Sedari hires Fay Howard as COO

New gTLDs start-up Sedari has recruited Fay Howard, formerly general manager of CENTR, the Council for European National Top Level Domain Registries, as its new chief operating officer.
Howard has also previously worked at Nominet and Eurid, where she wrote the winning application for the .eu registry contract, according to Sedari.
It’s one of a number of recent senior hires for the company, which came out of stealth mode this summer to provide new gTLD applicants with application and registry management services.
Last month, the company hired Philip Shepard as director of policy.

Staff changes at new gTLD consultancies

There’s movement in the new top-level domains consultancy market this week, with new hires and departures at a couple of startups.
It’s been a case of one in, one out at Sedari, the registry management services company founded by Liz Williams this summer.
The company has hired Philip Sheppard, most recently director of public affairs for AIM, the European Brands Agency, as its new policy director.
Sheppard is an ICANN veteran from the IP/business side of the house, who has chaired multiple policy committees since becoming involved in 1999.
But Sedari has also lost another industry vet, Jothan Frakes, who’s decided to go freelance.
Elsewhere, FairWinds Partners, which shares management with the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse, has also emerged publicly as a new gTLD consultancy.
The Washington DC-based company hope to use its track record of criticizing the new gTLD program to win the support of big brands skeptical about the ICANN process.
FairWinds said this week it’s taken on former ICANN director Michael Palage of Pharos Global, who has worked for both proponents and opponents of the program, apparently on a freelance basis.

Twitter co-founder to headline DOMAINfest

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone is to keynote the 2012 DOMAINfest Global conference, organizer Oversee.net has just announced.
It sounds rather like his speech will focus on the “inspirational story” angle, rather like Go Daddy founder Bob Parsons’ keynote at the 2011 show.
According to the agenda, Stone will “share his thoughts on Twitter’s future and the evolving world of social media”.
Judging by the other speakers and panelists lined up, it’s an SEO-heavy agenda, but there will be a workshop entitled “Everything You Need to Know about New TLDs”.
For the new gTLDs panel, so far only Neustar’s Ken Hansen is listed as a confirmed speaker. I don’t expect that state of affairs to last long.
The show will be held at the Fairmont Miramar in Santa Monica, California, from January 31 to February 2 next year. Prices start at $1,195 if registering before December 31.

Google threatens domain names with Direct Connect

Google’s latest social networking play is a potential threat to the relevance of domain names.
The company has announced the launch of Direct Connect, a feature that enables direct navigation to Google+ pages via the search engine.
Essentially, typing a + sign before the name of a brand in the search box will take you directly to that brand’s Google+ page, assuming it has one, bypassing search results.
This video explains it pretty well:

Google said yesterday that at launch a handful of brands, including Pepsi, Toyota and Angry Birds, are signed up, but from where I’m sitting only +google seems to work as advertised.
The feature also only seems to work when used with the search box on Google’s home page.
However, it does not require a massive leap of the imagination to see it quite easily showing up soon in the Google Toolbar and the integrated search/URL bar in Chrome.
Direct Connect was launched alongside Google+ Pages, the company’s answer to Facebook Pages – a way for companies to have their own branded fan page for interacting with customers.
Many companies are already advertising their Facebook addresses, or simply encouraging people to search Facebook for their brand, in print, on TV and elsewhere.
It might not be long before we see +brand advertising along similar lines.
Could Google train people to type +pepsi instead of pepsi.com? It’s an interesting notion.
The + operator was of course until recently a way of telling Google that you really, really wanted to see search results containing your query.
As Google has increasingly crapified its search engine with infuriating “user-friendly” guff over the last few years, I’ve trained myself to automatically put a + in front of every search in order to get the results I want rather than what Google, in its infinite wisdom, thinks I might want.
I’m sure I’m not alone.
While the + function has now been deprecated in favor of enclosing queries in quotation marks, it is nevertheless already trained user behavior in many cases.
I’m not suggesting that Google is going to kill domain names, but at first glance Direct Connect certainly seems to be a step toward attempting to make them less relevant for branding and advertising.
I can’t help but note that Google+ Pages was launched unilaterally by Google with no multi-stakeholder consultation, no battles with intellectual property interests, and no government oversight.
The Association of National Advertisers has yet to demand that Google shuts it down.

NetNames puts gTLD.com domain to good use

European registrar Group NBT has a pretty great domain for its new generic top-level domains consulting business: gTLD.com.
Under its NetNames corporate registrar brand, the company is targeting the “.brand” market, like so many others, judging by its recently relaunched web site.
Its services include pre-application consulting, help with applications, and ongoing management services, provided through its relationships with registry infrastructure partners.
It will also keep track of other ICANN gTLD applications and alert clients about potential cases of trademark infringement.
One thing’s for sure, new gTLD applicants in general are spoiled for choice now when it comes to selecting a consultant.

DomainTools opens massive email record database

DomainTools has opened up a huge database that matches domain names to the mail servers they use.
A search on ReverseMX.com for a domain name returns the mail servers that domain uses. In reverse, you can search for a mail server or IP address and find out which domains use it.
For example, a query for one of Google’s mail servers will spit back a short list of some of the domains that use Google for their email, along with an aggregate domain count.
DomainTools said in a press release:

ReverseMX can be used by a wide audience – basically anyone interested in researching the footprint of small or large email providers. For example, users can analyze which mail servers’ domains are using certain email providers, or how Microsoft’s hosted email is doing against Gmail or Yahoo.

