Domain Name Barter Trading

The World's First Domain Name Barter Trading Portal

Online Domain Name Swapping Marketplace Launches on the 4th of July 2007.

Penang Island, Malaysia (PRWEB) July 24, 2007 -- Swapnames.com is the industry's free and safe marketplace for everyone to literally trade their domain names or websites in return for other, more valuable domain names.

With SwapNames, domain owners can now actively search out domains of interest, offer their own domains to swap, as well as receive swap offers from other domain owners. Additionally, the site acts as a domain name marketplace where users have the option of buying or selling valuable e-properties. All listings on SwapNames have both a fixed selling price and a trade value, which creates valuable exposure to easily market and sell or trade domains.

Presently, there are no open, 'free-for-all' marketplaces just for domain name barter trading. All other domain name marketplaces are either auction houses or 'for sale listing' sites. With the launch of SwapNames, the domain name industry now has its very own true-blue barter trading portal.

The idea for SwapNames was inspired by a man named Kyle MacDonald who traded one red paperclip for a different item, and continued trading his items until, 14 trades later, he owned a house. SwapNames' founder Koay Al Vin, after reading about the One Red Paperclip project, immediately related the idea to the hundreds of domain names he had invested in.

"Most of my lesser quality domain names could not be sold, and were left undeveloped and gathering 'digital dust'. I could not properly monetize the names, and renewal dates were drawing nearer!" said Koay. "Because of the circumstances, I had to actively search out fellow domain owners to barter trade my names with theirs. Today, every domainer in the same boat can actively 'trade-up' their domains and that is an extra alternative instead of just letting their domains expire," he added.

"I knew that this industry was really in need of a platform for people to swap their existing domains. Now, everyone can diversify their portfolio of domains the way Kyle MacDonald did, but this time it will be for virtual pieces of properties: domain names."

About SwapNames

Swapnames.com was founded by a Malaysian-based domain investor and entrepreneur, Koay Al Vin.

With a little help from a kind angel investor and some money made from a domain name sale, Koay hired a talented programming team from India to chase his vision. He dreams of a totally new marketplace where domain name 'trade-ups' could potentially be among the mainstream tools for domain investors.

SwapNames, Inc was incorporated in Delaware, USA and operates from a tiny, but beautiful, island in Malaysia called Penang.

One other virtual property founded also by Koay is DNHour.com, another industry's first. It is a DIGG-style domain industry news portal.

Press Contact: Koay Al Vin
Company Name: SwapNames, Inc.
Phone: +6012-4726233
Website: http://www.swapnames.com

Domain to Promote Asian Internet Usage for Trademark Owners

.Asia Domain Extension to Promote Asian Internet Usage - Pre-Registration Period Open for Trademark Owners

.Asia accredited registrar, EnCirca, Inc, (EnCirca home page (http://www.encirca.com)) announces that pre-registrations are being accepted for the Dot-Asia Sunrise Period, scheduled to launch on October 9, 2007. Priority applications are limited to registered trademark owners. The .Asia extension allows individuals and companies to target the largest Internet community in the world as well as people looking for relevant information about Asia. .Asia domains appear as example.asia and will function just like .com domains. Registering your trademarks will prevent cyber-squatting.

Woburn, MA  -  September 13, 2007 -- .Asia accredited registrar, EnCirca, Inc, (.asia registrar home page) announces that pre-registrations are being accepted for the Dot-Asia Sunrise Period, scheduled to launch on October 9, 2007. Priority applications are limited to registered trademark owners. The .Asia extension allows individuals and companies to target the largest Internet community in the world as well as people looking for relevant information about Asia. .Asia domains appear as example.asia and will function just like .com domains.

"Trademark owners are advised to get their applications in without delay," says Tom Barrett, President of EnCirca. For companies, brands and marketers, the new top level domain adds a strong sense of affiliation to corporate brands and online identities and communicates a commitment to the Asian market. "Demand for .Asia is expected to be high - .eu, a similar extension launched last year for the European Union, achieved over 2 million registrations in its first year," adds Barrett.

