TORONTO, CANADA (June 15, 2006) – Tucows Inc. (AMEX:TCX, TSX:TC)
today announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Mailbank.com Inc. (doing business as NetIdentity), a privately held, profitable business owning and managing a domain name portfolio that Tucows believes is one of the Internet’s largest collections of surname addresses.

Consideration for the transaction will be approximately US$18 million payable in cash, promissory notes and the issue of approximately 3,603,000 shares of common stock to the stockholders of NetIdentity. Tucows expects this acquisition to add between US$3 and $4 million in cash flow in 2007. Tucows now expects cash flow from operations in the range of US$7-8 million for 2006 and US$10-12 million for 2007.

A podcast and an FAQ concerning this announcement can be found here: http://resellers.tucows.com/about/investor/netidentity

Tucows Press Release

According to their press release, Intersearch (OTC:IGPN) purchased a domain portfolio including the domains “camps.com” and “summercamp.com”.

While many of us have heard about PayPerUnique, some of us have actually rented their domains out to endusers/other sites. Along comes a new (German) site that actually automates the entire domain rental process and sets up the corresponding forwarding: DomainVermietung.com (Which translates into DomainRentals or something similar. Actually it’s not that easy to find a direct translation.) The current site’s limited Beta test was launched on June 1st, 2006.

The site lists more than 2,000 domains available for rental starting at € 9,90 (=$12.45) . If you pick a name (for example from their top 100 list or by category). So let’s pick appartment.com, since even the non-German speaking people amongst us should be able to figure out it’s meaning.

This domain averages 2,650 visits in 30 days. For this site they are asking for a fee of € 0,15 per visitor, which equals about $0.19. The site also lists the estimated cost for a 30 day rental at € 397,50 (=$500.00). The name is available right now. The listing also shows the PageRank and the Overture rank of the domain without extension, probably for the German market. The rental is for a maximum of 30 days.
If you are looking for a breakdown of the domain details, the site offers many additional statistics (monthly/annual) – even more details for registered users.

The site features an easy to use cost calculator tool:

It also has a shopping cart functionality for those who want to rent several domains. They also allow for an auto-renewal of the rental term and you can enter the redirection URL right in the shopping cart.

Now you do need to sign up for an account in order to go on I’d assume that my application for the Beta might not be approved due to it just being a test, but if it is, I will update this article. The note that the site currently is in Beta is really only apparent at the time you try to sign up for an account.

If you currently visit any of the names listed (and they not rented out to anyone) on this site, the only hint that you can rent the domain is in the Title bar of your browser window.

If you have any questions on the details of the program and the question is answered in their FAQ, I will gladly translate it for you – just leave a comment.

I wanted to take a closer look at how Marchex (MCHX) has integrated the OpenList content into their parked pages. This should be of interest, since it is the first step to providing additional value to the visitors of their domains, preferably without losing clicks and hopefully gaining more return visits. So how does Marchex integrate content, PPC ads and other partners?

Let’s take a look at NewYorkDining.com, one of the domains mentioned in the Marchex Press Release. For the following images, I have marked PPC content in red and OpenList categories in orange and detailed OpenList content in green.
First let’s take a look at the equivalent page in OpenList, New York Restaurants.

Now, let us take a look at NewYorkDining.com.

The categories on the left are the OpenList related categories, on the right you see the PPC ads and at the bottom additional OpenList content.

As we scroll further down, we see more additional OpenList content and the related categories on the left.

If you actually click on one of the restaurant names you end up on a detailed page providing more content and reviews on the left accompanied by additional PPC ads on the right.

I really like the new design for the Marchex parked pages and this approach in converting them into real sites is very nice as well. The content is integrated nicely into the design, and the ads work nicely as well. Now hopefully they will publish some numbers on how this is helping their click through rate and if it affects the number of return visitors.

