Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

I’ve praised ZFBot several times in the past.

The “killer app” for domainers is a tool that processes daily the zone files of millions of domain names in various TLDs.

Perusing this huge, searchable database of domain names offers a great advantage in determining not only the trends in domain registration and ownership but also use it in order to gauge value and pricing of domains.

Ken Greenwood, creator of ZFBot has just launched a sizable upgrade to the tool: more than 127 million domains are now monitored, across several TLDs.

The latest upgrade adds the .info zone files, thus providing accessibility to .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .us, .mobi and .tel.

ZFBot.com is an indispensable, free tool that can assist domainers with their domain investment and end-user sales.

While most great domain names are already taken, hundreds – if not thousands – expire daily. Some of these domains belong to the old batch of registrations, particularly with Network Solutions or Register.com

Aged domains have one extra benefit: a lot of them were businesses once, some more successful than others.

When researching domains that miraculously become available via auction, for example on NameJet, it’s important to research the former owners of these lapsed domains.

You might discover some gems.

Some domains turn up as former assets of Fortune 500 companies. Others were involved in IPOs that preceded the burst of the dot com Bubble in the late 90′s.

One of my domains once belonged to a start-up that was bought by Microsoft, ten years ago. Once they absorbed the company, they eliminated the service and they dropped the domain.

That used to be the Bill Gates way.

I don’t have any delusions of grandeur. That domain is now worth a tiny fraction of the $65 million in stock and cash that Microsoft spent on the business in 2000. But still, I had to make a point.

Is this the only way one can become a millionaire with expired domains?

A couple of years ago, I landed a real gem on NameJet – a domain that belonged to a pioneer movie production company. Currently, it’s just a landing page with a logo and a contact email. I get lots of spam to its single “info” mailbox.

I also get lots of movie scripts, for free.

It’s shocking to realize that several dozen aspiring writers every month, contact that former company email thinking that someone is giving them a chance to hit it big in Hollywood!

The truth is, that I do read those scripts, and if I were a malicious jerk I’d probably try to benefit from them. Instead, I’m responding to those poor souls, explaining that the movie company does not exist anymore. Of course, I make sure I  include my constructive criticism about their script; some are great, some are good – some suck worse than most of Sylvester Stallone’s flicks from the 80′s.

The bottom line: you might be sitting on a pile of cash and you aren’t aware of it. Scrutinize your domains, research who owned them years ago. Enable the DNS, set up some email addresses and listen to the digital waves as they pour in.

You might have a gem in your hands.

—

For updates, follow me on twitter: @acroplex

This short article was spawned by a discussion over at Namepros, whereupon a domainer listed several Greek IDN domains that he owns, seeking the feedback of native Greek speakers.

When one invests in non-ASCII domains (IDN) it is important to be familiar with the culture and habits of that particular nation that uses that language.

Popping open a two-way dictionary e.g. English-Greek / Greek-English is not enough.

It can also lead to misconceptions about what constitutes valid words and phrases, which can make one look like an ignorant idiot.

Most importantly, it can cost you the registration fees for a useless domain.

I will be blunt: don’t waste your time and money on Greek IDN domains.

The reason is simple: on the Internet, most of the time, Greeks don’t type in Greek.

Shocked? Disgusted? Well, so am I.

I love my language. Through several eons of existence, the Greek alphabet and language have evolved from the ancient times and have given birth to Latin, thus producing the range of Western languages, including English.

The problem with modern technology is that it’s adapted differently by different cultures. While e.g. the Chinese live and breathe their own language on the Internet, Greeks prefer to type words phonetically or by visual substitution into what has been known as “Greeklish“.

A while back, I wrote an article on companies that should never do business in Greece, due to their lack of knowledge of the local market’s language and social behavior.

In an nutshell: Greeks – as much as 80% of the urban population – can fully understand English content. When marketed to in English, the comprehension of the mottos, slogans etc. is almost 100%

Due to the proliferation of Greeklish – the use of latin characters to depict Greek words – there is currently no target market for Greek IDN domains. No sane Greek person – domainers excluded – will switch to Greek keyboard, type in a keyword and will switch back to English for the .gr or the .com in order to type in a URL.

The same applies to other electronic devices and popular Internet destinations: texting on cellphones, chatting on IM software, twitter, facebook, portals, forums, search engines, etc. is done mostly in Greeklish when user interaction is required.

Perhaps it’s an inherent “laziness” but it goes back to the days of early Internet and UNIX systems, before Windows 95 – when Greek students abroad could only communicate, type and chat on networks such as IRC using only Latin/English keyboards.