During a Pre-Sunrise period, Asian governments were invited to submit their list of cities, cultural places and famous travel destinations for a Reserved Names List. Any Asian government that missed the Pre-Sunrise deadline should contact EnCirca immediately.

Eligibility during the Sunrise period is open to trademarks and company names registered in any jurisdiction in the world. Compared to past domain launches, the Dot Asia Organization has adopted a more stable process for managing the expected initial demand for domain names by companies and businesses to protect their corporate identity online. During the Sunrise phases, all applications for domain names within the period specified will be considered to be received at the same time, which greatly reduces the hassle of hastened applications within moments of the registry opening.

The .Asia sunrise period starts October 9 and is divided into several phases:

     •    Sunrise 1: Governments register reserved place names

     •    Sunrise 2: Registered Trademark Owners
          o    Sunrise 2a: Exact Registered Trademarks applied for before March 16, 2004
          o    Sunrise 2b: Exact Registered Trademarks applied for before December 6, 2006
          o    Sunrise 2c: Any domain name containing a Registered Trademark in the domain name

     •    Sunrise 3: Registered Entity Names (company names, etc.)

Pre-registrations are being accepted for all dot-Asia sunrise periods now. Live sunrise registrations begin on October 9 and will continue through January, 2008.

Following the completion of the sunrise periods, the Dot Asia Organization will begin a land rush for dot-Asia beginning in February of 2008, which will involve an auction of the most valuable names to the highest bidders. Employing the auction format removes the need for applicants to submit the domains through multiple registrars in hopes of increasing their chances of getting the names they want. In fact, the Dot Asia Organization asserts that working exclusively with a trusted registrar will in no way hinder an applicant's ability to secure a domain name they want; it might even be a more affordable alternative to paying multiple registrars to get ahead in the registration queue.

About EnCirca, Incorporated
EnCirca, registrar for the .Asia domain is an ICANN-accredited Registrar founded in 2001, specializing in intellectual property protection and internet marketing in new top-level domain extensions, such as .travel, .pro and .jobs. For more information, please visit EnCirca home page or call +1.781.942.9975.

About DotAsia Organisation
The DotAsia Organisation is the Sponsoring Organisation and Registry Operator for the .ASIA Sponsored Generic Top Level Domain. DotAsia is a not-for-profit, community based organisation incorporated in Hong Kong. Asia has developed into a global force in the international commercial, political and cultural network. The .ASIA domain aspires to embrace this dynamism in the Asia Century to become a nucleus, intersection and breeding ground for Internet activity and development in the region.

Press Contact: Smita Majumder
Company Name: EnCirca, Inc
Phone: +1 (781) 94209975
Website: http://www.encirca.com

Advertising Intextication

In-Textification Or In-Text Infestation?

by Kory Kredit , Thursday, December 13, 2007
DEPENDING ON WHOM YOU ASK, the in-text ad is either an ingenious ad revenue-generation mechanism (an opinion typically shared by marketing and ad sales people), or pure unadulterated evil invented by Lucifer himself (popular opinion among journalists and editors). These two groups could be referred to as bottom-liners (not to be confused with bottom-feeders), and content purists (read: hopeless idealists).

The bottom-liner views the proliferation of in-text advertising, or in-textification, as a natural progression of the ad-supported Internet universe. In this world, Web sites exist to generate revenue, or at least that's what their job description says. These people are generally responsible for squeezing every last penny out of any available pixel they can confiscate from their editors and/or Web site designers.

Content purists, alternately, see the growing threat of in-text advertising as an unwanted infestation that crosses the line between their sacred words and the necessary evil that is advertising. While they subconsciously acknowledge that advertising pays their bills, they long for an Internet utopia void of banners, interstitials, rollovers, adwords, pop-ups and the like. (If only Al Gore could have foreseen the dark side of his creation, would he have done it differently, knowing what he knows now?)

