As we fast approach the new site launch within the next couple of weeks, I started to think about the Web 2.0 Expo and what some of the important takeaways were for us as a team.

I’ve played MMORPG’s in the past, the last one I devoted any real time to was Earth and Beyond which took up a few weeks worth of my waking life back in 2002. From my guildies to my character growth the game play and social dynamics were completely immersive and very addictive, which is one of the reasons why I haven’t moved on to any others since it was shut down. I now prefer to relegate my online gaming experiences to short tactical based shooters such as Counterstrike Source and Battlefield 2142. It’s something I can dive in, acquire an hour or two of fun, and turn off without issue since there are no real strategic ‘goals’ I can lose myself in trying to achieve. Are these tactical shooters more rewarding than a good MMORPG? I don’t think so. You don’t get the same immersion or social reward that you can from games like WOW, but I also don’t face the issues I did in 2002 like a fiancé screaming for attention or work being put to the backburner that negatively affected my progress towards goals that influenced my real life.

This startup is my new immersion since I can lose myself on a daily basis, acquire the social interaction I desire, and accomplish the goals I set out to that materialize on a daily basis. Plus, I still have the fiancé screaming for attention so I know the addiction has to be similar in some way. The key difference though is that this immersion is also moving me forward in real life, as opposed to the fake one I create in someone else’s world who I have to pay to participate in on a monthly or episodic basis.

The reason I’m explaining all of this is because a few of the sessions we attended focused on how the science of online gaming is leading the world in social interactive immersion, and that the basic principals of this science are applicable to online social networks. I totally agree, with the important difference being that social networks can provide the same or better rewards emotionally, but similar to how this startup rewards me, some of them can also help you become more knowledgeable and powerful in this thing we all call real life.

We’ve designed our platform to have immersive features that allow users to socialize and interact in an environment with a shared goal. Similar to online gaming it’s a goal that all users share to one extent or another, and our community members all have to collaborate and work together to achieve their goals. Those that focus more at working with others will be more successful than those that are interested in the altruistic rewards, but all users will acquire the gratification they are looking for no matter what they want when they enter our community. The key difference though is that the rewards they will be able to achieve add to their real life existence on a daily basis, and it’s something where members will be able to earn tangible financial incentives for the effort they invest into the community versus us charging them for their contributions.

There are some very exciting things about what we are planning to launch, and I can’t wait to hear feedback from all of you when we pull back that curtain and show off what we’ve been working so very hard to create for you.

I have to say that the conference is very well attended, from Entrepreneurs to Investors to Services Providers, right down to a ton of Enterprises all looking to leverage the “user revolution”. I would estimate almost three thousand attendees have come here from around the world, and even though some of the sessions were a little disappointing from a content depth perspective, we’ve acquired some valuable learning and the networking has been amazing so far.

To our surprise we’ve run into quite a few domain professionals here at the conference. It’s refreshing to be able to connect with these contacts in a non domain centric environment and talk about some of the stuff they’re working on in terms of integrating a little “web 2.0 sprinkle”, as Richard Rosenblatt likes to call it.

The keynote yesterday was a little disappointing since it appeared to be more of a pitch on Amazon’s new development services, but it was pretty cool to watch Tim O’Reilly poke Jeff Bezos over the Alexaholic incident in front of such a huge crowd.

Today’s keynotes were much better. There was some fantastic data analysis from Dave Sifry of Technorati and Bill Tancer of Hitwise on traffic trends, new site growth, and the health of the blogosphere. Also, there was a great interview with Eric Schmidt where they delved into everything from Google’s new presentation addition to their docs and spreadsheets family straight to comments on the recent Double Click acquisition.

That’s about all the time I have to blog for now, but hopefully I’ll be able to do a more in-depth write up once I get back from the conference. In the meantime I’m going to lose myself in some more 2.0 goodness.

I’m off to San Francisco tonight to attend the Web 2.0 Expo this week. There are a few of us from the team flying down together so we’re really excited about losing ourselves in the scene, exploring as much learning as there is available, and hopefully generating a bit of a buzz about our little project.

