Did Twitter pay $47,000 for Twitter.co.uk?

The domain name twitter.co.uk, which was until recently listed for sale with a £30,000 ($47,000) price tag, is now owned by Twitter.
The domain now redirects visitors to twitter.com, and Whois records last updated a week ago show that it is now registered to the San Francisco-based company.
Until recently, twitter.co.uk led to a page calling itself a “thorn in the side of American imperialism” and containing a lengthy rant about the microblogging service, which The Guardian reported on in 2009.
It also, since April 2010, carried this notice:

This domain is for sale at offers over £30k. This valuation is based on the fact that I devoted 9 months of my life working on my own t.w.i.t.t.e.r. project in 2005. I have offered the domain to Twitter Inc, giving them “first refusal”, and as they turned me down I am now offering it to anyone else who may be interested. Obviously there are limits as to what you would be allowed to do with the domain and you should familiarise yourself with Nominet’s policies and, in particular, its Dispute Resolution Service (DRS)

The previous owner registered the domain in early 2005 for his own legitmate purposes, well before Twitter itself launched, so it was by no means a case of cybersquatting.
The domain would, of course, have been considered untouchable for any sensible domainer.
Nominet, the .uk registry, currently has no record of Twitter ever bringing a complaint to its DRS, so it seems likely that Twitter had to put its hand in its pocket to acquire the domain.
The change seems to have been first noticed by a Twitter user at the weekend. AcornDomains has a discussion.
(Hat tip: @MathewCoUk)

Is Microsoft buying Kinect.com?

Did Microsoft just file a UDRP complaint on a typo of a domain name it doesn’t even own?
When Microsoft announced its new Kinect games console earlier this year, it did so without owning the domain kinect.com, as I blogged at the time.
But this week somebody – I’m guessing Microsoft – has filed UDRP on the typo wwwkinect.com, which was registered about the same time as the console launched and is currently parked.
The complainant’s name doesn’t seem to be available yet, but the case was filed the same day as several other Kinect-related UDRP cases that almost certainly are Microsoft’s work, such as microsoftkinect.com.
Kinect.com currently belongs to an advertising agency called CAHG. The domain isn’t resolving (for me) at the moment, which makes me wonder if it’s in the process of changing hands.
It would certainly be unusual for the company to own a typo of somebody else’s domain, although I don’t think there’s anything in the UDRP rules that would prevent it winning the case.
UDRP, after all, only compares contested domains against owned trademarks, not domain portfolios.
While Microsoft would not have a leg to stand on if it filed UDRP against the non-typo domain, I expect a good case could be made that the large majority of people typing “kinect.com” into their browsers are looking for Microsoft’s console.
Alexa is showing that kinect.com has experienced a 350% increase in traffic over the last three months, and has increased its Alexa rank by almost two million places.
UPDATE 2011/01/01: Microsoft now owns the domain.

Will a Russian domain sell for more than Sex.com?

The scandal-hit Russian domain name market may yet produce some of the most expensive domain name sales of all time. Premium .рф generics are already attracting eight-figure bids.
Bids of $10 million have apparently been placed on at least two domains, квартиры.рф and бетон.рф (apartments.rf and concrete.rf), in the controversial quasi-landrush auction managed by RU-Center, the largest Russian registrar.
IDNblog.com is reporting the apartments.rf asking price, and a reader was kind enough to send me a screenshot of the concrete.rf auction.
If these bids are for real, and these auctions were to close, they would immediately occupy the number two and three slots on the league table of all-time biggest-ticket domain sales
Before sex.com sold for $13 million, DNJournal’s top twenty list had fund.com in the top spot, at $9,999,950, followed by porn.com at $9,500,000 and diamond.com at $7,500,000.
The RU-Center auctions may not close, however.
As I reported yesterday, the registrar and five others are being investigated on antitrust grounds by Russian competition authorities, after allegedly registering tens of thousands of domains to themselves.
The auctions are currently frozen and the .рф registry, Coordination Center for ccTLD, has made noises about applying “sanctions” to the registrars that could include de-accreditation.
RU-Center, which confusingly does business at nic.ru, has defended its position in at least two articles here and here (in Russian, naturally).
As far as I can tell, none of these auctions will close until the registrar and the registry resolve their differences and/or the Russian government probe concludes.
However, it’s pretty obvious that the demand for Cyrillic generic IDNs is enormous in Russia, and could easily challenge .com on the big-sale league tables.

Overstock to bid for o.co.uk next month?

Overstock.com, which seems to have made registering single-letter domain names a key part of its branding strategy, likely has o.co.uk next in its sights.
The company drew headlines recently when it paid $350,000 for o.co and subsequently used it in its TV ads, and again yesterday when it picked up o.co.za for $9,000.
While it’s well known that o.com is the ultimate prize, Overstock has also been laying the groundwork for buying o.co.uk for over three years.
Nominet, the .uk registry, is set to open up the first of two sunrise periods on double and single-character .co.uk domains on December 1, and I expect Overstock already has its application ready to go.
It might not be an entirely straightforward bid, however.
Under the Nominet sunrise rules, holders of UK trademarks in use before January 1, 2008 are eligible to apply for their short domains.
Overstock, it turns out, has had a registered trademark on o.co.uk since August 2008.
It applied for the UK trademark in January 2008, the same month that Nominet’s policy-setting committees first started discussing the release of single-letter domains.
As far as I can tell, the trademark is considered valid from August 1, 2007, the same time Overstock was granted its US trademark on o.co.uk.
But can the company prove it was “using” the trademark prior to January 1, 2008, given that the domain was reserved? It does not appear to have a UK trademark on the letter O by itself.
One way or the other, I expect Overstock to eventually win the domain. Under Nominet’s rules, contested domains will go to auction, and Overstock has already proved it has deep pockets.
The company also has US trademarks on other O domains that it does not and cannot currently own, including o.info, o.com, and o.eu. It successfully registered and uses o.biz.
It also has a US trademark on o.de, but that domain appears to be currently registered to a German domain investor.