The common ground for both of these groups is that they understand and embrace the reality that one cannot exist without the other -- or let's at least pretend they do, just for the sake of argument. Without the bottom-line focus of marketing and ad sales people, the Internet would most likely be an overgrown college message board. By the same token, ads without compelling content wouldn't draw eyeballs to visit a Web site (although that hasn't stopped a large number of video-sharing sites from adopting that model).

The lure of in-text advertising for bottom-liners is that it essentially creates prime real estate that didn't exist before. It offers a wonderful solution for Web sites that don't have any more ad inventory to sell. This newfound treasure trove can be turned into additional ad inventory that doesn't require any modifications to the layout of a page.

For the content purist, however, embedding ads into individual words in their articles can create an unwanted intrusion and a poor user experience for the reader.

This leads us to the issue at hand. Can in-text advertising provide additional ad revenue while not detracting from the user experience, or possibly even enhancing the user experience?

There are a number of companies like Yahoo, Snap, JargonFish and LingoSpot that have created a next generation of hybrid in-text applications that may offer an acceptable alternative that benefits the bottom-liner, the content purist and the Web site visitor.

This hybrid model displays related content from a variety of online resources (i.e. YouTube, flickr, IMDb, Wikipedia, Technorati...) along with a display or text ad. With this type of application, the ad unit is secondary to the content in the window. The added value of the related content provides the visitor with a compelling reason to click on the highlighted link and view the contents of the in-text window, including the ad.

The result is an in-text solution that could appease both the bottom-liners and the content purists. The ad unit generates revenue and the related content adds value to the overall user experience, or at least that is the intended goal.

While this solution may not completely bridge the gap between salespeople and journalists, maybe the two sides could view it as a small plot of common ground in the battle for Web page real estate. Sort of like the Switzerland of the Internet.

Post your response to the public Online Publishing Insider blog.

See what others are saying on the Online Publishing Insider blog.
Kory Kredit is director of marketing at AdOn Network.

Online Publishing Insider for Thursday, December 13, 2007: http://publications.mediapost.com/

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If this issue was forwarded to you and you would like to begin receiving a copy of your own, please visit our site - www.mediapost.com - and become a complimentary member.
For advertising opportunities see our online media kit.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We welcome and appreciate forwarding of our newsletters in their entirety or in part with proper attribution.
(c) 2007 MediaPost Communications, 1140 Broadway, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10001

WIPO Whip

Domain Name Dispute Cases and Domain Harassment

I was just contacted by someone that as had not one, but two domain name complaints filed against them, and for the same domain by the same company. Each time this happened, the domainer was charged a $29 fee by Godaddy and his domain name was locked for an extended period of time. While this fee is reported to be mentioned in their Godaddy TOS, I had never heard of it or of anyone being charged it. Being charged twice for the same thing seems excessive and harassment.

What is to stop a company from filing complaint after complaint and using Godaddy to put the pressure on the domain holder? I do not know yet what the domain name is or the company that is filing the complaint, but too often companies either do not know or do not care what the rules are and cause problems for domain holders without contacting them first to see if something can be worked out.

Most domain name owners are not evil and not wealthy. They are just trying to make a buck from registering a domain name and either parking it, developing it, or holding it as an investment and if someone has a real problem with a domain they own they should be willing to talk about it. Just calling in the lawyers and filing complaints only serves to stir up anger and unite the domain industry against the companies.

There are cases where a company has to be tough and protect itself, but I think they will find more advantages in getting to know the person behind the source of their concern or they may discover that it's not just one domainer but an entire industry.

Check out what some of the current disputes are about. Domainers mostly know already, but it will be interesting to note the type of domain names that are attracting complaints.
http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/cases/2007/d1600-1799.html

(hris