The data currently covers the 130 million domains registered under .com, .edu, .net, .org, .info, .biz, and .us – the largest TLDs for which zone files are freely available.
DomainTools has already uncovered a few interesting factoids, such as that 30 million domain names use Go Daddy for their email, making it easily the largest provider.
The service also interrogates domains’ SPF records to work out which IP addresses are authorized to send email for any given domain.
I can imagine ReverseMX being useful for researchers in the security industry (and their spammer adversaries?).
But unlike DomainTools’ other services, it does not immediately appear to be something that many people in the domain name industry will find themselves using on a daily basis.

Now you can outsource your whole gTLD

It’s already common practice for domain name registries to outsource their technical operations to a back-end provider such as VeriSign or Afilias, but a new company hopes that new gTLD registries will want to go one step further.
Sedari, which appears to have soft-launched at the .nxt conference today, wants successful new gTLD applicants to outsource their back-office functions too.
The company, headed by former ICANN policy advisor Liz Williams, “helps string owners outsource the risk and responsibility of running a registry in compliance with ICANN’s contracts”, according to its site.
I understand this means functions such as billing, support, compliance, and liaising with the back-end registry and the front-end registrars.
I guess it’s going to be possible for a successful gTLD applicant to sign a registry contract with ICANN and then do very little to actually manage its day-to-day operation.
A registry that outsources its technical infrastructure to the likes of Neustar and its back office to Sedari will presumably be free to focus on nothing but marketing.
Sedari is staffed by a number of familiar faces.
Its CFO is Kevin Wilson, who had the same role at ICANN until January, and former ICANN director Dennis Jennings is on the board.
Its CTO is Wayne MacLaurin, who was previously CTO of Momentous. Jothan Frakes, formerly with Minds + Machines, is senior VP of channel management.

New gTLD conference planned for Bulgaria

Bulgaria is to get its own conference on the new generic top-level domains opportunity.
Set for the Grand Hotel Sofia in the nation’s capital, November 7 (and possibly November 8, according to the schedule), Domain Forum is being organized by Uninet.bg and Register.bg.
Uninet is the organization that’s been pushing ICANN, so far unsuccessfully, for a Cyrillic version of Bulgaria’s ccTLD, .bg.
The program looks like a mix of local-interest talk and general gTLD discussion, and I’m told it will be conducted in a mix of English and Bulgarian. Two-way translation will be provided.
The organizers expect about 100 attendees. ICANN staff will be there, but names have not been confirmed. I’m also planning to attend.
Oh, and registration is free.
The new gTLD conference diary is certainly filling up.
We have Kieren McCarthy’s .nxt coming up next week in San Francisco. I attended the first one in February and thought they did a great job. I wrote about it here.
And next month there’s United-Domains’ two-day newdomains.org meeting in Munich, Germany, which I believe will be Europe’s first new gTLD show. I’m on a couple of panels at this event.

Last chance to win newdomains.org tickets

Congratulations to Jim Davies, you’ve just won a free conference pass for newdomains.org worth $1,000 for entering the latest DomainIncite competition.
Random.org’s random number sequence generator selected the winning order of tweets qualifying for the draw, and Twitter handle @PerthPom came top of the list.
That’s a second Australia-based winner, by the looks of things, after Michael’s win on Monday. I hope you guys can both afford the airfare.
Competition Day Three
I have two final tickets to give away.
To reiterate, they’re Full Conference passes for the newdomains.org conference in Munich, Germany, on September 26 and 27. Flights, hotels and Oktoberfest not included. Details here.
If you want a pass, just leave a comment here before 2359 UTC Sunday August 14, saying why you think you should get one. Make something up.
I’ll use Random.org again to pick the two lucky winners and announce the names on Monday.
All winners will be contacted by somebody from the conference organizer, United-Domains, next week.
UPDATE: Proving just how random Random.org is, the winning order it selected was 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. The winners are TAG and Daniel. I’ll be in touch.

Your second chance to win a $1,000 conference pass

Congratulations to “Michael”, you’ve just won a free conference pass for newdomains.org worth $1,000 just for leaving a comment on DomainIncite.
Random.org’s random number sequence generator selected the winning order of comments earlier today, and Michael came top of the list.
His winning answer to the question of “What new gTLD(s) do you think will be successful, and why?” was:

If success is defined by the value it offers the Internet community and not by the number of registrations then I think that a cause based TLD like .Eco or .HIV will be the most successful as they will revolutionize the way we interest with charities online and show our support, ushering in a new era.

I’ve hooked the winner up with conference organizer United-Domains.
And now on to…
Competition Day Two
To be in with a chance at winning the second Full Conference pass to newdomains.org, simply:

1) Follow me on Twitter (if you’re not already doing so).
2) Send a tweet mentioning @domainincite and including the hashtag #conferencecompo

Tweets must be sent by 2359 UTC, Tuesday August 9. I’ll announce the randomly-selected winner here on Wednesday.
Again, the prize does not include transportation or accommodation, but it does include a certain amount of food and drink, along with access to all the panels and exhibits.
The show runs September 26-27 in Munich, Germany.
These Full Conference passes are currently selling for €699 ($1,000) each, so if you’re currently wondering whether or not to attend, a free ticket may help make your mind up.