NameJet to auction new gTLD domains before they launch

Many registrars are already offering new gTLD pre-registrations, now NameJet has taken the idea one step further: it’s going to auction premium names months before the gTLDs even go live.
It’s just announced a deal with XYZ.com, which is on track to run the .xyz and .college registries, to sell 40 “premium” domain names this month. In fact, according to its press relase, the first auction started on Wednesday.
These two new gTLDs are uncontested but do not yet have Registry Agreements with ICANN, and have not passed pre-delegation testing or any of the other pre-launch prerequisites.
The companies said they due to go live next year.
Some of the domains to be auctioned include: loans.college, scholarships.college, vacations.xyz, insurancequotes.xyz, students.college, jobs.college, auctions.xyz and health.xyz.
NameJet said it expects the auctions to be wrapped up by the end of February.

Second private auction nets $1.2m per gTLD

Only eight new gTLD contention sets were resolved during Innovative Auctions second round of private auctions this week, and the average winning bid has gone down.
The eight strings sold for a combine $9,651,000, or an average of $1.2 million per string. That’s down from the $1.5 million average reported from the first round of auctions in June.
The overall average winning bid from Innovative’s auctions is now $1.33 million.
Over 100 gTLDs had been committed to the second round by various applicants — which put up 68 strings and wound up winning three — but the auctions can obviously only go ahead if the whole contention set agrees to participate.
According to Innovative, these are the winners this week:

• .guide: Donuts
• .construction: Donuts
• .storage: Extra Space Storage (applying as Self Storage LLC)
• .desi: Desi Networks
• .expert: Donuts
• .fishing: Top Level Domain Holdings
• .casa: Top Level Domain Holdings
• .网址 (.wangzhi): Hu Yi Global

These were all two-applicant contention sets (Go Daddy had originally applied for .casa, but withdrew its application months ago).
Losing applicants — which get to take home the winning’s bidder’s cash, net Innovative’s fees — were Demand Media, Afilias, Dot Construction, and Red Circle.
The DI PRO Application Tracker will be updated daily as and when the losing applications are withdrawn. So far, only Donuts’ bid for .casa has had its withdrawal processed by ICANN.
Innovative seemed to blame the low turnout on the August holiday period, and said it has scheduled its third round of auctions for September 10.

Porn.com owner buys porn.xxx

PimpRoll, a pornography publisher and owner of porn.com, has bought the domain name porn.xxx from registry manager ICM Registry, it has just been announced.
The domain is already live. The site appears to be distinct from porn.com, but PimpRoll said it plans to build another “tube” site there.
The price of the domain was not disclosed, but PimpRoll is known to have paid $9.5 million for its .com address.
I’d guess we’re talking about low six figures for the .xxx, which was reserved by ICM as a “premium” name.
ICM said in a press release that the buyer will also automatically qualify for porn.sex, porn.porn and porn.adult under ICM’s Grandfathering Program, should it be awarded those gTLDs by ICANN.

Baseball league buys Rockies.com for $1.2m

Major League Baseball has purchased the domain name rockies.com for $1.2 million, according to the deal’s broker, Venture Capital Group Ltd.
The domain did belong to Tourism Canadian Rockies, which plans to move to CanadianRockies.org, according to the company. The Colorado Rockies is a baseball team in the MLB.
Domain Name Wire reported that the domain was up for sale last September, with Andrew Allemann predicting a sale to the MLB at price of $200,000 to $400,000.
According to Allemann, the MLB now only needs four .com domains to complete its collection of team names.
Rockies.com now redirects to mlb.com.
January 11 Update: The sale price of $1.2 million is now looking very dubious indeed.

ICM has already sold $200k of premium .xxx names

Contrary to some reports, ICM Registry has in fact already seen several sales of premium names from its recently published buy-it-now price list.
Judging by the changes to the list since it was revealed three weeks ago, at least eight domains have been sold for a total of $55,755.
Two new domains — trannyporn.xxx and trannys.xxx — have been added to the list, and a handful of others have had their prices increased, by a total value of $73,820.
These are the domains we’ve managed to establish were sold, along with their original list prices:

888.xxx ($1,320)
bet.xxx ($3,465)
celebrities.xxx ($15,015)
ddd.xxx ($330)
freeliveporn.xxx ($330)
massage.xxx ($18,810)
moms.xxx ($15,000)
own.xxx ($1,485)

Some domains appear to have been repriced, adding almost $74,000 to the total value of the $7.7 million pot. For example, highdefinition.xxx is now listed at $19,000, up from $2,500.
According to ICM, not all of the sold domains have been removed from the published list yet. President Stuart Lawley said a total of over $200,000 has been taken so far.
ICM came in for a bit of criticism from one early .xxx adopter last month, when six-figure investor Mike Berkens accused the company of damaging the TLD by capping prices too early.
There are still over 1,000 available names on the list.

