iEstates.com

I just literally stumbled across  a new blog aggregation service called Gurus.com which is covering the domain industry along with blogs of some other industries.  The site is using the Slogan; “one site, all the gurus”

Of course most of you are familiar with Domaining.com and NameBee.com which have been serving the domain community quite well as blog aggregators.

Gurus.com is categorizing domain blogs as: “Web Development and Domains Gurus”

The only blogs currently covered by Gurus.com in that category are:  TheDomains.com, ElliotsBlog.com, DNJournal.com,  DomainNameNews.com,  TheFragerFactor.com and the Conceptualist.com.

I don’t know about any of the other guys, but no one from Gurus.com contacted me to ask if they could include our posts in their service and no one contacted me to tell me they were doing so.  However seeing who owns it I’m willing to forgive him (read below).

Gurus.com which says it is in Beta does not currently contain any advertising.

Other Industries currently being covered by Gurus.com are:

“Financial Gurus”

“Internet Marketing Gurus”

“Pro Blogging Gurus”

“Productivity Gurus”

Now back to whom owns the domain Gurus.com?

None other than Ammar Kubba of Thought Convergence and Trafficz fame.

However this is a personal project of Mr. Kubba.

Reached for comment Mr. Kubba said about the site:

“”I envision a site that eventually aggregates blogs / information sites from experts across all fields, i.e., financial gurus, domain gurus, plumbing gurus, etc., along with a social component that allows people to comment and contribute their experiences, knowledge and opinions”

Sounds like a great plan.

I know domaining.com tried a few weeks ago to add in some non-domain blogs into its feed but got some push back since many mainstream blogs publish can publish 10 posts a day or more.

Gurus.com is laid out in sections (changed by a drop down menu) so if you just want to see just the domain blogs or just the financial blogs you can, thereby allowing all of these to co-exist without overwhelming each other.

I wish Ammar the best of luck in this new project.

Now to the really important part.

I assume the honor of being named a “Guru”, like the Nobel Prize, comes with a large cash award and a nice trophy.

Ammar you have my address.

Domain Industry, External Articles, Media

Many in the domain community think that companies in the space do not try to reach out to “End Users” or non-domain tech companies enough.

However this week several company’s from the domain space are attending the Parallels Summit here in South Beach.

Speaking at the conference include companies in the domain space including:

Demand Media/Enom co-founder Shawn Colo.

Sedo.com, Mark Klein, Director of Business Development

OpenSRS (Tucows),  Director of Domain Services,  Adam Eisner

Godaddy.com’s CEO Warren Adelman

A Senior VP from VeriSign’s

Not bad.

Of course there will be speakers from Google and Microsoft as well.

Many  companies involved in the domain space are also sponsoring this show including  Sedo, Enom, VeriSign, OpenSRS and the .CO registry.

The host of the show is Parallels.com and the show is all about the cloud and is described as follows:

“”The show is about how to build better Cloud Services based businesses. The Parallels Summit has become the premier conference for industry leaders to discuss how to drive innovation, create differentiated service offerings, and build businesses that profit from the Cloud.”"

It’s always nice to see companies in the space reaching out beyond to the much larger tech community hopefully to continue to spread the message about domain names.

Domain Industry, External Articles, Media

Domainers traditionally complain about the lack of interest and knowledge of Fortune 500 companies in domain names.

According to a new report released today,  “The Conductor Research Q4/2009 Fortune 500 Report” Fortune 500 companies also “fail at search engine optimization, many still don’t link paid-search keywords to SEO campaigns, although they collectively spend about $3.4 million a day on 97,559 keywords.”

The report found that only 25% of those 97,559 keywords the Fortune 500 buy everyday rank in the top 50 natural search results on search engines such as Google, Microsoft Bing or Yahoo.”

The Research report also found that only 2% of the domains surveyed show a significant number of terms in the top results.

“”Many companies still have not adopted a culture that identifies what it takes to build and support a natural search campaign and, 53% have no natural search visibility for their most advertised keywords.”

“”More than half of Fortune 500 companies had almost no search engine visibility, with their targeted keywords not ranking in the top 100 search results”

For full details checkout the report.

External Articles, Media

As you all know Godaddy.com ran 2 ads during the SuperBowl.

According to USA Today’s Ad Meter which tracks viewers opinions of all the ads on the big game,  Godaddy’s commercial’s fumbled the ball.

Out of the 63 commercials  USA Today tracks, the Godaddy.com ad featuring Danica Patrick getting a message, ranked 63rd while its other commercial ranked 60th

Ouch

Compare that to Google’s ad which ranks 43rd or Flo.TV which ranked 36th.

Cars.com gets the 12th spot, Monster.com ranked 10th and e-trade.com is the highest ranking internet company commerical with the baby ad (one of my favs) at #7

Personally I thought the Godaddy.com ads were fair at best and certainly seem to be getting old and cold.

