Dan Warner of Fabulous released a document on the segmentation of the Domain Aftermarket. A must read – unfortunately I haven’t completed reading it yet, so it’s too early for me to comment. At the same time they launched a new website: AftermarketDomains.com.

AfterNIC launched their German website yesterday and also has German speaking support staff available. The link to switch to the German site is in the top right corner of the site at http://www.afternic.com/ .

Over at OptimizedDomains.com, the author has published a very nice Domain Name Appraisal guide that looks at the all of the factors that influence domain name evaluation.

[...] eNom, Inc. has appointed Taryn Naidu, the former CEO of pool.com, as an executive advisor to its management team. In this position, Naidu will drive business and product development strategy as well as recommendations for promoting corporate growth.

Naidu’s immediate focus will be eNom’s aftermarket and auction business called Club Drop™ (clubdrop.com).

[via DomainInformer.com]

ICANN approved that application for the creation of a .ASIA TLD. No big surprises here, after .EU had been approved before.

[ICANN Board Meeting]

Marchex, Inc. (NASDAQ:MCHX) (NASDAQ:MCHXP) today announced that Anne Devereux has joined its Board of Directors, effective October 19th. Devereux replaces Rick Thompson, who has stepped down from the Board to devote more time to his position as a Vice President at Microsoft Corporation.

[Press Release]

As reported earlier PIR has submitted a proposal to ICANN that looks to charge a $0.05 fee for Traffic Testing (also known by some as Traffic Tasting)within the .ORG TLD if the deletions exceed 90% of the registrar’s regular registration volume.

(For an explanation what Traffic testing is, please read: How does traffic testing/tasting work?).
The registry for .ORG, PIR, claims a significant overhead due to the volume of the traffic testing. Depending on the setup of the registry, the traffic testing will of course take up database space (since registrations are billable transactions, they cannot just be deleted even when the charged amount is refunded at the time of the domain deletion) and some system resources during creation and deletion.

It would in general be very interesting and helpful to see a detailed breakdown of the registry operating cost that further explains how traffic testing affects the registries.

Peter Ejtel comments:

With the Direct Navigation market significantly increasing year over year, today’s domains that don’t pass mustard may become profitable in the future, and IMHO the registries may just be shooting future business in the foot with this strategy.

[via Peter Ejtel's ClickToHit]

Apparently the week before the TRAFFIC conference (which I will be visiting as well) is the week for press releases from anyone in the industry.

LeaseThis.com announced today the launch or their “advertising platform“, which appears to be a domain/traffic leasing similar to the German site DomainVermietung, which I featured in June of this year.

Unfortunately the details on the offerings are very sparse at this point in time.

[Press Release]

As you might have heard, Microsoft released their Internet Explorer 7 yesterday. So what does this mean for domainers?

One important feature in IE7 is the integration of IDN (internationalized domain names), which means all those names with the “funky” characters in local language will work flawlessly in IE7.

One change that I also noticed is that the address bar is sort of ‘grayed out’. It could be a hint that Microsoft wants to draw the attention away from the actual domains.

Any other observations or comments?

NameMedia Inc., a direct search and domain name company, has hired Brian Farrey as chief technology officer, the company said on Wednesday.

Prior to joining Waltham-based NameMedia, Farrey was the president of technology at Monster Worldwide Inc. in Maynard.

[via Boston Business Journal]