I’ll blog a bit about the conference during the trip, so stay tuned…

One thing about a startup is that you’re continually being challenged by your budget. It’s a nasty beast that threatens the vision you’re trying to shape on a daily basis, and unless you learn how to tame it and make it work for you, you’ll face huge challenges down that final mile to your launch date.

One important factor in shaping the use of that budget is defining your weak points and addressing them. It’s pretty easy to identify strengths, but defining the areas you’ll need help with is something you should work hard to identify earlier rather than later. It can be scary, but identifying your weaknesses early is a key to any success in early stage companies. Once this has been achieved, you have a few choices of addressing them dependant on how strategic they are to your plans where consultants and contractors offer a boon of resources that usually provide a hell of a lot more bang for the buck than hiring staff.

You like to think you’ve covered your bases when it comes to the key components of your management team, such as technical, marketing, sales, finance etc… but working with experts who live and breathe one of these verticals daily makes all the difference. Working in a startup requires a generalist’s approach even when focused on a particular area, and just the mere distractions that occur on a daily basis can take away from the output in areas you consider yourself to be an expert in.

One thing I truly believe is that when it comes to certain key areas, you can’t “No Frill” your way to success, and I was reminded of that after a 3 hour brainstorming session with the brilliant Marketing/Design team we contracted to help us with the brand strategy of our closed beta. We went through a thorough RFP process to identify our vendor of choice, but after the legal contracts were out of the way the fruit really started to shine as we’ve progressed to digging in on actual work.

I’ve learned it’s very important to focus on quality versus quantity when outsourcing important segments of your project. Identify the best, because even though they may be pricier than someone in your family or network, the output is almost always worth the expenditure. Top firms, whether they are a law firm, design firm, marketing firm, or tax consultants, attract the best talent when they consider new additions to their team. That talent and the associated deep resources are what you’re trying to leverage with your limited budget. Even though they may take a somewhat bigger piece of your budget pie, the odds are in your favor that they’ll have the resources and creative to go beyond your expectations in filling out your weak points.

A somewhat interesting fact has come to light as we go through the hiring process to fill gaps in our infrastructure. One of the key things I personally qualify through the interview process is the fact that a startup usually has a fun, relaxed, results oriented environment that allows participants to acquire equity, and be rewarded for their contributions in making passionate ideas become a reality.

This can be a double edged sword, and although I highlight the benefits I like to make sure the negatives are clearly communicated since it takes a certain personality type to thrive and contribute in this structure. It’s important to note that a startup can also be a hectic, stressful, chaotic environment with a lot of pressure on your adaptive skills to conform and succeed in an ever changing landscape.

When going through this process, it was surprising to me when asking applicants why they wanted to become a part of a startup to hear a few of them state that a flexible work structures was something they found most attractive. Meaning, working from home, leaving early, and taking days off were benefits they expected as compared to their current or previous structured corporate lives that required minimums of work hours on a weekly basis.

I have to disagree, and its import to note that although a relaxed process does translate into a more flexible results oriented “fun” approach to accomplishing goals, due to limited resources the environment is usually more labor intensive. With a vested interest past just a salary, there should be incentive to put in as much effort as possible while still balancing your personal life to offset burnout.

In either event, the important note is to ensure you qualify both the positive as well as negative aspects of a startup work environment so you can find the right people who will be successful in helping the project become a reality.

Wow, take a look at this:

On Domain Monetization

We note that there is a meaningful difference between Domain Tasting
and Domain Monetization. Monetization is a straightforward arbitrage
between the cost of domain registrations and the revenue from as much
pay-per-click traffic as the domain owner can get from people who
visit web sites in the domain. It's a fundamentally sleazy business,
since the web sites have no useful content and the way they get the
traffic is basically by tricking people, either via typos or recently
expired domains. More importantly, the presence of such website makes
web-surfing by ordinary users far more difficult and confusing than
they should be.

