Recent Posts
- The Swiss can register .swiss domains from next week
- .ai up to 425,000 domains
- A million “free” .music domains up for grabs
- D3 to get $5 million in crypto to apply for .ape gTLD
- Alibaba hit with ICANN breach notice
- New Vegas conference “Davos for Web3 interoperability”
- ICANN content policing power grab may be dead
- Cable company unplugs its dot-brand after acquisition
- Germany crosses 10,000 dot-brand domains milestone
- Founders out as Com Laude gets equity injection
- PIR’s Diaz to leave domain industry
- Some registrars have already quit ICANN’s Whois experiment
- ICANN opens $217 million Grant Program
- Internet could get one-letter gTLDs (but there’s a catch)
- .ai registry fights deadbeats with tweaked auction rules
- Amazon and Google among .internal TLD ban backers
- .ai registry advises buyers not to use GoDaddy
- .post liberalizes with new sunrise period
- Team Internet spends $41 million on content farm
- Epik backtracks on Kiwi Farms claim after legal threat
- .austin names launch on blockchain
- Freenom shuts down 12.6 million domains — report
- GoDaddy’s next .xxx contract may not be a done deal
- GlobalBlock blocking 2.5 million domains
- Microsoft moving its cloud apps from .com to .microsoft
- ICANN 79: anonymous trolls and undercover lawyers
- ICANN scores win in single-letter .com lawsuit
- Cosmetics brand terminates its gTLD
- Up to 70 jobs on the line at Nominet as .uk regs dwindle
- Governments back down on new gTLD next round delay
- Private auctions could be banned in new gTLD next round
- ICANN meeting venue “insensitive and hurtful”
- GoDaddy to start selling graphic.design domains
- GAC spinning up new gTLD curveball at ICANN 79?
- GoDaddy’s GlobalBlock supports blockchain names
- Police .uk domain takedowns dive in 2023
- GoDaddy wants to cut the bullshit from .xxx
- Dueling domain blocking services to launch at ICANN 79
- Freename tries to bridge DNS and blockchain
- Olive retires from ICANN
- Whois policy published without life-saving disclosure rule
- UK gov takes its lead from ICANN on DNS abuse
- Tucows reports 2023 results
- Twitter “completely unresponsive” on clickable domains
- ICANN spends $5 million more than planned in first fiscal half
- .art takes a million domains off its premium list
- KeyTrap ‘the most devastating vulnerability ever found in DNSSEC’
- Freenom settles $500 million Meta lawsuit and will exit domain business
- New gTLD lottery to return in 2026
- First GlobalBlock prices revealed — they ain’t cheap
- Domain universe grows on new gTLDs despite .com shrinkage
- D3 signs up crypto gTLD client number five
- GoDaddy reports strong domains growth
- How to qualify for a $40,000 gTLD
- Registry service provider evaluation handbook published
- WebUnited inks deal to “mirror” country’s TLD in the blockchain
- GoDaddy project unveils brand-blocking calculator
- Report: Monster “misappropriated” millions from Epik
- .com is shrinking but Verisign raises prices again anyway
- D3 announces fourth crypto new gTLD client
- Donald Trump loses second UDRP case
- UK cybersquatting complaints hit record low
- No excuses! PIR to pay for ALL registries to tackle child abuse
- ICANN insists it is working on linkification
- Namecheap sues ICANN over .org price caps
- GoDaddy offers free Ethereum blockchain integration
- Epik reveals who is running the company
- Epik gets acquired again! The plot thickens…
- Airline gTLD crashes and burns
- First chunks of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook drop
- Epik to reveal its owners soon
- Another crypto firm to apply for a new gTLD
- Monster and Royce are NOT involved in Epik?!
- Nominet to overhaul .uk registry, turn off some services
- Russia blames DNSSEC, not Ukraine, for internet downtime
- Team Internet says revenue beat estimates
- Sold for over $20k, insure.ai and dog.ai back in .ai’s expired names auction
- .ai helps UDRP cases rise in 2023, WIPO says
- Freenom’s domains land at Gandi after termination
- .ru domains fly off the shelf as Western sanctions bite
- ICANN picks its first ever Supreme Court
- Lebanon’s ccTLD going back to Lebanon after ICANN takeover
- ICANN picks the domain it will never, ever release
- ICANN approves domain takedown rules
- Has Epik gone “woke”?