On a side note one thing I noticed when looking at the HTML source of the sites is that the PPC links are directly pointing to their corresponding Overture Links. This leads me to assume that there is no tracking on the Marchex end as to which ads generate which CTR. Now this might be for licensing reasons or similar reasons, but other users of the Overture XML feed are passing the clicks through their own scripts and thus are collecting additional performance data. I am not sure what type of reports Yahoo!/Overture provides to their domainers, but I would always like to have my own statistics, in any case.
Another item note is that there are also partner links integrated in this section, which you see on the next screenshot in the bottom right corner. This is a hotel search which open some booking sites in separate windows, 6 pop-ups by default. Looking at the source this appears to be something from the OpenList website as well, but while it’s a start the integration is not very appealing. The idea is great though, and I am sure that the level of integration will improve over time.

Since OpenList has already added Google Maps to their listings, I am expecting to see those on the landers in the future as well. Not sure if Yahoo! likes them to use Google Maps, but it appears that the Yahoo! Maps API has also just been opened for commercial applications.

(Disclaimer: I own a small amount of Marchex shares.)

Ever wondered how much money was paid for a similar domain? Don’t trust appraisals? A new site, DNSalePrice.com, provides a searchable history of domain name sales. Currently the data is obtained from DNJournal and AfterNIC. The current data is acurate up to June 11th and contains the data of $152,504,332 (USD) worth of domain names. A great tool.

Following Demand Media with eHow and Marchex (MCHX) with OpenList Internet REIT announced a partnership with Associated Content today.

Under the terms of the agreement, Associated Content will provide content for many of iREIT’s premium sites, including Netster.com, Consulting.com, HispanoMundo.com, MovieClips.com, MutualFunds.com, and VietnamWar.com.

Associated Content is transforming the user-generated content model by paying its quickly-growing online community of Content Producers for original audio, video and text and publishing this content across its partner sites, as well as its own central property www.associatedcontent.com. With its innovative approach and an interactive community of thousands of talented community members, Associated Content is the leading provider of diverse, original and comprehensive content that adds depth, substance and personalities to Web sites.

This underlines the serious intention of some of the large domain portfolio holders to develop their portfolios.

Associated Content (website, no information on the partnership)
Internet REIT Press Release 

Didn’t I say earlier today that we would be hearing more about NameMedia/BuyDomains? Well, it appears that they have partnered with DomainCapital in order to provide Domainers with financing for domain purchases.

BuyDomains: Financing for your domain name purchase

[Thank you Joe]

According to an article in the Boston Globe (“Internet stealth company steps out“) YesDirect (which includes BuyDomains) is becoming NameMedia. Today (7:15am ET), www.namemedia.com still points to BuyDomains.com, however the YesDirect Site already shows a NameMedia website. Now at 10:15am ET NameMedia.com points to the NameMedia website as well.

The company, called NameMedia, is being led by Kelly P. Conlin , 46, a veteran media executive who previously had been chief executive of International Data Corp. in Boston and Primemedia Inc. in New York. NameMedia has already hired 75 people in its office near Route 128 to buy, sell, and develop businesses around Internet domain names.

NameMedia, which already is profitable, says it owns more Internet domain names than any other party and draws more than 25 million consumers monthly to its vast collection of websites. It makes money when computer users type the name of one of its sites, such as photography.com, bookstore.com, or jobfinder.com, into the Internet address bar and then click on advertising links.

The article goes on to explain that NameMedia will be following the current industry trend and is planning to develop some of their most valuable online properties.
On top of the 650,000 domains in their own portfolio the company also says to have exclusive rights to sell or monetize 350,000 additional names. I would imagine that those numbers includes the GoldKey and ActiveAudience domain parking services.

I am sure we will be hearing more about them.

[Update]

I needed to find out more about the 350,000 additional names, since I wanted to know if there’s any partnership besides the domains parked with GoldKey and ActiveAudience. Goldkey has a little over 66,500 domains pointing to their DNS in the registery according to the zonefiles [webhosting.info]. Active Audience has about 5,600 names pointing to their dns [webhosting.info]. So this adds up to 72,100 domains. Even if you would add some domains that are parked via domain forwarding, I would doubt that the total amount of domain names from those parking services is higher than 100,000. So it has to be assumed that NameMedia includes a partnership with one or more portfolio(s) with a another 250,000 domain names.

