Owen Frager’s blog post today hits an important point about an obstacle the .mobi extension faces with consumer adoption. Owen blogs about how the New York Times doesn’t own New York Times .mobi or NYT .mobi, since they own both .com domain names. While I disagree that the owner of NYT.mobi is a cybersquatter (NYT could stand for a multitude of things), I do think the New York Times not owning these extensions (and other brands not owning their .mobi names) could hinder consumer adoption.

While I am all for domain speculation, I think speculators should stick strictly to generic domain names. When a consumer learns about .mobi and types a brand name in with the .mobi extension, Read More »

One lesson that Owen Frager taught me was how important a headline can be in attracting attention. An article in Sports Illustrated shows just how important a headline is. John McVaney is a football playing high school senior, whose college football prospects projected him to play in Division I-AA, as a fullback or a linebacker. When he began looking at colleges, he put a video on YouTube called “Jeff McVaney Highlights.”

After Jeff’s older brother re-watched the video clip, he thought the play reminded him of Heisman Trophy winning, University of Florida quarterback, Tim Tebow. He decided to change the name of the video clip to “Jeff McVaney - The Next Tim Tebow,” which is now the top result on Google for “the next Tim Tebow.” By changing the name of the video, Jeff has garnered the attention of several Division I schools, including Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, and National Champions, LSU.

Simply by changing the title of his recruiting video, Jeff was able to go from Division I-AA football prospect to Division I hopeful. This shows the power of a headline, something that everyone should keep in mind when writing articles.

*Yes, I do realize that Owen’s situation is different, however, this was one of the first blogging lessons he taught me.

When Sahar writes, I generally listen. This morning, Sahar made some predictions for 2008, and the following predictions worry me a bit:

“1. Top prices will drop: As the top of the domain market is driven by a handful of buyers (Frank Schilling, Kevin Ham and Co., Anything.com), I see those coming to the conclusion they either have enough to develop or have better returns elsewhere, therefore stop paying top dollars.”

“5. Top portfolio owners to diversify away from domains, investing in other technologies (Search technoligies, others), services ( arbitrage, others).”

Sahar has a great feel for the domain name market, better than most, so when he makes a prediction like this, I would take some time to evaluate your holdings.

I’ve noticed that many of the mid-level to highest-priced domain auction acquisitions end up in the portfolios of the big players. They control quite a bit of the money that is invested in domain names. If one or more of these companies drop out of the bidding at domain auctions, we could see what would appear to be a market correction. Of course, another company could come in and fill the void, but it would take a whole lot of financial power to do that.

Regarding the prediction below, I know that Owen Frager has also been saying something to this affect for a while:

“4. Top portfolio owners to collaborate more with marketers outside the domain space (such as Scott Day/Seth Godin The “ever” project), SEO folks.“

This is a smart approach to domain development. If you look at some of Scott Day’s domain names (like Chairs.com as an example), you wouldn’t know that each wasn’t a full business. Not only does Scott seem to have one of the nicest portfolios assembled, he also has one of the smartest development strategies.

At this time of year, it’s always good to evaluate your portfolio and make changes if necessary. It’s smart to have a diversified portfolio in case there is any type of domain market correction. When it comes to domain names, content is king (for monetization and protection), so now is the time to consider your development strategy.

My apologies to Steve Jobs and his Apple employees for neglecting to mention iPhoto in my previous entry about photo sharing websites who are preserving history. It is especially sad considering I use a Macbook and have the iPhoto icon anchored on my desktop.

My post discussed the value of photo sharing services for preserving history. However, Owen brought up a good point about pre-digital photos:

“Now Elliot takes the matter further with a GREAT post about the value of online photo-services. This still doesn’t take into account all of the analog and paper assets sitting in boxes and albums; like the ones that are too much trouble to sort through and scan that I’ve been wanting to share with you about my past.”- Source: The Frager Factor

So… what do you do about your photographs that can’t be easily uploaded to your computer?  The answer??  Photo transfer services!  First off, being a domain investor, the first thing I did was search to see if PhotoTransferServices.com was registered.  It wasn’t, but it is now!

A few months ago, the Wall Street Journal revewed several photo transfer services and reported on them.  DigMyPix.com was one of the companies they reviewed.  The company offers a variety of photo transfer services, and the prices are pretty reasonable - much moreso than doing it yourself!  It takes a few weeks to receive your photos, but I believe its worth the expense and wait.  You can receive your photos on a DVD/CD and you can view them online.

Owen, they have you covered!

Certainly seems that my friend Owen Frager has been making headlines alot lately. Here’s another column talking about Owen’s knack for generating tons of ideas that spiral from a single thought.

I think Owen is going to continue making headlines. He is truly a “thought leader.”

Thanks to Owen Frager for posting the link to the video on YouTube. To summarize, Henry Mishkoff, a Dallas web developer, created a website full of information about the Taubman Company’s mall, The Shops at Willow Bend. Because he used the name of the mall in his domain name, Taubman filed suit and won an injunction against Mishkoff. The court ruled that Mishkoff was infringing on Taubman’s trademark and ordered the website to be taken down.

To show his displeasure with Taubman, Mishkoff registered and developed TaubmanSucks.com. Again, Taubman filed suit against Mishkoff in a Texas court, and this time, Mishkoff won. In the ruling, the justices cited Miskoff’s right to freedom of speech and ruled,

“Taubman concedes that Mishkoff is ‘free to shout “Taubman Sucks!” from the rooftops’… Essentially, this is what he has done in his domain name. The rooftops of our past have evolved into the internet domain names of our present.”

“This is the first time an appellate court has addressed the trademark and free speech rights for an Internet fan site not meant to mislead and gripe site, and it was particularly important that the court get things right. This decision will set an important precedent protecting the rights of citizens to criticize and to praise. It is quite a victory,” said Paul Alan Levy, an attorney with the Public Citizen Litigation Group who represented Mishkoff.” – Source: Public Citizen

Domain names are powerful communication tools, and it is good to see a court ruling accordingly.

Someone recently asked me which domain blogs I read on a daily basis, and I listed them below:

Frank Schilling’s Seven Mile Blog

Owen Frager’s The Frager Factor

Sahar Sarid’s The Conceputalist

Jay Westerdahl’s DomainTools Blog

Interesting article on Owen Frager’s Blog this morning about the domain portfolios of Kevin Ham and Frank Schilling. The article discusses how the amount of money their portfolios generate may be preventing them from seeing the opportunity cost of doing something much more powerful with their top notch portfolios:

“For someone in this position it must be hard to imagine anything more you could ever want. And that’s why they may never consider that the opportunity and money being left on the table is far greater than anything they’ve earned.” — Source: The Frager Factor

The article suggests that by forwarding all of their domain names to one landing page, as much as $250 - $600 million could be generated in less than 30 days. I can’t agree or disagree without knowing the traffic specifics and other variables, but that is a big chunk of change. Imagine if Frank, Kevin, Rick, Elequa, Mike and a few other large portfolio owners decided to join together and create their search engine. They would immediately pose a direct threat to Yahoo and Google, and it would certainly impact their search volume. This shows how powerful generic domain names are.