We do not think it is appropriate in this case to make ICANN as a
regulator to watch and prohibit the Domain Monetization practices per
se. Instead, on behalf of ordinary Internet users, we call upon those
commercial enterprises such as Google or Overture to take appropriate
measures such as to stop paying for clicks on pages with no content,
thereby dealing with a problem that is not limited to typo and expired
domains. We've seen click arbitrage, people buying Google ads to drive
traffic to pages that are simply other Google ads. This kind of
self-generating traffic for pay-per-click advertising is confusing and
unnecessary for ordinary Internet users and, in the long run, not
healthy for the development of Internet as a whole.

Since Domain monetization is a relatively new phenomena, the impact to
the ordinary users and the wider Internet community is hard to measure
at this point. It seems clear, however, that it does not improve the
user experience at all. We think it is worth to keep watching on how
it develops and may seek for specific actions when we have clearer
understanding of measurable impact.

I haven't read anything in recent years that didn’t shock me with its ignorance and arrogance more than these three paragraphs. It’s obvious to me this group has no idea of the impact or value Direct Navigation brings to the search market or to Google and Yahoo’s bottom line. Direct Navigation is a true form of search; it’s a way for a user to find a search term through the address bar of their browser without having to wade through pages and pages of organic search spam to find what they're looking for. Although Typo’s and Expired traffic is an exploited portion of the market that has ethical concerns that need addressing, it is a small portion and doesn’t come close to outweighing the benefits the larger percentage of true generic domain monetization pages bring to the search space.

Thankfully there are groups being put together to fight this ignorance …

Since our project’s heading ever so near a public unveiling, I’m making this my inaugural article relating to our startup experiences. Although some details will emerge, don’t expect our whole story to come out until the timing’s right, but I hope that you can find a few of these tidbits valuable if you’re going through a startup process yourself.

Some of the most important feedback you’ll receive on your business plan will come from potential investors. The unfortunate thing is that investor feedback, at least at the VC level, can be harsh and is usually comprised of a “no” without much explanation or detail on the “why”. Take a look at Guy’s list of the top 10 lies by Venture Capitalists to understand where I’m coming from, but as a side note also take a look at his list of top 10 lies by Entrepreneurs to understand what to avoid on your side. In both of these articles however, one of the key’s highlighted to acquiring a favorable response from a VC is to ensure you clearly articulate your differentiation in the marketplace.

For us in particular, the User Generated Content monetization market is rife with success stories and failures over the last few years. One thing I don’t think anyone has done well enough is cornered the market on UGC consumer experiences even though a few startups have already been repositioning or sold due to competition in their particular choice of approach. Personally I see a lot of depth in what a consumer experience is or could be, and I break it down in a number of ways. The most important of which is drawing a line between whether it’s about a service or a product. In my mind the former relates more to a particular business or provider, and the latter relates more to the particular purchase where that distinction can end up with very different results.

Two real life examples I can use to highlight this is the difference in approach between yelp.com and epinions.com. One focuses on service providers in geographic locales, while the other focuses on the product itself, yet they are both services we feel we have little in common with. If we aren’t similar to either of them then where do we fit since there’s little perceived real-estate in between? That answer is one we’re working on attempting to articulate in word since we know there’s an unexplored gap between the two that we hope to leverage. Although reviews have traditionally been relegated to the periphery of user content generation with little emotional investment on the part of the reviewer, we feel that has more to do with the platform and the process than their actual interest level.

What this all means is that we have a significant challenge in clearly articulating our differentiation on paper without examples of our ideas in action, and if no one has really done it yet how do we articulate it effectively, especially if a VC is mired in what already exists today? Almost everyone we have had the pleasure of carefully sharing our plans with has provided extremely positive feedback. Someone I highly respect in the 2.0 space even went so far as to say “I think you have a winner here’, which for us meant the world, but I have yet to look at our executive summary and find myself 100% satisfied with the clarity of our message, then again as a typical perfectionist I probably never will.

The biggest thing I can share is that no matter how perfect or flawed your business plan, you are going to have to find the VC that has the square hole to your square peg, so don’t obsess over the details at the sacrifice of the product. Just make sure you explore multiple investment sources that make sense strategically and get help if your writing skills don’t meet the requirement. If your vision is realistic as well as profitable you should find the capital to help make it a reality in no time if you're persistent. No matter what keep at it, in my last startup during the bubble I was turned down by more than 10 VC’s before we were considered final four out of over 1500 business plans by the 11th, so timing and fit mean everything.