There are 700,000 names in the zonefiles pointing to the BuyDomains namesservers [webhosting.info].

And here comes the Press Release.

If you are planning on going public it’s a great idea to get mentioned in the media as often as possible. Especially if you are “the good guy”. Hence Bob Parson brought up his newly invented term for an old practice once more, but this time in front of a different audience – As a feature article in Business Week Online: Getting the Drop on Domain-Name Abuse.

Basically the article is a reprise of his blog post. Once again, he does provide numbers, but he does not provide any statistics or more detailed information on the registrars that he accuses of registering and deleting the same names continuously within the grace period. As far as we could tell in our research, names do indeed often get tested multiple times in a row. But this testing occurs via different registrars and different corporate entities.

The article seems to attract the usual crowd, the GoDaddy supporters and the critics exposing some of the stains on GoDaddy’s clean sheet: Starting with information on how GoDaddy defaults all domain registrations to domain parking and ending with comments on how GoDaddy auctions names that are potential trademark infringements.

If all of this traffic testing really puts such a huge load on the registries, you can only wonder why ICANN and the registries have allowed this practise to continue for so long. The answer probably is (as so often): Money! The registry and ICANN earn money off every domain name kept. $0.25 annual ICANN fee and $6.00 annual registration fee for Verisign for any .COM name kept. So the cost to allow this testing only increases as the “keep rate” of the tested domains goes lower and lower. I would imagine that this rate is probably below 0.5% now and dropping. Any of the testing registrars care to comment?

(by Adam Strong)

With over 3000 attendees, the Internet Retailer show seemed to be buzzing with the type of energy seen in the early days of the internet.

I’m no MENSA member, but it’s always been my perception that a packed tradeshow full of attendees and sponsors means that a sector is white hot. The last 4 internet- related shows I attended were all very well attended and many, compared to previous shows, have grown dramatically. More sponsors, more attendees, more buzz, more press releases during shows. As examples : Domain Roundtable has grown dramatically from it’s first year in 2005. Last I heard TRAFFIC in Las Vegas was attended by over 500 people. . The Affiliate Summit in January was sold out. The recent GeoDomainExpo shows that even a highly targeted niche sector of the internet has grown big enough to have its own gathering. So, the Internet Retailer 2006 show is not alone and I would make a fairly safe bet that all of these shows will see more growth at their next locations. Internet business is on fire and the tradeshow business sure seems to be a good place to be as well!

Ok, so how does any of this Internet Retail show tie in to the direct navigation space (aka domains)? Since we all are online based businesses we’re essentially all in the same space so to speak. My thoughts are that the info coming out of any internet business show provides a perspective and insight that can relate directly to the future of any internet based niche. So, Frank asked me to write a bit about the show and since this is a domain oriented site, hopefully some of my immediate “take-aways” from the presentations will relate to the space.:)
As an entrepreneur and a wet behind the ears newbie considering a jump into the retail space with a start-up idea (no I won’t go into details . . . it’s incubating), I was overwhelmed by the amount of information packed into the IR show. Fortunately, the show provided a conference packet as thick as the yellow pages packed with the slides and bios from each presenter. This was an incredibly nice freebie to reference during the show and to take home. I also picked up the cd-rom version so I could listen to the presentations I missed later. You can see the agenda here.

There were a lot of facts and numbers presented by researchers throughout the show. All of them were very bullish on the future of the space. The growth of online retail is predicted to continue, but what’s amazing is that that the internet retail channel still represents a very small percentage of the whole of the retail world. Many of the top retailers on the Internet Retailer Top 500 are noticeably the multi-channel big box stores like Best Buy, Staples, Office Depot, etc or the manufacturers like Dell, Sony or HP, but it’s great to see the list also includes many pure play internet retailers. One statistic that amazed me was the low conversion ratios (1-5%) that were cited by some presenters. Remember, I’m new to internet retailing in general, but that number seems like it is very low and in desperate need of improvement.

