Seven Mile

 Domaining .com (news from whos/who of the domain world) http://www.domaining.com/

***FS***  Cool!~ I hadn’t seen this.     Seriously slick and simple mashup on a terrific name..  This is going to be a big big high-traffic site if they don’t get bored.  The drudge of domaining.
Yahoo to put adverts in PDF files
Yahoo has reached a deal to start running advertisements in Adobe’s popular PDF document-reading format.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7118363.stm

***FS***  Don’t count Yahoo out..  This is a resourceful bunch

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071126.wgtmedia1126/BNStory/Technology/home

Excerpt: “”Experts say advertisers need to remain competitive in a tightening market while keeping costs down, making them likely to boost spending in areas more directly linked to commerce, such as Web search queries. That would benefit companies like Google Inc., Amazon.com
Inc. and eBay Inc. But television networks like CBS or NBC and Web companies like Yahoo Inc. that rely on brand advertising could suffer. “We see continued strength in paid search and continued strength in retail e-commerce, and possibly an acceleration of online video,” said Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay.”"

***FS***  I see Yahoo as being in a great position,  they have my domains, others, error-search from Verizon, others..  These guys have so much potential if they could just use the parts better..  I serve Yahoo ads more than a million times a day, nobody knows though because Yahoo! has been so overly cautious about displaying “powered by Yahoo!” in the search box..  What has Google done?  They have put “ads by Google” across nearly every site that will have them..  and that reach has helped it to grow it’s advertiser base..  How many eating disorder clinics would run to Yahoo to advertise with them if they’d just place a ghosted Yahoo bug in the search-box at EatingDisorders.com? or a “click here to advertise” button to lead folks in?  Tens of millions of collective visits a day and nobody knows the network is powered by Yahoo!..  such a lost opportunity to brand your search..  Yahoo has the pieces, they have the good intentions..  they just need to execute better.  And quicker…  and stop coddling their brand to their share price’s detriment.

The networks have the money but they keep getting led astray ..  buying indefensible pieces..  businesses without burn-down value and other assorted bags of smoke. The net is surprisingly simple..  Traditional media outlets overthing the opportunities and fail to execute, or overpay for the pieces they do buy.  JMO

http://thewebdesign.blogspot.com/2007/11/good-post-on-getting-ranked-high-on.html

Nice post.

http://blog.snipperoo.com/2007/11/death-of-the-do.html

  Summary:  A guy who could have bought billions of dollars worth of domain real estate by applying his foresight (but didn’t) now declares “domain names dead” and hypothesizes that we will abandon domain names in favor of Rube Goldberg inspired Universal Search Locators (USLs) which will take over as the foundational elements of the web.. 

While I could actually see some variant of this trying to marginalize domains in the next 50 years,  in the end I think the obstacles are so many and the challenges so daunting that nothing could actually “do away” with the usefulness of domain names.  Consider:

—You would need to have Google agree on a global standard with Microsoft, Yahoo, Sina, Baidu and all other competing search services so that the experience of USL’s is uniform. You wouldn’t want to type Snipperoo at Baidu and get to Widgettown instead.

 —Even if you got everybody to agree on a standard you wouldn’t have mail because email runs on domain names.  This chap would surely argue that we could all abandon our email in favor of search engine messengers.. but those would have to run on a globally universal standard too.

— After clearing the initial hurdles above, you’d just have to convince every existing site owner to adopt your new platform and abandon their trillions on global collective branding in domains (think of every business card, bus bench, billboard, TV commercial, directory you’d have to change)

— You’d have to persuade governments of the world to cast away their national heritage embodied in (CCtlds)

— You’d have to convince Verisign to roll over and play dead.. or just buy them.. ditto with PIR (.org) and Affilias..

— Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, and Safari would have to give up their browsers because we wouldn’t need them.

It’s funny to read posts like this because search engines actually search for domain names.. It’s a symbiotic relationship. Without a name there is nothing to search for  

In fact it would be easier to just buy all the available domain names from large name holders around the world..  a few billion would roll up 60% of the most visited sites on the net.

Quote: “”The idea here is that as your content is broken up and thown out into the four corners of the web, that is where you come to reside. You no longer have a central address, you only exist where you end up. If you are good, you end up in some very powerful places. If you are bad – well, we all know what happens on the web if you are bad.”"

Those “Places” will need to have a unique location of course..  There is no such thing as a “place” without a unique location..  and on the Internet you need a Domain name to have a unique location – unless you want to start typing-in IP numbers that is.

This guy needs to lay of the over the counter cold medication.  Sahar calls bullshit too..  Next.

Yahoo and Google plan to turn their e-mail systems and personalized home page services into social networks.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/inbox-20-yahoo-and-google-to-turn-e-mail-into-a-social-network/index.html?ex=1352696400&en=b7f0d6a896f23bec&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Josh sends link and says:  For most people, email is important.  For many people, it is vital/mission critical.  I’m a strong proponent of people getting their own email address under their own domain name.  Gives you alot of control and potential more secure email.  And yes, there is a trend away from using mail.  I guess, at 42, i’m a bit of a dinosaur.

***FS*** Email is the language of business and commerce.  Nobody selling products or services directs you to their Facebook or Twitter Messenger.  Nobody sane anyway..