If I could ensure you take anything away from this article, it’s that the keys are making sure you understand your vertical well, have passion for what you’re doing and as someone who I highly respect attributed to his personal success… be persistent no matter what.

As I assumed, the whiteboard was never delivered on Friday, it's been postponed until Friday March 30th. I now have to talk to a "Tracey" in the mississauga "Insight" office after a coworker, who didn't appear the least bit interested in helping, stated she was the only person who I could speak with about this order.

Tomorrow, Tracey will receive a call, and hopefully if I pound enough of those "Easy" buttons at the Staples alter I may actually receive a whiteboard shortly thereafter...

As we went through the office build out, we ended up buying some office furniture from staples which we found pretty cheap yet not bad quality at all. A couple of examples would be the desks and the office chairs, where for a leather manager’s chairs $69 CDN was a fantastic deal. I guess the only bad experience I’ve had with Staples Canada is their online store, and the frustrating story that started on February 9th when I ordered a whiteboard…

I went online, and when comparing a few retailers found their pricing for a decent sized 4’ by 6’ whiteboard to be competitive at just over $100… comparable sizes from other suppliers ranged from double to triple the pricing so I was pretty happy I found a good deal. Staples promised next day delivery so I decided to go for it.

The next day I get a call from a very nice lady stating the whiteboard was on backorder, and I’ll have it delivered in about a week and a half. I thought why not, no super rush so no problem. A week and a half goes by; the Friday February 16th comes and goes, no whiteboard, no phone call. Hmm, that’s strange; they’ve been very responsive so far, so on Monday February 19th I give them a call and spoke with a nice gentleman who tells me the whiteboard was on backorder, but they do have stock now and it will be delivered on Friday February 23rd. Great, I thought, so I went about my business working on all the myriad of things that had to get done and next thing I knew it was Tuesday February 27th before I realized that they still hadn’t delivered the whiteboard. I gave them another ring, spoke with someone… “The whiteboard was on backorder. It will be delivered Friday March 2nd. We’re sorry for the inconvenience, but it is showing up in stock now and you will receive it this time”. Although it's a little funny, I have to admit I was also getting a little frustrated by this point as well.

I had been so consumed by work that it was Wednesday March 14th before I was reminded of the elusive whiteboard again…  of course no deliveries on either Friday since my last communication, nor any phone calls. So I call them up and this time, understandably, a little miffed to say the least. The response I get? “Sorry sir, the whiteboard was on backorder, but they have stock now and it will be delivered on Friday March 16th”… yeah right… I explained that this was the 4th or 5th time I’ve heard the exact same story, and the person tells me “You’re right, I’m not exactly sure why but *someone* at the warehouse keeps delaying your order by a week every week. Let me look into it and call you back” Thankfully this time I did receive a phone call a couple of hours later “The Mississauga location that was earmarked to make your delivery has been out of stock, and although we're showing a shipment being received on January 27th, it was never delivered so we’ll call you when we receive stock.”

Yesterday, Tuesday March 20th I gave them a call to check on the status “Sorry sir, the whiteboard was on backorder, but we do have them in stock now and you WILL receive it this Friday march 23rd”… <sigh>“If you have it in stock, why can’t you deliver it tomorrow instead of Friday?”… “Sorry, the order is locked so I can’t change it, but I am showing it in stock so you will receive it this Friday”

I’m not holding my breath….

I buy a lot of stuff, from gadgets, to clothes, to cars to all kinds of things my fast paced modern lifestyle requires. Throw my wife and family into the mix and there’s a whirlwind of consumption that makes Twister look more like a board game than a blockbuster movie.

With all of this hard earned income being spent, what are we gaining? Allot of stuff, sure, that’s why we’re buying things in the first place, because we need stuff… but I mean what do I gain as a consumer? What power am I acquiring and effectively using to improve my life?

