Disclaimer
The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent anyone else's view in any way, including those of my employer.
© Copyright 2008
The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent anyone else's view in any way, including those of my employer.
© Copyright 2008
The 20 Most Influential People In The Domain Industry
2007 Edition
Meet the Executives, Entrepreneurs, and cutting-edge innovators who have positively influenced today’s domain industry business agenda.The names presented here weren’t selected on the basis of fame, net worth, or the accomplishments of yesteryears. Instead my goal was to identify people whose ideas, products, pioneering accomplishments and industry insights have or are changing the world of domaining. A remarkable who’s who of the domain industry.(content assistance)
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Vinton Cerf
Former ICANN Chairman/ VP and chief Internet evangelist for Google
Why He Matters: Widely known as the “Father of the Internet,” Cerf is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet.Vint Cerf serves as chairman of the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Cerf served as founding president of the Internet Society from 1992-1995 and in 1999 served a term as chairman of the Board. In addition, Cerf is honorary chairman of the IPv6 Forum, dedicated to raising awareness and speeding introduction of the new Internet protocol. Cerf served as a member of the U.S. Presidential Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) from 1997 to 2001 and serves on several national, state and industry committees focused on cyber-security. Cerf recently made headlines when he was quoted as saying “Attempts by governments to create a controlling agency for the Internet are likely to fail.”
Rick Schwartz
CEO, President and Cofounder of T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
Why He Matters: Rick Schwartz purchased his first domain name in December 1995 when he paid $100 for LipService.com. Eight years later to the month he sold one, Men.com, for $1.32 million in a deal that was reported worldwide. As one of the early domain pioneers dating back to 1995, he was a pioneer in the history of domain names, and is generally regarded as an expert in the field of web site traffic, flow and valuation.He is also known for being one of the first people to recognize the value of “type in” web site traffic, which is also known as “direct navigation” traffic, referring to domain names that are typed in directly to a web browser’s URL text box. Rick’s highly successful T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference is a premier industry event. More information about Rick Schwartz can be found at his blog.
Ron Jackson
Editor and Publisher of DNJournal
Why He Matters: The first domain Ron Jackson registered was MusicParadise.com in 1997. He came into the domain business strictly as a buyer/seller/investor, however having been a journalist, Ron soon recognized that despite this being a business where tens of millions of dollars were changing hands annually, it had no trade magazine. Ron decided to be the voice for the domain industry and put DNJournal.com online New Year’s Day 2003. Today, DNjournal.com is considered the “wall street journal” of the domaining world and Ron Jackson is one of the most highly respected journalists in the industry.
Monte Cahn
Founder and CEO of DomainSystems
Why He Matters: Monte Cahn is Founder and CEO of DomainSystems, Inc., which is the parent company of the domain traffic monetization solution TrafficClub.com, and 9 ICANN Accredited Registrars including industry leading registrar - Moniker.com. He started investing in intellectual property and domain names in 1996 and helped start the first online domain brokerage business on the Internet in 1996.Success includes participating in the industry’s first domain name sale for over $1 million dollars with the sale of Wallstreet.com and the industries first $2 million dollar plus domain sale with the sale of Autos.com in 1999. Many feel that these two industry record sales were responsible for dot com buying and selling frenzy that started in late 1999. Monte is also responsible for co-developing the industry’s first recognized domain appraisal system to date. Monte Cahn is the host of the new free Internet radio shows ‘Domain Masters’ on WebmasterRadio.fm and yNotRadio.com that broadcasts each week.
Kevin Ham
The Man Who Owns The Internet
Why He Matters: Trained as a family doctor, Kevin Ham put off medicine after discovering the riches of the domain industry. Since 2000 he has quietly cobbled together a portfolio of some 300,000 domains that, combined with several other ventures, generate an estimated $70 million a year in revenue. His sites receive 30 million unique visitors a month. Kevin is also responsible for working a deal with the government of Cameroon, which owns the .cm country code domain, to forward all non registered domains to his website agoga.com; which take advantage of users who mistakenly type .cm instead of .com.
Jon Postel
Why He Matters: He is principally known for being the Editor of the RFC document series, and for managing the creation and allocation of Top Level Domains and IP addresses in the pre-ICANN era. Postel was the RFC Editor from 1969 until his passing, and wrote and edited many important RFCs, including RFCs 0791-0793, which define the basic protocols of the Internet protocol suite. Postel served on the Internet Architecture Board and its predecessors for many years. He was the Director of the names and number assignment clearinghouse, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), from its inception. He was the first member of the Internet Society, and was on the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society. He was the original and long-time .us Top-Level Domain administrator. Postel died of complications following heart valve replacement surgery in Los Angeles, on October 16, 1998.