Black Friday domain fetches $90,000

Sedo is reporting that the the domain name blackfridaysales.com has sold for $90,000.
It appears to be have been registered to Frank Schilling’s Name Administration for the last couple of days.
Black Friday is the name given to the day after Thanksgiving in the US, when pre-Christmas sales traditionally kick off. This year, it falls on November 26.
The operator of the domain blackfriday.com, which was a 2001 $10 hand registration, says it received over 18 million unique visitors last year, and that 70% of them were direct type-in visits.
Oddly, blackfriday.info seems to rank better in Google for the search [black friday], for me at least.
Other five figure sales Sedo is currently reporting include valuable.com ($28,500), webengine.com ($50,000), adhoc.com (65,000 euros), rodon.com (20,000 euros), uganda.de (20,000 euros) and littleangels.com ($50,000).

ICM buys dotxxx.com for $25,000 and unveils new slogan

ICM Registry, the would-be .xxx registry operator, has acquired the domain name dotxxx.com from a Korean domainer for $25,000, to support an upcoming marketing campaign.
The company is also expected to unveil a punny new slogan, “Let’s be adult about it”, following its recent hiring of international ad agency M&C Saatchi.
The dotxxx.com domain currently redirects to icmregistry.com, the company’s main site. The private sale used Sedo for escrow.
Given the amount of cash ICM has spent attempting to get .xxx approved over the last ten years, $25,000 is a drop in the ocean.
ICANN recently decided to refer its application to the Governmental Advisory Committee for a consultation, before it makes a final call on whether to approve it or not.

SnapNames settles shill-bidder class action

Domain name auctioneer SnapNames said that it has settled the class action lawsuit filed against it by disgruntled domainers after one of its employees was found to be a shill bidder.
It seems to have had a bit of a result, too. Class members will receive exactly the same amount they would have had they accepted its rebate offer, according to a statement released by the company today.
The case was filed almost a year ago, after it emerged that Nelson Brady, a SnapNames employee, had been posing as a bidder in domain name auctions in order to bump up the final sale price.
Posing as “Hank Alvarez” or “halverez”, Brady stood to gain bonuses based on performance targets as a result of SnapNames’ acquisition by Oversee.net, its current owner.
After the abuse was discovered, SnapNames offered affected customers a rebate equivalent to the money they would have saved on a winning bid had “halvarez” not outbid them.
SnapNames said today:

Class members (which are United States residents who were extended the rebate offer but have not yet accepted) have been or shortly will be notified of the settlement terms and amounts (which are identical to the amounts affected bidders were offered in the rebate offer we extended last November).

This seems to mean that anybody who was holding out for a bigger settlement is out of luck.
The deadline for accepting the rebate expires November 4, but the deadline to become part of the class action is not until December 17.
SnapNames will have paid out $2 million to customers in total.
(I wonder how much the class action attorneys are to receive).
More info can be found at snapsettlement.com.
SnapNames has also settled its lawsuit against Brady for an undisclosed amount. The company sued him for $33 million in May.
Oversee said it “believes the financial penalty is appropriate considering the seriousness of the improper activity”.

NameJet to auction three-letter .pro domains

NameJet has inked a deal with RegistryPro to auction off eleven “premium” three-letter .pro domain names next month.
The domains themselves have not yet been revealed, but the auction is scheduled to kick off November 19, according to a press release today.
RegistryPro, a subsidiary of HostWay, received the the right to start selling previously-restricted one-, two- and three-character .pro domains from ICANN in May 2009.
This June, it allocated nine such domains, including top.pro and 411.pro, via an RFP process.
After it has finished auctioning off its selected short domains, the company plans to put the remainder back into the pool for first-come, first-served registrations.

Sex.com to sell for $13m

Sex.com is set to be sold for $13 million, after Sedo managed to find a buyer from among about a dozen bidders.
I reported the story for The Register today.
The buyer is Clover Holdings Ltd, based in St Vincent. The deal is subject to approval by the California bankruptcy court that is overseeing the assets of Escom, the current owner.
Go read the story. Or, if you’re interested in more detail, here’s the motion Escom filed this week, which includes the sales contract as Exhibit A (pdf).

DiscountVouchers.com sells for $158k

DiscountVouchers.co.uk has acquired the equivalent .com domain for £100,000 ($158,000).
The private sale, apparently sealed after owner Barry Garner offered it for sale in a forum post at Affiliates4U.com last week, does not appear to have closed yet, judging by Whois records.
The buyer, who claims the .co.uk site will handle £50 million to £100 million of sales to merchants in its first year, reportedly said the primary motivation behind the deal was brand protection.