They say the consumer has the ultimate power; they can sway markets and dictate the growth or demise of any business all through how they spend their dollars. Sure, where I choose to spend my money combined with all of the other buyers out there does affect the market, but is that the end of where our power lies?

I personally question whether my power as a consumer ends there. I think that with all of the hard earned income I dispose of on a daily basis I can influence things much more than just through my buying choices. With the advent of the Internet which allows me to interact with others in ways never dreamed of there has to be a better way that I can band with other consumers so that we may influence the market to meet the needs of our specific lives.

Specific life is the key term in that statement, feedback to manufacturers has been around for a while but that isn’t what I’m talking about. Some unnamed feedback form will never give the manufacturer the data they need to cater to my specific needs. I’m talking about something different, a vehicle that will allow me to leverage my buying power to its utmost, and maybe even assist with future purchases down the road.

That to me would be the vehicle that would enable me to fully leverage my true power as a consumer, and we hope to bring that vehicle to the market very, very soon.

As time progresses, pressure builds and we have so much to do with so little time. I can see competitors start to "get it", I can see users start to demand it, I can see us working toward delivering it, and it's just not happening fast enough. Although I have to say that weirdly enough it's happening much faster than any of us originally anticipated.

We're hoping to have an Alpha launch of a portion of our service by the end of March, and although that may be a little too aggressive we're striving to put ourselves into a position where we can talk more feely and acquire more feedback, since without the feedback how can we design our service to meet our future user's needs. In the interim we plug away, focus on recruiting and building the best combination of contractors and employees we can find, and reveal little pieces of the puzzle as we can.

Speaking of which, I am very proud to be able to publicly announce that my Co-Founder is now in a position to reveal himself. Frank, welcome to the front lines, I look forward to you contributing publicly as much as you have been behind the scenes up to now...

I ended up heading down to the domainfest conference in the Hollywood hills this week, mostly because there are a few aspects to our new startup's business model that tie into the domain monetization market, but also because I knew it would be an opportunity to see all of the great people I've had the pleasure to get to know over my many years in the domain industry now that I’ve headed off on my own into a somewhat different vertical.

There were quite a few interesting sessions over the two days I was in L.A., but the one I found most intriguing was a keynote by Michael Arrington of Techcrunch fame where he touched on a synergistic convergence between what a ton of people are calling the web 2.0 phenomenon and the domain monetization space. Specifically, he cited the examples of what Demand Media is doing with a few of their micro portals, and how the learning from those efforts are fueling the hinted launch of a new Enom parking service that integrates social networking and user generated content sometime this year. Although Enom will more than likely require you use them for monetization in order to leverage this new platform, imagine if a new startup came out that offered something along the same lines which was also able to plug into any monetization provider you wanted? Well, enough hints for one day...

All in all the decision to head down was a big success. I received a ton of positive feedback on the little that could be divulged about our plans as well as lined up potential new partners and future customers for after we launch. 

There’s been a ton of press lately pertaining to big business jumping in on the Social Networking bandwagon. From NBC, to the BBC, and even Proctor & Gamble, everyone seems to want to create their own social network in order to leverage all of that user generated goodness to promote their brand. Although there are huge opportunities to be discovered in how Social Networks can build new revenue streams and strengthen brand loyalty, to me the strategy of trying to create your own mountain is the wrong way to go, let me explain…

Social Networks provide the ability for people to create friend’s lists, nurture a controlled image of oneself, and interact with a community in ways that can become an extremely rewarding and addictive experience. This is obviously a simplistic description of what’s taking place, but when it comes to the net effect social networks have, these features are what I see as the most common denominators driving the success of the top players in the market today. A problem starts to become apparent when you think about the effort versus reward of maintaining your presence in any one of these specific networks. No matter how rewarding emotionally or otherwise, the number that you could reasonably dedicate enough time to garner any viable reward has to be limited unless you don’t need an income and can resign yourself to button mashing as your only contact with the outside world.

