domain names covering the majority of population of the United States, Marchex has experimented with several models to drive traffic and monetize these domains. Currently MyZip.com and the zip code domains itself point to landers based on Marchex’s OpenList business review and information website.

Disclaimer: The author ownes a small amount of shares in Marchex.

Geo-Domain owners are not domainers.

Most of the major cities (think top 50 US) were all taken before 1997. Often times they were taken by people in that specific area. For example, I met the guy who owns Austin.com. He has it because he had an ISP from there, and registered it. In March 1994. Few of them collect domains outside of their comfort zone (ie - their city). This is important to note. I see a lot of overlap at TRAFFIC/DRT/DF. But there were few domainers that I saw here. At the same time, few geodomain owners would bother with the before-mentioned conferences. I asked dozens of people, and the same standard response: “Not a domainer, waste of time”

The Auction was Boring.

I think that was a core problem. As I mentioned, geodomain owners aren’t domainers. So the auction to them wasn’t something at the top of their list. Furthermore - as many already owned a top city/state/country.com, why would they bother with domains with state suffixes or other inferior TLDs? I do believe geo-centric domains would have done better (Eg DallasPlumbers.com or AustinDoctors.com). If it wasn’t for Perth.com pushing up the energy for a while, it would have been bad.

Problems I saw:

• Auction right after lunch. All those carbs = you just want to fall asleep. By the second hour I was ready to keel over.
• ‘Pushing up’ of price. I didn’t like how the Auctioneer would start at $5000 and ‘push’ to $10000 (which would be the reserve). Stuff like this brings out the shill bidding accusations. As a phone bidder I wouldn’t necessarily realize that no one was bidding. Perfect example: here. None of the bids that the blogger thinks were ‘rejected’ ever existed. They were all from thin-air.
• Poor planning. It started 30 minutes late. How many times have Moniker ran an auction? Seriously - get with it already.
• Clueless Auctioneer. Can I say that here? He struggled with pronouncing ‘kazakhstan’ (why would the ‘z’ be silent?). And that was just one of the mis-pronounciations. This just cries poor planning. Why didn’t they go over the list of domains before the auction?

Parking? What parking?

The majority of exhibitors were either domain-oriented companies (eg parking) or reservation (hotels/travel). All the parking companies I talked to agreed that the match wasn’t there.

Disconnect with the ‘local’ field.

I was disappointed that beyond us (iBegin) and Local.com none of the big players in the local space actively took part in this (Neal Polachek from Kelsey Group and Gib Olander from Localeze did show up). No local advertising companies. No local tracking service. No YP publishers. No analysts. These CITY.com owners hold a lot of traffic. Local companies need to wake up to that.

Things are just getting started

The first domain conference I went to was Oct 2004. I’ve heard ‘we want to develop’ for the last 3+ years, and I have yet to see anything really happen. But when it comes to domain development, none get me as excited as geodomains. The amount of money in the local space is huge. People are starting to waken up to that. The fight has changed from just ‘local website’ to ‘local media.’ And contrasting the discussions about development from this to DRT - I believe geodomains will be developing out sooner and faster than other generic domains.

Overall, I enjoyed this more than most of the domain conferences. Of course this is with the skew that we do (business listings) meshes much better with geodomain owners. But there was definitely a much better feel for building out of a domain - instead of the typical ‘PPC company shootout’ or ‘Google vs Yahoo - the gloves come off this time’ panels (which always end up with each company saying ‘Hey we are the best!’) there were good panels on development, technology, and SEO. There was the sensationalist ‘Dot-Coms vs. Other TLDs: A Battle Royal?’ which ended up with the ICANN director skipping and was more a casual agreement than any sort of battle. But hey - you can’t have a domain conference without some hyperbole.

UPDATE: I just wanted to clarify as it seems like some wires got crossed.

1. I loved the actual conference. My favorite domain-oriented conference so far. Lots of real energy and work towards development (and not the same panelists talking about the same story). Friendly people, good energy, and informative sessions. I almost always skip all the sessions at a conference - this time I listened to most.