Frank Schilling
Pioneering Domain Investor /Sevenmile.com
Why He Matters: Frank Schilling’s bidding and investment activities helped expand the expiring domain name auction houses; and later, other ICANN accredited registrars selling their registry connections as a drop registrar. Frank Schilling patented the “Generic Top Level Domain Rerouting System” in 2001, financed the Caribbean’s first ICANN accredited domain name registrar in 2003, joined as a member of the ICANN business constituency and co-founded the non-profit ‘Internet Commerce Association‘ in 2006. He began domain blog Seven Mile in 2007.Frank Schilling was one of the first to administer very large portfolios of domain names for third-parties and is one of the largest generic domain-name investors in the world.
Adam Dicker
Owner, DNForum.com / Go Daddy VP of Domain Name Aftermarket
Why He Matters: Adam Dicker has built a reputation in the Internet community throughout the years by helping people earn more revenue from their domain name investments. Adam Dicker is the owner of the largest domain industry discussion forum:DNForum.com. Adam purchased his first domain in 1996 and has since become a prominent play in the domain industry. With the knowledge of domains and the power of a highly successful domaining forum under his belt, Adam has recently been hired by Go Daddy as the Vice President of Domain Name Aftermarket.
Russell C. Horowitz
CEO, Marchex / Chairman of the Board Director
Why He Matters: Russell Horowitz is a founding officer, Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer and Treasurer of Marchex since January 2003. Russell was previously a founder of Go2Net, which he sold for $1.6 billion. Together Russell Horowitz and Marchex have become a leader in delivering vertical and local online traffic to merchants. Marchex offers services like “feed management” that delivers advertiser listings into search engines and shopping engines. It also offers “bid management,” which helps merchants monitor performance-based search advertising on search engines and pay-per-click networks.
Yun Ye
Elusive and successful domain pioneer
Why He Matters: A onetime computer programmer, Yun Ye used his newly developed software in the late 1990’s to amass an infamous domain empire that was ultimately sold to Marchex for an astonishing $164 million. Yun ye, a Chinese citizen who lived at the time in Vancouver, British Columbia, was intensely private and dealt with the Marchex people only under the agreement that they never mention his name. To this day, Marchex execs refer to the deal by the company name Ye adopted for the transaction: Name Development.
Tim Schumacher
Co-Founder and CEO, Sedo
Why He Matters: As one of the founders and CEO of the world’s most successful domain marketplace, Sedo.com, Tim Schumacher is responsible for driving the pulse of the domain buying/selling industry with it’s record selling auctions and popular user-interface web tools. As CEO, Schumacher helped Sedo become a profitable dot-com-while maintaining rapid growth and international expansion. Sedo stands for “search engine for domain offers” and is one of the most widely used domain aftermarket websites on the Internet.
Tim Berners-Lee
Director of the World Wide Web Consortium/ WWW Inventor
Why He Matters: Sir Tim Berners-Lee is the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, Senior Researcher at MIT’s CSAIL, and professor of Computer Science at SouthHampton ECS. In 1989, while working at CERN laboratory, Berners-Lee developed the World Wide Web, including the first HTTP client and server. In 1994 he helped establish the World Wide Web Consortium and has served as it’s Director ever since. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2004.
John Berryhill
Patent Attorney and UDRP legal specialist
Why He Matter: Dr. John Berryhill has represented domain name registrants and trademark claimants in numerous UDRP proceedings and federal court proceedings. John has been a longtime advocate for the rights of domain registrants in ICANN working groups and task forces relating to intellectual property and other domain policy issues, and is a representative in the Registrar Constituency. Having earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, John maintains a “nerds-eye view” of issues affecting technology and media companies interested in securing and defending their rights in cyberspace. John Berryhill was a guest speaker at DomainFest in 2007.
Chris Chena
Pioneering Spanish domainer
Why He Matters: Chris Chena, a pioneering Paraguayan domainer that has acquired gems in the Spanish domain industry such as Vlajes.com (trips), Clasificados.com (classified), amistad.com (friendship), and Paraguay.com. Chris has become a premier player in the IDN marketplace and has recently purchased 80% of the popular Paraguayan TV channel, Canal 13. Chris decided to acquire Spanish generic domain names when the rest of the world was scrambling to obtain English generic domains.
