Domain Name Wire is reporting this morning that the First Two .XXX UDRP disputes have been filed.

The honors for the first case go to VIPINDIRIM for the domain name markafoni.xxx. The case was filed December 29 with the World Intellectual Property forum.  Runner up is a dispute at National Arbitration Forum filed December 30 for HEB.xxx. Although National Arbitration Forum does not disclose the identity of a complainant until the case is settled, HEB is the name of a large grocery store chain based in San Antonio.

As with any new TLD launch, you can expect many more in the months to come.

@AndrewHazen

How much is a tweet worth? And how much does a Twitter follower cost?  We may soon find out as Noah Kravitz’s former employer, Phonedog.com, is claiming ownership of the Twitter account he started at the company and is suing for damages.

The question is: Can a company cash in on, and claim ownership of, an employee’s social media account, and if so, what does that mean for workers who are increasingly posting to Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus during work hours?

A lawsuit filed in July could provide some answers.

In October 2010, Noah Kravitz, a writer who lives in Oakland, Calif., quit his job at a popular mobile phone site, Phonedog.com, after nearly four years. The site has two parts — an e-commerce wing, which sells phones, and a blog.

While at the company, Mr. Kravitz began writing on Twitter under the name Phonedog_Noah, and over time, had amassed 17,000 followers. When he left, he said, PhoneDog told him he could keep his Twitter account in exchange for posting occasionally.

The company asked him to “tweet on their behalf from time to time and I said sure, as we were parting on good terms,” Mr. Kravitz said by telephone to the New York Times.

And so he began writing as NoahKravitz, keeping all his followers under that new handle. But eight months after Mr. Kravitz left the company, PhoneDog sued, saying the Twitter list was a customer list, and seeking damages of $2.50 a month per follower for eight months, for a total of $340,000.

It will be quite interesting to see how the California court handles this case…I will keep you posted!

@AndrewHazen

Submit your best domain name for a chance to have it included in Domaining.com’s January 2nd, 2012 newsletter. The newsletter will also be broadcast to DNForum.com and DomainState.comin addition to Domaining.com’s regular newsletter subscribers. The best 100 submissions will be included in the newsletter.

Domain names should be submitted to http://www.cax.com/submit/newsletter/

Start the New Year off right! Submit your best domains today.

@AndrewHazen

You may or may not know that I am a published poet and I wrote LOTS of poems throughout high school and college.  Below is one of my favorite poems, which I wrote 17 years ago this week on 12/1/94 and I am amazed at the experiences and life I have lived these past 17 years; what a trip it has been and it only gets better!!  The best part is, my destination is still clandestine (GRIN)…

My Destination – Clandestine

Follow me along my path,
the rocky floor is surprisingly stable.
Awareness dissipates into a dark cavern.
Instinct begins to linger,
thoughts are followed by action.
Repercussions overlooked,
neither fear nor anger exists.
Striving towards success,
obstacles become endurable.
Living, Learning, Loving
the earth rotates beneath my feet.

Questions pertaining to life initiate,
knowledge is what I aspire.
Stranded as a mortal,
reality is something I cannot elude.
Responsibility lunges at my back,
leaping ahead I eventually get struck down.
Climbing up to higher ground,
experience fills my pockets.
each step becomes more difficult.
Voices, Visions, Vulnerable
Enigma begins to beckon, I am ready…

Wandering through time,
no chance for stability.
Trying to plan ahead,
my eyes can only see so far.
Decisions lead to independence,
the child inside begins to evolve.
I realize now death is inevitable.
Caring, Concerned, Cautious
My destination – clandestine.

- Andrew
12/1/94

According to BusinessInsider.com, Google is gearing up to launch its Groupon-killer, Offers, in New York.

After talking with merchants who have signed up to provide deals through Offers, we’ve learned that Google’s deals product provides merchants several key advantages relative to Groupon, advantages that could shake up the deals business.

We’ve also learned that at least one Google Offers salesperson in New York is promising merchants that signing up Offers will provide “SEO benefits.”

Specifically, a merchant tells us, the Google salesperson promised that merchants who sign up for the program will become “No. 1 in Google.”

