For those that never worked directly with SnapNames or Nelson, he was the kind of guy that you could email day or night and he’d respond almost instantaneously. He was the kind of guy that you wanted working on the other end of the phone; fast, courteous and intelligent.  To find out now that he was lying and betraying not only me, but everyone that he worked with leaves me speechless.  It left a fellow employee I spoke with at SnapNames speechless as well.  With such a small organization, I can only imagine the feeling of betrayal.

This is a tough day for Oversee. The aftermath of this news will leave a cloud of doubt over SnapNames for years to come.  This isn’t the only problem that this issue created though. Every Tom, Dick and Harry with a conspiracy theory about any domain company will come out of the woodwork now claiming “I told you so” or bringing up more cases of strange behavior that they believe could only be attributed to a nefarious company or individual.

We’re already seeing new theories today with posts in DNN comments citing other SnapNames users such as “Vaxis” may have also shills (most insiders know this was Kevin Ham’s user name).   Other conspiracies popping up include that the company knew about this and Brady is being thrown under the bus. The domain business has always had an unusually high amount of conspiracy theorists, but a conspiracy being proven true is harmful enough to beginning casting a shadow of doubt big enough to cover all in the domain industry.

Take the quote from Michael Arrington, former CEO of Pool.com (another expiring name aftermarket with conspiracy rumors of their own) comment on the Tech Crunch coverage of the SnapNames story :

Anyone who doesn’t know how dirty the domain name business is just doesn’t know the domain name business.

Arrington has taken plenty of stabs at the domain space since his departure, calling ICANN corrupt and domainers equivalent to the mafia.  This time though the dirty laundry is out and you’d have to say his name calling seems justifiable. Arrington’s mainstream audience which likely knows little about domains now gets to read about the confirmation of how dirty it can be and how right Michael can be as well.

The domain aftermarket business needs to take a step back and really think about the things that went haywire here and what exactly should be done.  SnapNames had internal policies prohibiting this (as do other auction houses), but the reality is that no internal policy is going to keep a rogue employee with dollar signs in their eyes from going after that “golden goose”.  Employees at domain aftermaket and parking companies deal with multi-millionaire clients and I’m sure the lure of the easy buck is hard to resist.  If someone wants to bid on domains and the policy says they can’t, they’ll find a way around it.   Policies like this won’t prevent it, they’ll just slow the person down or create a situation where the employee becomes more “resourceful” and goes further “underground”.

It’s not hard for any employee to create a new identity and run everything through that identity or hire someone to bid on domains on your behalf ?  This becomes an extremely difficult policy for a company to enforce, but clearly one that needs to be addressed.  We’re relying on the company to police itself in these cases.  It took Oversee over 4 years to figure this out so what does that say about policing their own company

The industry needs to get a grip on this stuff . We need a code of conduct, outside audits or some sort of layer of trust built in to these auctions.  The accusations of shill bidding are not new. Every auction house has been accused of it before.  Now it’s real.  We need audits and policies that insure that everything is being run right.  If we don’t I think you can rest assured that someone else will step in and create rules for us or settle these issues with lawsuits.

Let’s get it together domain companies!

(c) 2009 DomainNameNews.com

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According to TechCrunch the former owner of the domain name mint.com (Hite Capital), which was just sold with a developed site to Intuit for 170 million USD, received a significant amount in series A stock for the domain name, which should be “worth a ‘couple of million dollars,’ says one source [to TechCrunch], after the acquisition”. Hite Capital also invested money into mint.com in the series A and series B investment rounds - according to CrunchBase, so maybe they did not only give them the company the domain name. However they are not listed as an investor on mint.com’s website.

DomainTools whois history shows that the domain was owned by “Mint Investment Management Co.” in New York until April 19th, 2007. Aside from the floor (12th vs. 15th) this address also matches the current whois of HiteCapital.com, where the owner, admin and tech contact, Erik Jacobsen, also is using a @mint.com email address. Mint Investment Management Co. was founded by Larry Hite who also is an active investor and managing director at Hite Capital Management LLC

(c) 2009 DomainNameNews.com

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As reported at Domain Name Wire, the lawsuit claims:

“…Advertise.com recently commenced use of the virtually identical and confusingly similar designation Advertise.com and design in connection with the same and complimentary services as those offered by Plaintiffs under their federally-registered Advertising.com name and marks and their Ad.com name and marks.”

AOL believes that this could cause confusion for anybody who thinks Advertise.com is affiliated with AOL’s Advertising.com or Ad.com trademarks. The Ad.com mark, by the way, is not based on AOL’s ownership of the domain name (which it has never owned), but rather related to the company calling the Advertising.com unit “Ad.com” in the past.

In the court filings, AOL orders Advertise.com to pay for damages, gains, profits, advantages, and costs… plus “change its corporate and legal name to one that does not incorporate the term ADVERTISE.COM, ADVERTISING.COM, AD.COM or any term confusingly similar thereto”.

And remember, AOL doesn’t own Ad.com or any trademarks directly related to Advertise.com. Bizaare.

[via TechCrunch]

(c) 2009 DomainNameNews.com

Upcoming Domain Industry Events, Conferences & Auctions

Following the massive sale of Server.com, Robin Wauters of TechCrunch speculated as to why we’ve been seeing so many high-profile, generic domain names sell for such high prices during the recession:

“Maybe professional domainers and regular companies with an attractive portfolio are more willing to sell now that cash is in shorter supply than it was before the economy collapsed, or maybe these are all calculated bets made by companies that have the capital required to purchase/invest in quality domain names. Most likely, it’s a combination of both”

Take a look at the full list of Sedo domain sales after the jump…