news Verisign Blog Calls Us All "Domain Scalpers"

@ Verisign

Bob Hawkes said:

It appears that Verisign are feeling pretty secure now that they have their 6 year agreement with 4x7% price increases on .com and their stock popped up 18% today. In a blog post today Verisign say:

"Flipping domain names or warehousing them to create scarcity adds nothing to the industry and merely allows those engaged in this questionable practice to enrich themselves at the expense of consumers and businesses." - Verisign today​

Andrew has written an excellent column on it here, or you can read their blog post (I wonder if it will get revised?) here.

As Andrew points out:

Verisign has been catering to this market for years. Sponsoring its conferences, promoting domain investing, creating the very tools designed to let domain investors know which domains to register…and now it wants to pretend it has nothing to do with this “questionable practice”. C’mon.
​

This is almost unbelievable and I can't believe it will not anger many. At least for those of us who were trying to decide whether we call ourselves domainers (not a dictionary term),domain investors, domain service agents, domain experts, domain originators, etc. no longer need to worry about that. We are all scalpers according to Verisign.


Seriously, amazingly insensitive of Verisign.

Bob (grrrr... feeling angry )

ps I always try to find the bright side of everything. A good day for ngTLD and country code extensions I guess?

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I guess Verisign is the biggest scalper of them all then. Very interesting how they got this agreement in place, without having to give up much.

Biting the hand that feeds them. Without the aftermarket, they would be making a lot less money. Maybe we should grant them their wish.

ICA's Corwin leaving to work for Verisign had all the earmarks of what was going on behind the scenes. How can one person question everything one organization does, only to join their payroll, and go silent against what they were so previously passionate about.

Absolutely disgusting piece, every one of you should be commenting and sharing your thoughts on this attack piece by someone who willows in her own hypocrisy.

Verisign can fuck off. They have a no-bid contract for something any number of companies would be willing and able to do far cheaper.

Special shout out to Phil Corwin from a member of the ICA. He sold out and joined Verisign. From an outspoken critic to working for them. Any good work he ever did for the ICA was washed away with that move. Pathetic.

Brad

On the positive side, it is nice to find a topic that I think the vast majority of domain name investors can all agree about.

Trying to be positive, why don't we put together as a community a comprehensive, compelling argument about what we do add to the business and organization community. I am having trouble finding it, but I recall reading an eloquent post from @Kate some months ago on the topic on some thread.

So what do domainers do that is positive?

Bob

Domain investors creatively come up with word combinations that are effective, original and valuable, and bring these combinations to the attention of those in branding, marketing, and management that could benefit from their acquisition.

Domain name investors make domain names available in an orderly way through marketplaces, brokers, company websites, and other means. Without domain name investors it would be much more difficult for companies or organizations that want a name to find it, and domain investors also efficiently make the variety of available alternatives obvious so the best business decisions can be made.

Domain investors have expertise in the value and importance of digital assets, the regulations surrounding domains, new trends and opportunities, etc.

My start to a list I hope many with long term expertise and involvement can improve and add to. What do we do of value?

Thanks,
Bob (not a scalper)

What value does Versign add? Maybe they could justify their own business model.

They are given close to a billion a year to essentially manage a database.
Seems reasonable....

They are just the typical company benefiting from taxpayers with a no-bid contract; one that many other capable companies would be willing to do for far less.

Brad

It's no surprise the person tasked with this "job" has very little clue what makes a good domain to begin with, how has she been employed at Versign for so long? I guess "coordinating global content marketing" with a major monopolist corporation doesn't involve the strategy of actually naming anything... Check out her "domain collection." Like many newbies, she has not a clue.

DanSanchez said:

It's no surprise the person tasked with this "job" has very little clue what makes a good domain to begin with, how has she been employed at Versign for so long? I guess "coordinating global content marketing" with a major monopolist corporation doesn't involve the strategy of actually naming anything... Check out her "domain collection." Like many newbies, she has not a clue.

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DailyDoucheDigest.com. What a gem.

Brad

so is me domain investor or domain scalper now?

I wanna know if I should update my cv.. I wouldn't wanna seem like I'm not keeping upto date with latest trends.. and stuff like this.

Bob Hawkes said:

Domain investors creatively come up with word combinations that are effective, original and valuable, and bring these combinations to the attention of those in branding, marketing, and management that could benefit from their acquisition.

Domain name investors make domain names available in an orderly way through marketplaces, brokers, company websites, and other means. Without domain name investors it would be much more difficult for companies or organizations that want a name to find it, and domain investors also efficiently make the variety of available alternatives obvious so the best business decisions can be made.

Domain investors have expertise in the value and importance of digital assets, the regulations surrounding domains, new trends and opportunities, etc.

