A possible merger and DVD dot com purchase were most popular stories of March.
Here are the top five stories on Domain Name Wire for the month of March 2012.
1. American Airlines merger with U.S. Airways is a go, suggest domain registrations – a company used Mark Monitor to register a number of specific domain names suggesting a merger between U.S. Airways and American Airlines (AMR). U.S. Airways later claimed responsibility for the registrations, but said they were “just in case”. I don’t buy it. There were some clever domains, including AAdvantageofUS dot com. That doesn’t seem like a traditional “just in case” sort of play. After I broke the news about their registrations, the company threw up a smokescreen by registering domains related to other airlines.
2. Confirmed: Netflix buys DVD dot com – The DVD is dead. Long live the DVD! Last Friday I broke the news that Netflix had purchased the DVD.com domain name. Despite my web host choking, and having only two days to rack up page views before the end of the month, this story still lands at #2 on last month’s list.
3. The state of .TEL in 2012 – .tel is still around, although it’s nowhere near where the registry wants it to be.
4. Two Texas universities win .xxx domain disputes – The University of Texas and Baylor win .xxx domain name disputes.
5. Matt Cutts: No, new TLDs will not automatically get a boost over .com in search results – Google’s search guru responds to an article suggesting that new TLDs will have an SEO advantage over existing ones.
IISP.HK Team
ICANN CNNIC Accredited Registrar
??????? ???????: Private Domain Transactions are FLYing