- First bits of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook expected next week
- ICANN bans closed generics for the foreseeable
- You can’t use money to buy .box domains
- After 14 years, ICANN practices what it preaches on IDNs
- Weak demand for private Whois data, ICANN data shows
- .ing doing way better than .meme
- DNS Women barred from ICANN funding?
- Dev releases free open-source TLD registry platform
- INCO flips a gTLD to Identity Digital
- Anguilla fears the .ai junk drop
- Five more gTLDs get launch dates
- $10 million of ICANN cash up for grabs
- Almost 50,000 .ai domains sold in a quarter
- ICANN threatens to regulate your speech [RANT]
- Life insurance company kills dot-brand
- ICANN finds new home for Lebanon’s TLD after founder’s death
- ICANN begs people to use its new Whois service
- Shiba Inu outs itself as crypto new gTLD applicant
- Over 50,000 .ai domains sold in three months
- Amazon planning new push into registrar market?
- Registries and registrars vote ‘Yes’ to new DNS abuse rules
- ICANN predicts flattish 2025 for domain industry
- Fast-growing Gname buys another 150 registrars
- GoDaddy service to let you block domains in over 650 TLDs
- Did I find a murder weapon in a zone file?
- ICANN drops the “man” from Ombudsman
- Have your say on police domain takedown powers
- Most registrars are shunning ICANN’s new Whois system
- Nominet to take over .gov.uk
- ICANN picks Istanbul for 2024 meeting
- ICANN’s private Whois data request service goes live
- .au regs slide on 2LD anniversary
- ICANN accused of power grab over $271 million auction fund
- A registrar is getting blamed for an Israeli war propaganda site
- Two more dot-brands bite the dust
- Google sells five-figure AI domain and six-figure .ing hack
- .blackfriday is still a bit rubbish
- Internet Naming Co acquires five more gTLDs
- Domain universe grows despite .com drag
- Did somebody spend a million bucks on a Google domain hack?
Domain President? Dicker fallout continues as Schwartz unleashes tweetstorm
“Domain King” domain investor Rick Schwartz has twunleashed a twirade of Twitter twabuse about deleted podcasts that would put Donald Trump to shame.
Starting late Sunday night and apparently still ongoing at time of publication, Schwartz has been haranguing Michael Cyger, publisher of the DomainSherpa and DNAcademy investor sites, about dozens of deleted DomainSherpa podcasts.
So far, he’s hit send on scores of tweets. A very small sample:
Mike, I think you should stop ignoring Mike Berkens @thedomains & myself before this gets out of control and spills over all over the place.
— Rick Schwartz (@DomainKing) June 11, 2017
Exactly right! So @DomainSherpa should stop being a COWARD and clean this MESS up that HE ALONE CREATED. NOW!!!! SELF-DESTRUCTION! #Domains
— Rick Schwartz (@DomainKing) June 11, 2017
No idea why @DomainSherpa jumped on the thread other day & opened up this GIANT CAN OF WORMS?? Then ignored everything. BAD MOVE! #Domains
— Rick Schwartz (@DomainKing) June 11, 2017
Cyger was the host of the DomainSherpa video podcast, which regularly featured Schwartz and TheDomains publisher Mike Berkens as guests.
Also a regular guest was industry pariah Adam Dicker, who many domainers believe has used shady business practices in his dealings with others in the community.
After stories began to emerge of Dicker’s alleged wrongdoings, Cyger decided to stop using him as a guest. He subsequently removed all previous shows featuring Dicker from the DomainSherpa web site.
Now, Schwartz and Berkens are pissed that the hundreds of hours they volunteered into appearing on the show were wasted, and that hundreds of social media links they used to promote the shows are useless.
The three parties chatted by phone back in March, all seem to agree, about how to resolve this issue.
Cyger says it was agreed that the deleted shows would be replaced by an explanation that the show had been removed.
But Berkens and Schwartz claim that Cyger has in fact been ignoring their requests to reinstate the shows — hence the tweetstorm over the last 24 hours. Cyger denies that claim, and says he believes he did the right thing by removing the shows.
I, for the record, have no opinion on the matter.
It spilled into public when concerns were ignored in private and we expected to hear back and never did. That was in early MARCH! We were pretty patient until last week.
Then on the 7th I think he showed up on my thread on Twitter to PROMOTE his show.
That upset Mike Berkens and Mike Berkens brought the issue up in public. Not me, so please be factual. Thanks!