If we assume that  you actually have a normal life such that you’re a disposable income generating consumer, only one, two, or maybe a max of three networks will be able to garner enough of your time to make the relationship rewarding. If this is the case, no matter how much you love a brand, product, service, or vertical niche, would you be able to spend enough time to help the community grow if you’re already maintaining profiles and relationships on MySpace, Bebo, or any other of the plentitude of social networking sites that exists today?  Not unless you decided to jump ship, in which case their network better offer something amazing that I've yet to see.

So, if I were a brand manager, would the first thing I do once I realized just how much potential Social Networks have in store be to hire a bunch of developers / marketers and try to build another a-typical Social Network? Or, should I find Social Networks that compliment my brand strategically by leveraging those that have users who match my customer target profile in order to achieve my goals? I'm thinking the latter, and I may be able to show you proof sooner than you think.

I have to say that after a lightning fast sign up and a short time using the super intuitive interfaces while setting up the two page stealth site with all the trimmings, I've found Media Temple's Grid Server solution to be absolutely fantastic.

No, I'm not getting any discounts for the post, I just feel that credit should be given where credit is due. Way to go guys, I'm really impressed.

I read an interesting article in the globe yesterday where this quote by David Jacobson, a technology director at PricewaterhouseCoopers, struck out at me:

"The world is moving away from capturing people's attention to capturing their intention,"

The article talks about viral marketing, social networks, and the participatory revolution that’s opening up new opportunities in online advertising today. Looking back at the explosion in online advertising over recent years, you’re hard pressed to disagree with the validity of Advertising on the Internet and whether it works or not, so the future in this market won’t necessarily be about any huge revolutions, but more so about innovations to improve targeting and efficiency. Today, billions are spent quarterly by businesses to acquire the attention of internet surfers hoping that they’ll eventually purchase their products or services, but how can we improve the efficiency?

What the quote above highlights for me is that we’re witnessing a subtle, yet powerful change in focus from attention to intention. This means that traditionally I as a business owner wanted my message plastered in front of as many people as possible to increase my sales, but I now realize that the highest conversions and best efficiency for my advertising dollar takes place when my message is displayed in front of a person who’s interested in my vertical. Even more ideal is if you can catch them with their hand on their wallet ready to make a purchase, but that’s another story for a different day.

How can you get your marketing message in front of a pre-qualified buyer? It all comes down to the field of battle, where is your advertisement being displayed and who you’re targeting. The world of social networking and community niche marketing has provided the ability for you to start down the road of testing that strategy today. So, when you spend your next online advertising dollar, think about how to target user intent and you may find your online advertising budget stretching farther than you ever imagined.

Over the last two weeks I've taken some much needed rest to help both mentally and spiritually with the transition. I have experience in the start up game so I know implicitly what to do, I just needed to take some time to contemplate, absorb, and visualize, which I've had the opportunity to finally complete as of today so I'm raring to go.

Next steps? I've already started the process of remodeling, painting, and organizing the new office space. I'm waiting on our lawyer to finalize some much needed agreements and I'm tying up a few loose ends with branding, business plan, and other minor details that all need to be addressed this week.

The next major hurdle is to recruit the right person to head up our development efforts. Although we currently have contracted resources on that side and coding is already underway, I need someone senior who will roll up their sleeves and architect the whole project from the beginning. Equity and some salary are on the table, but I need to make sure that this person, whoever he or she is, not only is more than capable from a skill and experience perspective, but also yearns to work in an entrepreneurial environment. Stability is replaced with chaos and constant change this early in the game, so I need someone who prides them self on their ability to adapt to new situations and who knows how to get the job done no matter what it takes.

If you know someone who fits the bill, and who's also interested in creating something disruptive that I feel will change the Internet, definitely throw them in my direction. I can be reached at peter@ejtel.com.

I'm cutting my update short today since there's so much work to do and too little time, but I'll pop in with progress when I can.

I’ve thought long and hard about how I should announce this so I figured I would just throw it out there since that seems the easiest.

I’ve decided that it’s time for change, it’s time for something different, it’s time to leave the herd…

For over 5 years now I’ve called the Tucows barn home, and it was a very tough decision to leave this great company and the even greater people that I’ve had the fortune to work with.