Furthermore, certain words that exist in the dictionary can be outdated or passé versions of modern words currently in use. Even if such a word is valid or in the dictionary, that doesn’t mean that it’s correct or useful to register as an IDN domain.

The existence of the “tonal sign” on Greek words – a slanted tick on top of stressed, intoned vowels (or their left side, when the letter in question is the 1st letter of a capitalized word) complicates matters further:  a stroked IDN domain is different from a non stroked one; you’d have to get both versions if you considered the keyword to be important enough. For the record, the non-toned version of a Greek IDN domain is the same as an all-caps version:

ΑΘΗΝΑ.com and Αθηνα.com (Athens, the city) resolve to the same domain puny code but Αθήνα.com is a different domain name. Not to mention, that Αθηνά.com (Goddess of wisdom, female name) is yet another one.

Confused yet?

I’ll spare you the nostalgia of my Internet experience during the early 90′s for another time; I’ll wrap this up by re-iterating my position on Greek IDN domains one final time: don’t waste your money on them.

It’s important to state that GoDaddy was my primary domain registrar after I broke the chains of Network Solutions in 2000.

Positive things arise from competition, all while monopolies bring down entire industries. Throughout my early active use of GoDaddy – and prior to discovering Stargate around 2002 – I witnessed my domain portfolio climb into three digits.

While at GoDaddy I also had my first ever domain sale and it was there that I transferred my sole hijacked domain after it was temporarily stolen while at Network Solutions. In addition to that, I helped GoDaddy squash a serious security bug and also witnessed the GoDaddy appreciation of humor two years ago.

In other words, just because I don’t use GoDaddy anymore doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the past; business decisions are sometimes quite simple.

However, GoDaddy has annoyed the heck out of me for the past 30 days. How so?

A month ago I received an email asking me to authorize transfer to GoDaddy of an important domain that I own – which sits safely at Fabulous.  The email read in part:

Dear GoDaddy.com, Inc. Customer,

GoDaddy.com, Inc. received a request on 12/20/2010 for us to become the new registrar of record.

You have received this message because you are listed as the Registered Name Holder or Administrative contact for this domain name in the WHOIS database. If you are not the Account Holder, or you are transferring the domain to a new owner, please forward this email to the appropriate Account Holder so that they may complete the transfer process.

It then provided a transaction ID and a security code that’d initiate that transfer of my domain. I left an important detail out: I never initiated that transfer.

After the first three emails arrived, I contacted GoDaddy and explained to their tech support that I never authorized such a transfer; whoever was doing this was basically trying to fool me into approving the process.

I asked them to stop the process and GoDaddy’s response was that they could not. Every week, I got one such reminder email telling me how the transfer is in danger of failing if I did not log in and approve it.

What pissed me off was not the fact that I was receiving emails attempting to gain authorization to transfer a domain to GoDaddy. As it is, whoever attempted this transaction could not have completed it without further knowledge of the Auth/EPP code and without first unlocking the domain itself.

My domain was secure – the whole time at Fabulous.com.

What ticked me off was GoDaddy’s refusal to terminate this transaction, despite the fact that I alerted them to it. Were they hoping that despite all this whoever initiated the transfer would forget about the fees they paid?

I was told that the process would automatically end a month after it was started, and so it did. Four weeks and six email reminders later, it stopped.

It’s one thing to get renewal reminders at GoDaddy, attempting to also sell a dozen different services, it’s another to get “spammed” for domains that are with a different domain registrar.

It’s always exciting meeting large-impact domainers for the first time.

When I first met Rick Schwartz at TRAFFIC in Orlando, I was star-struck; then Rick asked me to simply enjoy the conference and of course its food.

It’s amazing how those “larger than life” domainers are in fact very normal-acting, very much human; in fact, sometimes more so than an average Joe Domainer.

So what makes such domainer idols project a different, God-like persona through their achievements and writings?

It’s very simple: industries need leaders. Those that stand out are soon given the ranks of a “strategos” – the Greek word for “general” in the military and political sense.

An industry that welcomes a variety of people from different cultures, age groups and places of the world – such as domaining – soon benefits from the lead and direction these leaders take.

Shane’s article about whether one would buy scalped tickets in order to meet with Frank Schilling at Domainfest reminded me that I met with Frank about eight hours ago.

Frank also gave me some free advice, despite the fact that it was only in my dream that he appeared.

When one is immersed in the domain industry, such dreams – however confusing they might be – often turn into revelations and the occasional epiphany.

To cut a long story short, in my dream Frank Schilling made this statement when I asked about his prediction about the future shape of things to come:

“Why change something that works already? Things won’t change.”

Frank then politely asked for directions to the bathroom of my house. It was a small price to pay for hearing such a simple yet empowering statement from Frank.

Even though it was just a dream.