My start to a list I hope many with long term expertise and involvement can improve and add to. What do we do of value?

Thanks,
Bob (not a scalper)

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That's corporate branding in summary

They have us all on their hands; that's why they can get away saying stupid stuff like that. Sucks.

werty said:

They have us all on their hands; that's why they can get away saying stupid stuff like that. Sucks.

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Except me...I invest only in new gTLDs, no .com here
And so far I was not called "scalper" by any new gTLD registry.
So...maybe it is good to have your eggs in more then 1 basket...

to be honest, I don't let stuff like that fill my head or my thoughts - I try not to think about it

Cheers
Corey

I totally understand the concern and anger, but please let's not lower this to an attack on individuals who work for Verisign, please.

I think our community should work together to develop a compelling argument offered in a unified voice showing how wrong the statements in the blog are, and the value that domainers offer the broader community.

I think this could be an opportunity to educate a wider group on what services domainers can, and do, offer.

I realize I don't have nearly the experience that many on this list do, or the expertise, nor the investment in a large portfolio. I feel ultimately if we take the high road of saying why the statements are inaccurate and incomplete will have more effect long term.

Just my humble opinion, and I totally accept that others can view this differently.

Bob

Bob Hawkes said:

I totally understand the concern and anger, but please let's not lower this to an attack on individuals who work for Verisign, please.

I think our community should work together to develop a compelling argument offered in a unified voice showing how wrong the statements in the blog are, and the value that domainers offer the broader community.

I think this could be an opportunity to educate a wider group on what services domainers can, and do, offer.

I realize I don't have nearly the experience that many on this list do, or the expertise, nor the investment in a large portfolio. I feel ultimately if we take the high road of saying why the statements are inaccurate and incomplete will have more effect long term.

Just my humble opinion, and I totally accept that others can view this differently.

Bob

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Lots of lessons can be learned. Lets hope Verisign sees the mistake.

Quite simply Verisign was hoping they could increase prices in an unlimited fashion. Just like the New Gtld's can. They were hoping to put "premium" labels and hold hostage many business's that have built on the .com foundation. They did not get what they want. They are angry and that shows in their blog post. The same anger they have is the same anger many investors are feeling. Since there is so much anger in the community I will leave with a quote that follows me, "Anger is the biggest waste of time."

alcy said:

so is me domain investor or domain scalper now?

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Check your desk for a tomahawk.

Someone should advise Verisign that the term "scalper" is very insulting to our Native American friends and the author should probably apologize for using that term as an insult.

DomainRecap said:

Check your desk for a tomahawk.

Someone should advise Verisign that the term "scalper" is very insulting to our Native American friends and the author should probably apologize for using that as term as an insult.

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Being well versed in American history I knew it was only a matter of time before that came up.
FYI - I do believe the term was removed from the post.

The Verisign post in essence argues that businesses are paying much more than they should for domain names because rather than paying the regulated base price they are paying a higher retail price. It tries to estimate the amount this is 'costing' and promises in a second post to show a simple solution to this problem.

To support the argument, it uses example prices from HugeDomains to show how unreasonable prices are (some examples in the millions of dollars). While it does not explicitly say so, it implies that businesses are paying these prices. I think one important point to point out to anyone from outside the industry that reads the post is that in most cases prices are nowhere near this value. The average .com price in 2018YTD is $1232. (NameBio data). This average is heavily influenced by a small percentage of super high sales. The median price is below $400.

Her post seems to imply that this has got increasingly so (high prices due to speculation) in recent years but actually the data supports the opposite - average resale prices are going down. She also implies that obscene profits are being made, which is simply not true. While she targets specific big players, she implies that all "speculators" perform no useful service.

The real estate analogy is often used in domain name investing. If we applied the reasoning of this blog, land that was purchased 30 years ago should still be sold at the price of that time, and it would be wrong that someone who saw that a parcel of land would become valuable decades ago now profit from selling it. Or that if governments limited the price of lumber, that houses should sell without markups. There have been real costs of holding them often for long periods, and portfolio wide costs related to the fact that many will not sell.

The other argument she makes is that those holding domain names perform no useful service I had hoped my previous post would have yielded some answers on why this is not true. I do think our industry must evolve to more of a service role, but for some time many have rendered a whole host of user added services to end users such as locating available names, suggesting innovative uses, help through the process of transfer, brand protection and defence related assistance, etc.

Bob

so anyone taking bets if she'll change her cv from domain name colector to domain scalper?

Mike Berkens called me today to go over the post and to him this was all calculated, because the end goal is no price caps.

I said years ago, Verisign must look at new gtlds and be like WTF? We invented this model with .tv. They are playing the long game here.

https://www.thedomains.com/2018/11/02/verisigns-potential-long-term-goal/