Conceptualist.com, By Sahar Sarid

Readings for January 31st, 2008

February 1st, 2008 »

Drop-Catching Domains Is Big Business

Published on 2008-01-31 23:22:30 1 Comment Edit
URL: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/01/0146222&from=rss

WebsiteMag brings us news from the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) about a recent study of drop catching - 'a process whereby a domain that has expired is released into the pool of available names and is instantly re-registered by another party.' The eleven day study showed that 100% of '.com' and '.net' domain names were immediately registered after they had been released. CADNA has published the results with their own analysis. Quoting: "The results also show that 87% of Dot-COM drop-catchers use the domain names for pay-per-click (PPC) sites. They have no interest in these domain names other than leveraging them to post PPC ads and turn a profit. Interestingly, only 67% of Dot-ORG drop catchers use the domains they catch to post these sites - most likely because Dot-ORG names are harder to monetize due to the lack of type-in traffic and because they tend to be used for more legitimate purposes."

Source: Slashdot

What's in a domain name? Serious money

Published on 2008-01-31 23:16:14 1 Comment Edit
URL: http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/31/technology/domain.php...

"We think this is definitely a legitimate industry and a legitimate business," said Robert Morse Jr., a partner at Oak Hill Capital Partners, which invested in both companies and is backed by the oil-rich Bass family of Texas. "As with many early-stage markets, it is going through a transformation to professionalism."

Investors are so confident in the growth of online advertising - and the ability of domainers to capitalize on that trend - that they plan to soon start selling shares of domain-name companies to the public, even in today's volatile market. Last September, NameMedia, a company based in Waltham, Massachusetts, that has another huge portfolio of generic domain names, filed to go public on the Nasdaq stock market.

"This industry could probably be an oasis, in the grand scheme of things, relative to the rest of the economy," said David Liu, managing director at Jefferies Broadview, one of the firms underwriting the offering.

Source: International Herald Tribune

I do not agree with this article as it seems completely out of line with what I'm seeing in the domain industry. We had great times and when articles came out (03, 04, 05, 06) I was truly excited about the coverage, however, I'm not as ethusiastic to relate to the masses that today we're doing better than ever when in reality, watching trends, auctions, shows, sales, PPC market, we are actually slowing down.
Sahar

Google Misses: Stock Sinks

Published on 2008-01-31 17:00:22 1 Comment Edit
URL: http://www.thedomains.com/2008/01/31/google-misses/

Google released its earnings for the 4th quarter of 2007, that missed Wall Street estimates, sending the stock tumbling after hours.

Google which went up $16 a share today, sank $46 points after earnings were released and now sits at $518.

Google is now well below its all-time high of $747 last November.

Source: TheDomains

Google's Marissa Mayer: Social search is the future

Published on 2008-01-31 13:37:57 0 Comment Edit
URL: http://venturebeat.com/2008/01/31/googles-marissa-mayer-soci...

At an event in August, Marissa Mayer, Google's leading VP in search, said social search hasn't shown much promise, but if it does, Google would be in a good position to incorporate it. I wrote about that here.

Now, in an interview with VentureBeat (see Q&A below), she says she considers social search to be an essential part of the leading search engine in coming years.

She hints Gmail may be used to identify your friends, using their search history to influence search results for you and those in your social network. While this network would likely first be built on Gmail contacts, Marissa wouldn't rule out importing friends from third-party networks down the road. But it's clear Google wants to have the user explicitly approve them. For now, influencing search results based on information gathered from your MySpace friend connections is a relative non-starter, she says, because such influences haven't been explicitly approved by MySpace users. She is hopeful users will adopt an annotation model, though - meaning that they write reviews about websites and broadcast them to their friends. Google hasn't implemented these ideas yet. But I wouldn't be surprised to see if it's in the works.
Source: VentureBeat

As Google found out many times before, it is hard to do everything. Social Search may be the future but Google isn't a "social" company and therefore, if someone will succeed at social search, it isn't going to be google. As with videos (the purchase of YouTube), maybe a Facebook acquisition can fix that? Time will tell.
Sahar.

T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West 2008 Preview: Transparency Takes Center Stage and Rick Schwartz Says a Recession Could Bring Big Rewards

Published on 2008-01-31 13:31:41 0 Comment Edit
URL: http://www.dnjournal.com/events/2008/traffic-west-2008-previ...

The T.R.A.F.F.I.C. domain conference hits double digits when the 10th show in the highly successful series, T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West 2008, is staged Feb. 18-21 at the world's largest hotel - the fabulous Venetian in Las Vegas. This is their 4th go-round at this venue where conference co-founders Rick Schwartz and Howard Neu will once again have the task of trying to top themselves. So far, they are nine for nine in that category and even though the conference space has gotten crowded with competitors in recent years, few would bet on their string of hits being broken now.

Source: DNJournal

Rick and Howard have outdone themselves every single show. Will they do the same here? If we go by their track record, there's little doubt.
Sahar

Biggs's Tips for Rich: Expect War, Study Blitz, Mind Markets

Published on 2008-01-31 12:15:38 0 Comment Edit
URL: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aImBVle3...

The rich get complacent, assuming they will have time ``to extricate themselves and their wealth'' when trouble comes, Biggs says. The rich are mistaken, as the Holocaust proves.

``Events move much faster than anyone expects,'' he says, ``and the barbarians are on top of you before you can escape.''

``Wealth, War and Wisdom'' is from Wiley (358 pages, $29.95, 15.99 pounds).

Source: Bloomberg