Not sure why none of Berkens’s numerous comments appear here. But maybe they 1 or 2 should to show some context.
Instead of a response back, it has been radio silence from Cyger. We contributed 100’s of hours and deserve more than a “Houdini act”.
And please remember, Mike Berkens and I never received a penny nor asked for a penny for our contributions. The advertisers that paid I am sure expected their shows to remain up and so did we. But what made this unravel. is the “Houdini act”. It could have ALL been avoided.
Seems there was bad judgment with having Dicker on the show to begin with and then again to sweep this under the rug and not addressing our LEGITIMATE concerns. Not the way you treat 2 guys that contributed HUNDREDS of hours to help somebody take in a pretty decent amount of ad revenue and gain a lot of credibility.
What exactly did we do wrong? He treated Adam Dicker better and he seems to be partially responsible for this mess. We did it to share and educate not to be treated like we are scum.
We both feel completely used and unappreciated. Glad he was able to make $$$ on us and then DISPOSE of us when we were no longer need. NOT COOL! Not cool at all. PERIOD!
Also GLAD you found Houdini and he HAD TIME and the courtesy TO TALK TO YOU! Better judgment on his part and none of this would have happened. Very sad! I am totally disappointed in somebody I had a lot of respect for until this event.
Thanks for more than the 140 characters on Twitter!
Always enjoyed Rick, Mike and Page appearing.
Rick is the most entertaining to date 🙂
Shame all that video is now buried.
The sherpa show was where Dicker was able to find his sheep. I remember the show where Cyger said he said Dicker’s financial claims to some of his sites, and domains, was that all BS?
Rick’s timeline reads like the diary of a someone who’s borderline psychotic. How on earth he can think that it’s okay to bully a standup guy like Cyger is beyond me.
It has been pointed out by several individuals on Twitter that he responded to a tweet that was also addressed to him. Cyger even posted a screenshot of it to point this out but it seems that either Rick and Berkens are too infantile to understand how Twitter actually works (that is most likely the case considering their age) or they simply choose to ignore that fact.
Cyger not responding to your threads is not a disappearing act, it simply shows he stands above your childish BS imo.
And then there’s the whole argument that Cyger is responsible for bringing Adam Dicker onto the show – how on earth was he supposed to know Dicker was a stealing scumbag when people like you (Rick) called Adam a “good and trusted friend” – Yes that’s an actual quote of Rick Schwartz his endorsement of Dicker on LinkedIn.
I’m pretty sure Cyger could have made more money by keeping the content with Dicker online but he decided to remove all of it from his site to protect innocent newbies from the Dicker scams, yet you and Berkens demand the content to be published again. SELFISH!
I agree…Mike Cyger did the right thing to avoid drama and at the end of the day…it’s his website…he has the right to do whatever he pleases!!!
You gave me another side of this story. Thank you.
Why do you guys care if old shows are up or not ? They’re old shows from years ago…
A simple solution would be to get the copies of the shows and put them up on YouTube.
Lol: domainers.
I’m actually surprised Rick and Michael B didn’t do the opposite and request that Michael C save them from the embarrassment of appearing alongside Dicker.
I happen to be a trained film editor, and it’s possible that the shows could be edited down into concise shows with substituted narration and superimposed diagrams & industry images, i.e. edit Dicker out, thereby not be “wasted”.
Editors have tricks to cover bad footage.
I was going to suggest editing and adding some kind of notices myself but don’t know how resource intensive that would be.
This seems to be a good solution.
Rick is no longer relevant enough to have any impact on anyone, let alone an issue from two years ago. The sponsors don’t care a whit what two old retired domainers think. Rick will rattle his crib for attention, make threats and generally make a lot of noise then do nothing. Same as always.
“rattle his crib for attention” … hahahaaa…i love it!!!
What kind of nasty nonsense posting is that? And you are the person behind purple.com? Seriously? What’s more embarrassing and even bizarre – Rick Schwartz, who sure seems rather splendidly relevant to me, or how you’ve been holding a domain like that all these years?
Not sure what the problem is. It’s Michael Cyger’s show. If he decides to take it down, it is up to him.
Rick and berkens are the few people that give their honest opinions. The haters are either ignorant or new gtld proponents. Stooooooopid people will hate based on ignorance or agenda.
But would like to add that Rick and berkens should be understanding and accept that the videos shouldn’t be promoted. Cyger does have a vaild reason for taking them down. Offer berkens and Rick copies for personal use and that should be the end of it.