I know they generate a ton of publicity with their rejected ads but they should come back with a fresh take for next year if they want to improve their marks and try to beat an 88 year old Betty White’s who commercial currently ranks number 1

External Articles, Media

According to Autonews.com, GMC says it could drop TV commercials altogether in favor of Viral marketing.

The article quotes Steve Rosenblum, Buick-GMC’s director of advertising and promotions, as says GMC needs new types of advertising for young shoppers saying it would target a new audience,  people 35 or younger which may mean no TV commercials.

“”Instead, Rosenblum’s team has developed a brochure with bar-code-type designs called quick response codes that smart phones can read. Phones scan the codes and point consumers to Web pages that give details on the Granite’s features, offer opportunities for social networking and discuss designers’ inspirations for the concept.”"

GMC is pursuing smart phone marketing, he says, because studies show that by 2011, two-thirds of cell phone sales to people under 40 will be smart phones.

Go check out the article as further proof that the ad world is going online.

External Articles, Media

The price of a 30 second SuperBowl ad has fallen for only the 2nd time in its history this year.

According to  TNS Media Intelligence, 30-second commercials during next month’s Super Bowl on CBS are selling for between $2.5 million and $2.8 million. That’s a drop from last year, when ads averaged $3 million.

However only 4 of the 62 commercial slots remained to be sold.

Godaddy.com will be making a return to the SuperBowl and is already teasing its ad on its site, which you can view here.

Its definitely worth 30 seconds of your time

External Articles, Media

A new TLC show,  Accidental Fortune is looking for a real rags to riches domain name story for its show.

According to a producer for the show, they are looking for a story where someone sold a domain name (or site), for six figures or more in which the owner had a minimal cost.

They do not want a story about a domain sold by a professional domainer or someone who makes a living in the domain business.

The best example is Joe Francis, who owned the website Joetheplumber.com who was reportedly offered $800,000 for his domain.

Unfortunately for Joe, he didn’t take the offer; so no $800,000 and no story.

The producers are looking for a similar story but that ends with the domain or website owner taking the cash.

I suggested the story of AltaVista.com where a computer company wound up selling their domain for $3.3 million to Compaq which started the Alta Vista Search engine without the domain name, however there is probably a better story out there.

So domainers put your thinking cap on and lets see if can give the network a good story for their show.

Why help?

Any story involving domains ending up in a huge sale can only peak more interest in domains and hopefully more networks wanting to do more stories on domains.

If you have any ideas or references for the story please paste it below as well.

I will make sure the producer knows the name of person who referred the story.

Domain Industry, Domains, External Articles, Media

Back earlier this year,  we told the story how American Express failed to secure the rights to BlackCard.com allowing its main competitor Visa International to grab the domain of one of its best known products.

Today AMEX announced the launch of a new branded credit card geared to twenty somethings, the Zync Card, an obvious typo of the proper spelling which would be Zinc Card.

On October 9th the domains zinccard.com and zinccards.com were registered by a company using a London England address and are going to a Godaddy Parked page, showing as the first results, an ad for American Express.

The Domain Zynccard.com is registered to Iron Mountain one of those “domain management” companies that offer “digital brand protection” to their clients.

Yet the domain name zynccard.com is not going to an AMEX site but also a Godaddy landing Page and once again showing as the first results, an ad for American Express.

Its not clear if Iron Mountain registered the domains on behalf of AMEX as paid consultant,  but there is no excuse for not registering domains using the proper spelling of a product AMEX is planning on branding.

If this domains were acquired for the benefit of AMEX, it  blows my mind that these domain names are going to a parked Godaddy page rather than to a site of AMEX or even just to coming soon page.

Domain Industry, External Articles, Media

External Articles, Media

Talk about a milestone for the Internet.

The UK has become the first major economy where advertisers spent more on internet advertising than on television advertising.

According to a report by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers,  advertisers spent a record £1.75bn on online advertising,  a 4.6% year-to-year increase, in the first 6 months of 2009

In 1998, when the IAB first measured internet advertising, only £19.4m was spent online.

The internet now accounts for 23.5% of all advertising money spent in the UK, while TV accounts for 21.9%.

Your reading it right.

More money is spent by advertisers on the net than on TV in the UK.

According to the IAB’s of the £1.75bn spent on internet advertising, £1.05bn, or 60%, was spent on search advertising, up 6.8% year over year.

Online classified advertising grew by 10.6% year to about 22% of total internet advertising, online display advertising, fell by 5.2% to £316.5m, or 18% of all internet advertising.

Now if we can only figure out why our revenue keeps falling, while search advertising keeps growing.

External Articles, Internet News, Media