Trump Says You’re Hired to Prime Visibility

I am extremely proud to share that the company I founded, Prime Visibility, a full-service digital marketing firm, announced this week that it has been retained to work with the Trump Organization on several digital marketing initiatives.

Prime Visibility was hired to design, build and market TrumpVegasCondos.com and TrumpLV.com, two websites dedicated to the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas. Prime Visibility is currently optimizing and marketing both sites, building an online presence for the property and increasing the amount of qualified leads interested in purchasing the property’s luxury condominium units. Since the project’s launch, both websites have seen a dramatic increase in search results, traffic, page one rankings, and leads.

Prime Visibility was also hired to redesign 40WallStreet.com, the website for The Trump Building, the world renowned 72-story landmark address and tallest office building in downtown New York City. Prime Visibility completely redesigned the website in addition to adding a user-friendly navigation menu and content management system.

Most recently, Prime Visibility was retained to redesign and optimize TrumpChicago.com , the website promoting condominium units available for purchase at the Trump International Hotel & Tower® Chicago, and has been working on various digital marketing projects for the Ivanka Trump luxury jewelry collection.

We are extraordinarily excited to be working with the Trump Organization; they are extremely savvy and have passionate and devoted people on their team. Working with them is very rewarding.

I will also disclose, as a domainer, that I purchased TrumpVegas.com in an auction but of course I am giving the domain to my client and it already forwards to the project we are working on….

@AndrewHazen

According to MediaPost, High-tech companies spent 26% more on paid-search advertising in 1Q, compared with the year-ago quarter, and 6.4% sequentially, according to a report that search marketing firm Covario plans to release this week.

While the year-over-year percentage might seem a little steep, it’s important to note that spending dropped nearly 15% between 4Q 2009 and first-quarter 2010. Not since 2007, however, have companies in the high-tech industry invested more in paid-search campaigns during the first quarter, compared with the fourth.

In Covario’s 2010 end-of-year analysis, the company recommended that clients increase global paid-search budgets by 15% to 20% for 2011, compared with last year’s budgets. The company suggested the necessary increase would help high-tech companies maintain market share.

Cost-per-click (CPC) increases drove two-thirds of the growth in spending during the past two quarters worldwide. Improved monetization techniques by the search engines, such as Google, as well as purchases of expensive generic search terms propelled increases.

Covario expects click-through rates, CPCs and overall spending to increase on Google this year as a result of the impact Google Instant has on transferring clicks from natural search to paid search. The company “documented a rise of between 3% and 4% of all clicks transferring to paid search, meaning advertisers need to spend more on paid search for keywords where they do rank highly on natural search in order to maintain the same levels of traffic and conversions,” according to the report. (These are the listings where clicks will be transferred to paid search.)

Globally, advertisers spent 25% more on Google in the first quarter, compared with the year-ago quarter. Spending on Yahoo rose 28%; and Bing, 3.7%. Bing’s strength in the U.S. market drove weak investments throughout APAC and EMEA in the world, according to Covario.

In conversations with clients, Covario says the rise of CPCs and CPA rates in the U.S. continues to prompt companies to look overseas for large gains in paid-search advertising returns.

When breaking out campaign budgets for paid search globally this year, the Americas will get 60%, up between 8% and 12%, compared with the prior year. The APAC region will account for 22% of budgets — up between 20% and 25%; and EMEA at 18%, up between 30% and 35%, compared with 2010.

As for the Americas, Covario expects market share for Bing and Yahoo on the combined platform to stabilize this year at between 25% and 30%.

According to MediaPost, A judge presiding over a potential class-action lawsuit by search marketers against Google has ordered the company to divulge financial metrics associated with its “parked domain” and “errors” program, which place ads on sites with no editorial content.

The data that Google must disclose concerns its assessment of the quality of sites within its AdSense network, including its parked domain and errors pages. Among other information, Google must reveal the “conversion score value of the property source” — defined in the court order as “a metric Google uses to price clicks from Web sites contained in its network.”

Also, Google must reveal the “smart pricing discount,” or the discount that Google applies to clicks on some of its AdSense properties.