   Elliot Silver writes:  “”Hi Frank, Did you hear about Yahoo’s new social networking site Kickstart? Check it out when you have a chance…. if you can find it ”"

***FS*** Find it indeed.. I like Yahoo, but these folks really need some help with naming.. They own Flickr.com but don’t think to acquire the more logical, generic and often mistyped “Flicker.com”. They decide to lay the foundations for their new social networking site on kickstart.yahoo.com as opposed to the more logical Kickstart.com.  I think this is part of an internal naming culture that runs to the top at Yahoo.  I used to love Launch.com … The brand was seared into my mind..  Then they abandoned the years of branding and switched to music.yahoo.com..   It felt different.. Then they blocked foreign IPs from viewing videos (I’m in the US Centric Cayman Islands), so today I watch music videos on Youtube.com

   I believe you can run multiple domain names in tandem with each other, without confusing your audience and for the overall betterment of “the brand”. (ie. Activate launch.yahoo.com, music.yahoo.com, musicvideos.yahoo.com, videos.yahoo.com and point them to the stand-alone “Launch.com .. a Yahoo property” .. That way when Launch.com (it’s own brand and identity) gets big you can spin it off as a seperate publically traded company with its own currency..  extracting value for all Yahoo shareholders (thank-you Barry Diller).

   What would be really cool is if Jerry Yang played the role of Willy Wonka…  invited a bunch of domainers and spirited outsiders to Yahoo through some “Charlie and the Chocolate factory” like contest..  and then the winner who in Jerry’s judgement had the ‘heart’ and ‘passion’ to coax Yahoo’s naming/marketing culture into previously unexplored directions got to be “Charlie”, who with the help of Brad Garlinghouse would swoop up all salient domain names for Yahoo, adding billions to Yahoo’s market-cap. They could make it a reality show..  It would be bigger than “The Apprentice“..   Note to Jerry: I hereby give you a free irrevocable license to this concept should you choose to explore 

   PCs losing their relevance in Japan.  Both for desktops and laptops. Overall PC shipments in Japan have fallen for five  consecutive quarters, the first ever drawn-out decline in PC sales in a key market, according to IDC. The trend shows no signs of letting up: In the second quarter of 2007, desktops fell 4.8 percent and laptops 3.1 percent.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/071104/japan_bye_bye_pcs.html?.v=2

You could argue that a lack of IDN’s have led to less Japan-language websites…  so more traffic is flowing to portals like Yahoo in Japan. Portals have a greater percentage of Internet traffic so there’s a greater incentive to create browsing experiences for telco platforms, phones, game consoles and web-appliances. Also, seems like much of this flows back to the fact that Japan is a more conformist, inwardly looking culture. Fewer Japanese are venturing out of the portal’s bounds to test/explore… and if I can access the portal on my Nintendo Wii ..  who needs a PC?

Yahoo Flirts With Social Networking

http://mashable.com/2007/11/01/yahoo-flirts-social-networking/

***FS***  On may way to the airport this morning my cab driver told me he’s starting a social networking site. I’m selling out before the crash. 

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9800958-7.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=NewsB

Could be Part of the "de-Silo"ing at Yahoo or it could just be that Ms. Dunaway has jumped on the employment opportunity of her dreams.. I like to keep an eye on Yahoo because this company is a sleeper if they can just organise the pieces they have better. Companies with high stock valuations and a "can do no wrong" sparkle, that’s one thing. Companies with great assets who can’t get any love ..  that’s an opportunity.

http://domainnamewire.com/2007/09/17/so-long-overture-scores/

Ahhh the ‘goto tool’…  Old timers in the domain industry still ask "What’s the goto" when trying to determine the popularity of a given search-phrase with spaces between the words (apart), with spaces removed (together) and as a complete domain name (with extension). What these folks are asking is "How many times has this term been searched over the past month across the goto, (later called Overture and currently called Yahoo) paid search network? The answer to that question will determine whether a given phrase will garner organic, generic-intent type-in traffic when registered as a domain name.

I’ll never forget the day when Garry Chernoff showed me this tool for the first time. My eyes lit up with wonderment at this window into the hearts, minds and souls of the Internet browsing public. Want to know what the most popular types of pie are?  Just enter the word "pie" and see how many people search for apple, blueberry, cherry etc.. "American Pie" and "Pie Theory" always seemed to be the most popular pies..  but after a while you learned why that was.. 

It stood to reason that if some portion of the browsing public was so determined to find pictures of dolphins that they simply typed dolphinpictures.com into the search box at yahoo (recording one search in the suggestion tool) that those same people (and others) would type the domain-name in their browser address bar looking for the non-existent website that this powerful name describes.

I acquired the name when it dropped and was surprised to see 25 visits a day.. The people still come back, half a decade later.

That goto suggestion tool faithfully turned back billions of queries over the years and helped guide countless novice domain investors as they mined for untapped traffic veins. Many of those folks became "Fabulous"ly successful and created vast fortunes in spite of being late to the domain game. As word about this open software tool made rounds on the Internet it became much slower as parties ran monster lists against it, trying to harvest data. Surprisingly, Yahoo kept the tool open and unrestricted even after acquiring Overture.

Those days now appear to be "over" .. Several folks have reported the demise of the tool’s monthly update and results appear skewed since last week. Thanks for the memories goto tool. We’ll always have Wordtracker but you will be missed by many.