Since everyone has already posted some of their predictions for our beloved domain industry for 2007, let me add my two cents (one Canadian and one Euro-Cent).

For me 2007 is the year of convergence - a trend that will probably continue well into 2008.

• Parked pages and content will be married closer together in order to provide a better user experience and higher numbers of repeat visitors
• Industry partnerships (for example the Fabulous/BuyDomains/AfterNIC partnership) and buyouts (for example the Demand Media/eNom/BulkRegister deal) will continue throughout the year.
• Other methods of monetizing domains (for example lead generation, domain rentals/leases and full scale development) will gain momentum throughout the year.
• The changes will lead the industry to a more professional approach as well. More details on this later.
• We will also see even more media attention on domain portfolio holders and possibly some more backlash.

There’s probably more, but this is it for tonight :) See you at DomainFest.

As reported earlier, Marchex is going to expand the integration of the content from the OpenList site into their domain portfolio.

Marchex, Inc. (NASDAQ:MCHX) (NASDAQ:MCHXP), today announced that it plans to integrate content and functionality from its Open List search and content aggregation engine across more than 100,000 Marchex Web sites by June 30, 2007. Marchex also announced that it plans to launch an expanded version of Open List (www.openlist.com) by September 30, 2007, as a standalone destination and search guide that will provide relevant, searchable content and data on more than 15 million businesses segmented into more than 20,000 categories.

[…]

Marchex today announced the hiring of Chris Linnett for the position of Open List Director. Linnett will be responsible for evolving the Open List business, which includes bringing Open List content to Marchex’s proprietary Web sites, creating a unique consumer Web site experience at OpenList.com, expanding advertiser relationships, and building new partnerships around Open List’s unique data paradigm.

Linnett has extensive experience in the online consumer space, including 12 years at Microsoft, where he was responsible for the design and development of some of Microsoft’s leading online properties, including the MSN home page and Office Online. He holds a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from the University of California at Berkeley, as well as a bachelor’s degree from Pomona College.

[Press Release]

NameMedia, the parent company of BuyDomains and AfterNIC announced today that they were integrating the portfolio of 500,000 domain names from FabulousDomains, a division of the Australian Company Dark Blue sea into their domain offerings. This creates a marketplace that currently lists about 2,000,000 domains for sale.

[Press Release]

Getting over a nasty cold means slowly trying to catch up with many missed important tasks, while trying to give the body enough time to recover. What a balancing act. And recover it must, since next week brings to us the DomainFest Global conference in LA, which I will be attending. I am actually going on a parental leave starting February 1st, but I could not afford to miss meeting my friends in LA. So while it certainly sounds weird to start off a parental leave by visiting an industry conference, I had been planning to go for a while already. May my son and my wife forgive me.

That being said, for an event that was only announced in mid November, DomainFest Global is shaping up to be one of the major conferences for this industry this year. 250 attendees are said to have registered so far and while the hotel is apparently almost booked, there is still room for some more. The event starts on January 31st, 2007.

DomainSponsor brings us an industry event and a customer user track at the same time. Their line-up of speakers and sponsors (including the Bank of America, which helped establish a $60 million credit facility for Oversee.net, DomainSponsor’s parent company) for the event looks awesome and silenced critics of the September 2006 DomainFest LA, where some companies said they were refused as attendees. The event even features TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington (who founded Pool.com) and a FASTPitch where you can pitch your idea to Michael. Amongst others, Brett Fausett also is a very good addition to the list of speakers - especially since Domainers should also be concerned about ICANN politics.

For full information on the event, visit their website at http://domainfest.com/ . I am quite excited about the event and am looking forward to meeting at least some of my friends and readers. If you can’t make, I’ll try to cover some of the event here in my blog.

Oversee.net [the parent company of DomainSponsor] […] today announced that it has established a $60 million, five-year, secured revolving credit facility. The credit facility was arranged and managed by Banc of America Securities LLC. Bank of America, N.A. will serve as administrative agent. A syndicate of lenders and financial institutions is participating in the facility with Bank of America, including Comerica Bank, California Bank and Trust and Silicon Valley Bank.

I am planning on making some changes to the categories in this blog and the structure in general while also moving it to a new server and to the Wordpress MU edition. If you notice any problems, please let me know in the comments or email me. Thanks for your ongoing support!

Oversee.net […] today announced that it acquired LowFares.com, […] [a] travel product comparison research site for consumers. The deal was completed on January 5, 2007 for an undisclosed amount.

The focus of LowFares.com is to provide consumers with a side-by-side comparison of prices from various travel sites, accessible from a single site. Its advertisers include Priceline.com, Hotwire.com, Expedia.com, Cheapair.com, and Orbitz.com. The site provides advertisers with highly-qualified travel leads.

Oversee.net is the parent company of Low.com, a consumer financial portal that helps users find the lowest cost, most reputable purchase, refinance and home equity loans.

[Press Release]

After a vacation in Europe I am now back again in Canada (after a trip back that took about double the amount of time it should have taken) - so expect normal posting to resume shortly.

I also attended the DomainStammtisch in Hamburg and hosted (a very small scale) DomainerDiner in Berlin - thanks to everyone who I meet.

It appears this post has been sitting in my drafts folder, ready to post for some weeks now, so why not post it at this point.

After the announcement that Demand Media’s eNom division is going to manage the .TV retail registrations for VeriSign in the future, they have now released details on their plans.

For this purpose they have launched ChannelMe.TV today, which markets the .TV domain (which actually is the country code for Tuvalu) as a domain to “create your own TV channel”. The site does not yet offer any additional services, such as video hosting, with the domain registration, but those tools are “coming soon” according to the site (March 2007 according to the Washington Post article).

Premium domains (the registry charges a premium for what they consider valuable domains) cannot be registered through the site, they refer you to the eNom.tv instead. The eNom.TV website does not register those names either at the moment, but allows you to express interest by filling out a form and they will notify you when the name is for sale in Q1/2007.

The announcement reminds me of Tom Gardner’s (of the Motley Fool) speech at the Florida TRAFFIC conference, where he said that if he would be investing in domains, he would be buying .TV domains, due to the increased popularity of online videos. According to some .TV domain registrants, the extension already gets type-in traffic today.

[via the Washington Post]

According to this press release, Domainer’s Magazine, a bi-monthly print magazine for domainers has just launched. So far, no subscription information is available on the website.

[via DNForum]

PS: Happy New Year!