U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Howard Lloyd in San Jose, Calif. ruled that Google should share this information with the marketers that are suing. The theory is that it sheds light into Google’s pricing formula for its parked domain program.

The legal battle between the marketers and Google dates back to 2008, when several companies filed lawsuits complaining that Google shouldn’t have placed them in its AdSense for Domains and AdSense for Errors programs. Those programs often serve ads on typo sites that people tend to visit by accident.

The marketers alleged that such pages are low-quality and yield fewer purchases or other conversions than ads that appear on Google’s search results pages. The marketers also said they believed that clicks on ads on parked domains “were unlikely to lead to desirable business outcomes, and that placement on such pages could damage their brands.”

Google counters that parked-domain ads “perform as well as or better than ads on Search and Display Network sites.” The company also argues in court papers that it didn’t mislead or harm any of the plaintiffs by placing their ads on parked domains or error sites. Google recently lost a bid to dismiss the lawsuit before trial, which means the marketers that are suing can continue to gather evidence in the case.

Stay tuned…..

@AndrewHazen

In light of the recent disasters that have devastated Japan, .ORG, The Public Interest Registry( http://www.pir.org ) (PIR) today announced a plan to waive renewal fees for Japanese domain name holders who are unable to renew their .ORG domain names. Together with PIR, more than 17 participating Registrars have committed to automatically renew for one year at no cost the .ORG domain names that would unintentionally expire due to the inability of the owner in Japan to re-up their registration. Affected names will include those with expiration dates within the March 11 – June 11, 2011 period.

“The recent earthquake in Japan and the destruction that followed has shocked and saddened everyone, including the Internet community,” said Brian Cute, CEO of .ORG, The Public Interest Registry. “Survivors have been left without the basic necessities, let alone Internet capabilities. By waiving the renewal fees and working with our Registrars, we are protecting .ORG registrants in Japan from losing their domain names during a time when they and their country need to focus on sustaining and rebuilding. PIR’s goal, along with our valuable partners, is to assist in any way we can.”

Participating registrars include: GoDaddy.com Inc.( http://www.godaddy.com ), Ascio( http://www.ascio.com ), INDOM( http://www.indom.com ), WebNic.cc( http://www.webnic.cc ), Net 4 India Limited( http://www.net4.in/net4app/index.aspx ), Discount Domains Ltd( http://www.discountdomainsuk.com )., Name.com( http://www.name.com ), Fabulous.com, Blacknight Internet Solutions( http://www.blacknight.com ), Dotster, Inc.( http://www.dotster.com ), Moniker.com( http://www.moniker.com ), Spirit Domains( http://www.spiritdomains.com ), Advanced Internet Technologies( http://www.aitdomains.com ), Japan Registry Services Co.( http://jprs.co.jp ), PSI-Japan( http://psi.jp ), Network Solutions( http://www.networksolutions.com ), NameSecure( http://www.namesecure.com ), Onamae.com( http://www.onamae.com ).

To view an up-to-date list of participating registrars, please visit http://pir.org/help/japan.

I have had the great pleasure and experience of working with The Trump Organization on various projects from Trump Vegas to Trump Chicago, 40 Wall Street and most recently The Ivanka Trump Jewelry Collection

The Trump Organization has devoted, passionate and loyal people in its organization…something we all strive for within our businesses and when it comes to domain names, Don’t Mess with Trump!

A recent WIPO Decision reports that The Trump Organization has successfully won and took possession of TrumpBeijing.com, TrumpIndia.com and TrumpMumbai.com from Web-adviso of Brooklyn, NY (the domains were registered with GoDaddy.

You can read the WIPO Decision here

Additional reports from WIPO reveal that The Trump Organization has successfully taken possession of TrumpArena.com, TrumpRink.com and TrumpLasVegas.com….

NOTE/DISCLAIMER…I did purchase TrumpVegas.com on the aftermarket but have given the domain to my friends at The Trump Organization and of course have the domain pointing to our Trump Vegas Condos project….

Bottom line folks…Don’t Mess with Trump when it comes to HIS Domain!!

Have a great and productive day!
@AndrewHazen