An presentation by Heather Dougherty of Neilsen/NetRatings talked about user behaviors when shopping online for apparel. Heather didn’t get her presentation into the booklet on time so I’m hoping that I can track her down and cite some of it later. However, from what I can remember her company studied how users that purchased an item navigated to that store where the purchase was made, how long it took, where they came from , etc . Obviously there is some interest in this study as it can relate to the direct navigation/domain channel. Overall the study of these users showed that many of them preferred to “search” for the products (apparel) by brand rather than product type. In several of the cases the user typed in a brand straight into the address bar. Oldnavy.com for example, but in many cases they would land at a search engine first and perform the search for that brand. For example, they would go to yahoo and perform a search for “oldnavy.com”. HELLO WORLD! I didn’t realize that the “average joe” was still this handicapped when navigating the internet. Hey Joe, if you know the brand, why aren’t you navigating right to it by typing in Oldnavy.com into the browsers address bar?

The other point I found interesting from this was that shoppers are trending toward the brand search rather than an item search. This was very insightful from a direct navigation perspective. If there is a trend showing up in a study on shopping behaviors, can this correlate to a possible future trend that would lower the number of type-ins of generic, keyword-based domains in the future? As the consumer becomes more brand-aware on the internet will they continue to type the generic keyword into their browser? For example : I’m a user shopping online and I want to buy a sweater and I like Jcrew and Polo and I know I can get a cheap version at Old Navy, do I type in sweater.com as a direct navigation to find information/products on sweaters or do I bypass ths “search” activity. Since I already know where I can get the product I like, I can navigate right to those retailers by typing in the brand jcrew.com, polo.com, oldnavy.com etc

The last take-away I picked up was from a presentation by Safa Raschtchy of Piper Jaffray where he spoke about the Wall Street perspective on the e-retail space. He spoke about the impact of local search on e-commerce and gave an example that got me thinking about local search a bit more. He spoke about the next/last phase of the local search being for merchants to add real-time inventory based listings to the local search. For example, a shopper can presented with options not only of places to buy the particular product online but also options of locations nearby that actually have that exact item in stock, in your size and color and ready for pick-up. If you know the new sweater you want to buy is on the shelf ready to go in your size and color and you can pick it up on the way to your dinner date, there is an instant gratification and ease of use that will drive more shoppers to search online and buy offline.

What was interesting to me about this topic was I was actually faced with this exact sort of situation while in Chicago for the conference I was staying with friends who just bought a new condo. I wanted to purchase a house warming present and wanted to pick it up locally to be able to give it to them before I left. Of course, naturally as a domain owner, I went to telescopes.com first. I knew I wouldn’t be buying from them as it would take too long to get to me, but I was able to do research and find the types of products I should be buying. (a great feature of this site is the amount of information on buying a telescope for the newbie). Since I knew I wanted to buy offline to save time I went looking for a Chicago based shop on google by searching “telescope shop in Chicago”. Shoplocal.com comes up first but doesn’t really help me find what I want (contrary to it’s clever domain). It was virtually impossible on the limited time and internet access that I had to track down a shop within the 1-2 mile walking radius. It would have been nice to search for the item by city/location and be able to find a retailer with in a few blocks of my location and walk over and buy the telescope.

When this type of search is possible on the search engines it will definitely impact online buying. It will drive more shoppers to perform their search online and then make their purchases offline. This could impact pure play internet retailers who don’t have the benefit of a local brick and mortar location. I could also see an impact on the direct navigation channel as the shoppers gravitate away from direct navigation (telescopes.com) and toward the ease of finding what they want to buy nearby by performing local based searches. Obviously this innovation will be good news for the search advertising channel since the as this activity would increase, overall search advertising revenues would increase as well as more non-internet retailers convert to advertisers based on the notion that search engines could now bring more customers in the doors of their “brick and mortar” business.

I’ve got a lot of info buzzing around in my brain but this is a pretty good start on the topics that got me thinking about internet business in general and more specifically as it pertained both to the direct navigation channel and the new business venture I may soon be undertaking.

All in all it was an insightful show.

[Thank you Adam Strong]