I was away during the week and did not spend much time on my laptop. Because of this I was unable to get any blog posts done or a video recorded. So instead, I’ll give everyone a quick recap of this week’s top stories.

Sex.com Auction Cancelled – Creditors of Escom, LLC filed an involuntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition the day before Sex.com was set to be auctioned off.

.TV Premium Pricing Lowered – VeriSign has lowered the pricing on tens of thousands of premium .tv domain names. In addition, all .tv domain names registered after March 19th will not have a premium renewal fee. At this point all domain names registered before March 19th will continue to carry the existing high renewal rates.

Mocus.com Renamed To Catchy.com – Francois Carrillo, owner of Domaining.com and brandable domain name marketplace Mocus, has acquired Catchy.com for an undisclosed amount and rebranded to the new name. I love the new brand name!

Victor Pitts New VP At DomainIt.com – Victor Pitts whom recently left Moniker has now announced his new position as Vice President of DomainIt.com. Victor will be responsible for growing market share and profits for DomainIt’s core domain registration business, as well as evaluating and overseeing new business ventures for the company.

ScreenSavers.com Sells For $335,000 – SnapNames sells ScreenSavers.com for $335,000 during their recent themed auction.

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Press Release

Sedo, the leading online domain marketplace and monetization provider, today announced that it has teamed with VeriSign, the global registry operator for the .tv internet domain, to hold an exclusive auction for the entire available catalog of 115 premium .tv domain names at the standard registry renewal fee, which is a greatly reduced renewal price. Sedo has the exclusive right to offer this broad selection of highly valuable numeric, generic and geographic .tv online destinations, including Beauty.tv, Bloopers.tv, Business.tv, Cable.tv, Films.tv, Finance.tv, Home.tv, Jobs.tv, Lifestyle.tv, Real.tv, and Vacation.tv. This marks the first time that these .tv domain names have been offered in a public auction, free of high annual renewal fees. The auction begins on Sedo.com on April 1, 2010 at 12:00 p.m. EDT and ends on April 8, 2010 at 12:00 p.m. EDT.

The prevalence of television and video on the internet makes .tv a relevant and desirable extension for many companies and brands. Major broadcast networks, leading music publishers, and savvy businesses are all taking advantage of .tv domain names to create new revenue streams for their businesses. Organizations with engaging online video content are using .tv websites to engage their members in new and exciting ways. In fact, the extension has been successfully used by high profile brands such as MTV Networks and Major League Baseball to extend their reach to targeted audiences and visitors. Individuals are also creating .tv websites to get their creative voices heard.

“Descriptive and numeric domains are some of the most valuable and sought-after online destinations in the domain industry, and there are many excellent .tv choices in this auction,” said Jeremiah Johnston, chief operating officer at Sedo. “Sedo is honored to work with VeriSign to give the business community, content creators, portfolio managers, and online marketers the rare opportunity to register these .tv domain names at affordable price points.”

“VeriSign is pleased to offer these highly desired .tv domain names through auction. These web addresses have tremendous appeal, as they are industry neutral, with a great number of possible applications for each name,” said Tom Correia, VeriSign’s .tv Product Manager. “We selected Sedo, an industry leader with a large global reach, to be the auction platform for our first-ever .tv Registry auction.”

The complete list of .tv domain names available for auction at Sedo can be found at www.sedo.tv

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I’m excited to say tomorrow night, March 16th, I’ll be in South Florida for another great Domainer meetup. The last meetup I attended was in December and I had a great time. This is a fantastic networking opportunity as there are a lot of domainers down south. Already confirmed to attend is Rick Schwartz, Michael Berkens, Howard Neu, Scott Ross, Rick Waters, myself and many many more.

Tomorrow’s meting will be held at Kansai Restaurant at 7:30pm. The restaurant address is 7140 Beracasa Way, Boca Raton, FL 33433. Appetizers are being sponsored by Moniker.com/SnapNames.com.

There will be a networking session and I beleive Domain Masters radio show will be recording live.

If you are interested in attending, please RSVP and join us. There are already more that 35 guests confirmed to attend, so don’t miss out!

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In the midst of many debates on how successful any extension can be other than a .com, Football.tv was launched. However, it is not referring to football as we know it in the U.S., it’s referring to soccer. It is commonly known that soccer is a crucial part of culture for some countries and Football.tv aims to connect with those immersed in the sport.

The numbers are definitely in Football.tv’s favor. Consider the fact that the World Cup Series has had a little over 1 billion viewers in recent years past.  Yes, billion. Soccer is truly a universal sport and love for it spans across all continents.

It is conceivable that a .tv such as this can be abundantly successful especially with an aggressive and well planned marketing strategy. GSM, which is owned by Perform Group, holds the rights to over 15 different soccer leagues from around the world. The plan is to market the site through as many different mediums as possible to garner the maximum amount of exposure.

Currently they own the .tv domains for the word soccer in most languages with very few missing. This is an enormous marketing opportunity and can only help the chances for success as they will be able to reach millions of people from all around the world. In fact, they have invested seven figures into acquiring and developing these domain names. They have also created a brand with the logo they are currently using. This is important because regardless of the language a person speaks or script they write in, they will recognize the brand, begin to associate it with Football.tv and, most importantly, all arrive at the same destination. Think of the Nike swoosh. When we see the swoosh symbol we automatically associate it with Nike. It took a lot of money invested in marketing to achieve that global recognition and that’s what the owners of Football.tv are going to try to emulate in their own way.

I’ve said before that the .tv extension shouldn’t be easily dismissed. It tends to be associated with video, so if that is the type of content you have it will fit appropriately with the web address. Even if video isn’t the main type of content, there’s no reason to think it can’t be as successful as a .com if marketed properly and kept rich with content, which is something Football.tv is surely trying to strive for.

The site is fully loaded with content. There is news both in written and video formats about all things soccer related in addition to information about teams and individual players from every country imaginable. The site is truly a wealth of knowledge for the sport and is creating a huge value for itself.

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As reported in this week’s domain news episode 41, .xxx vote has been delayed.

Previous Comic Strip: Geek Perfume

Another .XXX Comic Strip: Domainer Comic Strip #2

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