Goatse.cx emerges as email provider after $10k sale

Notorious trolling domain goatse.cx is now being used to sell email addresses, part of the reemerging trend for domain owners to monetize their names with vanity email accounts.
If you’ve never heard of goatse.cx before, I’d strongly suggest remaining blissfully ignorant as your investigations will inevitably lead you into NSFW territory. Some things cannot be unseen.
Others may recall that it was the domain used in the early part of the century by pranksters and trolls to distribute hello.jpg, quite possibly the most disturbing image on the internet at the time.
Now, goatse.cx appears to be entirely safe for work.
According to The Register, the domain was acquired for $10,200 by an Australian who now proposes to charge $5 per year for an email account.

ICM puts $7.7 million of .xxx domains up for sale

Having already sold over $5 million worth of premium .xxx domains names, ICM Registry is putting another 1,000 names on the market, with a total purchase price of over $7.7 million.
Unusually for registry-reserved names, which usually end up at auction, all of the names are priced to sell.
Prices range from $220,000 for girls.xxx to $330 for provide.xxx.
Along with the full list of available names, ICM has also published some rough guides to likely traffic, based on its data gleaned from running search.xxx for the last few weeks.
A “Search Rank” stat ranks the popularity of the relevant keyword in search.xxx queries, while “Traffic Rank” divides the list into five categories by likely traffic volume.
ICM privately sold about $4 million of premium .xxx domains during its pre-launch Founders Program. Domainer Frank Schilling is believed to have invested seven figures.
Its biggest single sale to date is believed to be gay.xxx, which was snapped up for $500,000 last year.
ICM CEO Stuart Lawley told DI that the company still has about 500 premium names — including cams.xxx and tube.xxx — held in reserve to be released at a later date.

Domainers not welcome in one-character .org auction

The Public Interest Registry is to auction 85 one and two-character .org domain names, but only to organizations that promise to use them in a manner consistent with the .org brand.
The sell-off, branded Project94, will be handled by Go Daddy and eNom, which have each been provided with half of the available portfolio.
Discounting legacy registrations, 94 domains were released when PIR amended its contract with ICANN earlier this year, but nine of them are being held back because they match ccTLDs.
It’s going to be a straightforward auction, but to get a chance at bidding your idea will have to be vetted first.
“We want to see these names used in a way that reflects the brand attributes and the values of .org,” PIR CEO Brian Cute told DI today.
“Before getting into the auction there will be a filter where the applicant has to say the purpose to which they’re going to put the .org that they’ll be bidding on,” he said.
People wondering whether the .org auction is a park-and-flip opportunity seem to be out of luck.
I believe it’s the first time that a TLD registry has merged the RFP and auction phases of their allocation process when they release previously reserved one and two-character domains.
PIR, which is a non-profit, says it will earmark the auction funds for special projects, such as encouraging deployment of new technologies like DNSSEC.
The full list of names being sold can be found at Project94.org

Did a university just pay $3,000 for its .xxx domain?

The domain name sju.xxx has changed hands for $3,000 on Sedo.
It’s the first .xxx domain I recall popping up in Sedo’s sales feed.
However, I think there’s a pretty good chance it’s a damage-mitigation move by an American university.
SJU is the acronym used by Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, PA. The college uses sju.edu as its primary domain.
Knowing how paranoid universities have been about protecting their reputations in .xxx, and given that the sale came in just below the price of a cheap UDRP, I suspect we’re looking at a defensive move.
The Whois record for the domain is currently under privacy protection. Until recently, it belonged to one Jay Camina. It resolves to a suggestive Go Daddy parking page.

Paul Goldstone puts co.com up for sale

The domain name co.com has been put up for sale by domain investor Paul Goldstone.
The domain, which received 4.5 million unique visitors and 14 million page views in 2011, will be brokered jointly by DomainAdvisors and SellDomains.com, according to a press release.
I can immediately think of two companies that should be interested.
It might be a very smart move for .CO Internet, the .co registry, to buy the name and wildcard the third level in order to capture .co typo traffic.
It’s also exactly the kind of address CentralNic – which sells third-level names under domains such as us.org and uk.com – likes to use as a pseudo-gTLD.
If these two and others get into a bidding war, Goldstone could wind up making a packet.
DomainAdvisors CEO Tessa Holcomb said she expects the domain to fetch a “multi seven-figure” price.