I’ll be playing around with a few startup ideas that I can’t really talk about until they bake some more. You know how it is with the typical Web 2.0 startup, stealth is key until Beta. In the interim I wanted to send a special thanks to everyone who I’ve had the amazing opportunity to work with.

From all the great people who have left the herd, are still here, or have recently joined, thanks, it’s been a blast and I’ll never forget my time here.

For all of those great companies I’ve had the pleasure of calling customers and partners, thank you for your patronage, patience, and support. Tucows will continue to be the great company it always has been so I leave knowing you’re all in great hands.

Before I become all emotional I’m going to cut this post short. It’s been a wonderful experience and I will look back on these past five years with fondness and a weighted heart… but the future has beckoned.

Stay Tuned

With the largest attendance in history, the TRAFFIC Conference in Hollywood Florida was a great success both in Networking as well as Content. It was amazing to see how many new entrants and non-traditional participants were at this event, which is a testament to the ever increasing value this vertical is representing to the online advertising market.

Attendees included both large and small domain portfolio holders, multiple Registrars and Registries, representatives from Google, Yahoo and other top Search Engines, as well as tons of entrants from Internet Advertising and other verticals looking to see how their businesses can benefit from the high quality type-in traffic premium domains are providing advertisers today. For a more detailed breakdown of events take a look at Domain Editorial that offers more of a play by play take of the event.

Another record breaker was the LIVE Domain auction held the last day of the conference, where over $4.7 million dollars worth of domain names exchanged hands, most notable of which was the sale of cameras.com for $1.5 million to DirectNic Registrar. For a complete roundup of the auction results and prices take a look over here.

Although a little unexpected to me, Tucows was recognized as best registrar with the WADND Seal of Approval. I say unexpected only since we tend to be more of a higher priced domain provider with lower volume domain portfolio holders which are the majority of attendees at events such as these, but this recognition proves that our secure, stable, and feature rich domain services in both the reseller and especially registrar markets are an extremely safe and valuable offering in this evolving, growing, and maturing industry.

From Left (Tucows): Craig Hamilton, Peter Ejtel, Frank Michlick

According to the Register, It appears ICANN is set to vote on a PIR initiated proposal on allowing them to monetize the Domain Tasting process at $0.05 per taste.

For some time now, some registrars and their customers have been using the domain refund feature, which allows a registrar a full refund if a new domain registration is deleted within 5 days, to register domains in bulk and test for monetizable traffic before deciding whether the yearly registry fee was worth the continued registration.

PIR (The .org registry)  is claiming significant overhead facilitating these transactions on an ongoing basis, and although not willing to disclose specific numbers state that the vast majority of daily transactions are part of the tasting process. I have personally managed some projects for registrar customers of ours along these lines, and can personally attest that tasting in general is one of the major reasons why the number of domains registered in the top 3 TLDs has grown significantly over recent years.

I doubt the infrastructure overhead claim has much merit, but based on the fact that most if not all profitable domains have been registered, it does make financial sense on the registry's part to try and monetize what they can since all of this traffic is leading to a lower and lower percentage of monetizable registrations going forward.

The one thing I do not like about this is the clandestine nature of the review process for this proposal. I couldn't find many comments about it even though it was listed on the proposal page. We'll see what happens with the vote, but based on little or no discussion or commentary, I can not only see ICANN approve this proposal but also a quick turnaround from the COM/NET registry to follow suite.

With the Direct Navigation market significantly increasing year over year, today's domains that don't pass mustard may become profitable in the future, and IMHO the registries may just be shooting future business in the foot with this strategy.

A parting Tucows employee sent out a beautiful email today thanking everyone for the amazing and valuable time she spent here with the herd. She gave us all the parting gift of sharing the following words of inspiration from the late Mother Teresa that I had to share in kind;

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; Forgive them anyway.

 

If you are kind, People may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; Be kind anyway.

 

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; Succeed anyway.

 

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway.

 

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway.

 

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; Be happy anyway.

 

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; Do good anyway.

 

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; Give the world the best you've got anyway.

 

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; It was never between you and them anyway.

Good luck Tetyana, following these precepts will result in a success for you that's immeasurable.