2. I did not love the auction. TRAFFIC & DRT were much more energetic. Much more organized. This one was the opposite.

1. Dallas Cowboys Fumble Cowboys.com Deal
2. Naked.com and BigTits.com Sold
3. Verisign to Profit from Rootserver Data?
4. Group of Internet Mavericks Lasso Domain Cowboys.com
5. Fusu introduces Domain Stock Exchange in private beta
6. Domain Strategies launches new Domain Development model
7. Godaddy Signature Domain Auction List Announced
8. Overheard At TRAFFIC, Domain Name News Tidbits
9. Unofficial Moniker Silent Auction Results
10. Moniker T.R.A.F.F.I.C. domain live auction results from Hollywood, Florida

This is a ranking of the top 10 articles by traffic for the month of October 2007.

According to sources, Verisign, the operator of the generic TLDs .COM & .NET registry, is considering selling access to selected root dns server lookup data to registrars. The root servers are what make domain names work on the Internet, meaning that many domain queries hit these servers on their way to a site or an email recipient.

Why is this data so interesting? It contains the majority of failed lookups, meaning the Verisign nameservers will be hit and log the query, when someone enters a domain name that does not exist. While many domain-tasters have obtained this information directly from ISPs, getting this directly from Verisign would be a step up the chain, since Verisign manages two of the 13 root name servers.

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(Attention, irony within .ed) OK, most of us know domaining is a big problem. Why? Because we don’t own the real premium domains we’d really like to own - yeah, there might be a few exceptions to this amongst our readers. Well, along comes Lynn Tan and writes a nice article on CNET. About Domainers CyberSquatters and how CyberSquatting escalates in Asia. Oh an yes, cybersquatting outside of Asia is really bad too. And to make things worse, let’s throw in a quote about how cybersquatting relates to child exploitation and spamming.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I do NOT think that profiting from other people’s brands is a great idea. As a matter of fact there should be legal protection against it, no question. But linking all domainers and domaining activities to cybersquatting is by no means fair:

Here’s a quote from the article - by Janna Lam, managing director of Singapore-based IP Mirror:

“The cheaper the domain (name), the more active the cybersquatting activities,” Lam said, noting that cybersquatters have now earned a new moniker, “domainers.”

So this probably makes any one who owns domains and does not “use” them a cybersquatter, right? Now let’s do a quick reality check and see some of the domains that are owned by the author’s employer, CNET:

• Auctions.com
• Browser.com
• Builder.com
• Buying.com
• Chat.com
• Com.com
• Community.com
• Computers.com
• Download.com
• Freeware.com
• Gaming.com
• Help.com
• Kids.com
• Labs.com
• Marketplace.com
• News.com
• Online.com
• Radio.com
• Search.com
• Shareware.com
• Shopper.com
• Silicon.com
• Store.com
• TV.com
• Updates.com
• Upload.com
• Welcome.com

[via email from Dan and CircleID]

During the Targeted TRAFFIC conference in Florida which started yesterday, a new kind of Domain Development company called Domain Strategies is being launched. The company will bring together domainers, investors and entrepreneurs in order to create businesses. Rob was so kind to take the time to talk to me about his new venture earlier this week.

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The Canadian company GeoSign, owner of premium domains such as GolfCourses.com and Hockey.com, went through a strenuous period lately. After its massive $160,000,000 funding, the company got a black eye due to its search engine arbitrage, and after Google stomped on that, went through some layoffs.

Anyway - it seems that GeoSign now has two subsidiaries been split into two companies that act as its public face (my blog post @TechSoapbox has more) - eMedia, which will deal with their marquee products (Hockey.com, GolfCourses.com, TrueLocal, etc), and Moxy Media, which apparently continues to deal with their content business.

[Updated] Both are actually subsidiaries of the parent GeoSign company - just that GeoSign will no longer be the public face. As it turns out, both companies are apparently two entirely separate companies.