Bob Parsons
CEO, Go Daddy
Why He Matters: In 1997, Parsons founded GoDaddy.com, which quickly carved out a niche as an affordable alternative to the larger companies that monopolized the early Internet domain registration market. Ever since then, Bob Parsons and Go Daddy has become the world’s most popular domain name registrar with over 22 million domains registered. Along with controversial promotional ads and provocative television commercials, Bob Parsons is fast becoming the face of registrar domaining.
Craig Nine
Founder, IDN Forums
Why He Matters: The first domain Craig Nine registered was J99.com. Since that day back in 1999, the 32-year-old SEO consultant and web developer living in Japan – first became interested in IDNs, he didn’t just register a couple of domains to test the waters, he dove in headfirst. Nine is not only the owner of one of the strongest Japanese IDN portfolios, he is also the owner and founder of IDNForums.com, the premier IDN discussion and sales forum, and one of the top sites about Internationalized Domain Names.
(Content from idncyclopedia.com)
Sahar Sarid
Co-founder Recall Media Group/ Conceptualist.com
Why He Matters: With only determination and his sister’s credit card, Sahar Sarid, Co-Founder of Recall Media Group, successfully began his journey into professional domaining and has become an iconic knowledgeable resource to many in the domain industry. Along with his popular blog, The Conceptualist, Sahar educates his readers with domain specific information and industry news. His current project involves a site called “Assista ” which is a search engine powered by asking questions instead of using keywords.
(content assistance)
Ron James
Founder, NamePros.com/ Director 1Plus.net
Why He Matters: Ron James founded NamePros in February 2003 and has used his skills to create one of the fastest growing domain forum communities on the Internet. Ron and his staff have created a positive and educational resource forum for the domain industry with no signs of slowing down. Ron James registered his first domain in 1997 and has been actively buying and selling on the domain aftermarket since 1998.
Rick Latona
Founder, DigiPawn
Why He Matters: Rick Latona has been in the Internet business since the beginning. Rick’s popular Sick Site Network controls over 5 million daily unique visitors. He currently owns over 10,000 .com names and is highly respected in the industry. Rick Latona is founder of DigiPawn, the first Internet pawnshop that specializes in lending money to domain name owners that use their domains as collateral. It is pioneering endeavors like this, which are pushing the domain industry to new levels.
You
Future of the Domain Industry
Why You Matter: The future of domaining has fast become highly publicized due to recent world record sales and industry advertising. It seems every TV, radio and print commercial advertisement is now tagged with the website address of the company sponsoring the ad in hopes of driving traffic towards the site. Domain names are no longer a collecting hobby, but a multi-billion-dollar industry that has taken the world by storm. As a domainer, we have dedicated ourselves to searching trends, market influences, future potential interest and overall market appeal of domain names that would be highly sought for purchase or traffic monetization. We are the driving force behind the exploding media behind the domain industry and without you being a part of the frenzy, there would be no frenzy. I would like to thank everyone for your positive influences to our emerging industry and I look forward to adding some new faces to the 2008 edition of the 20 Most Influential People In The Domain Industry. Please be kind in critiquing the choices I have made. These are just one guy’s opinion.
Cheers,
Rudy Hernandez
If you are in the domain industry or have an interest in it you have likely come to know about RegistrarStats.com which shows up to date details on who is doing what in the market as far as domain volumes.
Another site which has loads of useful stuff is DomainTools.com. If you haven’t taken a look before, do yourself a favour and check it out. Today I found something I for whatever reason never came across before on their site, an annual summary of the domain industry starting from 2002.
Very interesting to view the trends:
- 2007 Registrar round-up
- 2006 Registrar round-up
- 2005 Registrar round-up
- 2004 Registrar round-up
- 2003 Registrar round-up
- 2002 Registrar round-up
The World Wide Web is now going local. If you haven’t noticed already, you soon will. All across Canada, the U.S., and the rest of the world companies (big and small) and individuals are jumping on the local search/local directory/Online Yellow Pages bandwagon. As they should. The more free space you have to sell advertising, the more money you will make. Small and medium sized businesses are usually the target and they want to increase their visibility. Its a win-win situation.
This is not an entirely new trend as I can remember talking with these types of companies several years ago, the difference today is the amount of new services I see popping up. The question then becomes, who will come out on top? Will the entire industry suffer from the flood of directory start-ups bombarding users to sign up to their service?
Those who are going to be successful in my opinion will tend to be those who have an existing, strong brand behind them. Someone like YellowPages, Idearc, etc. These two examples have had their brands built in the print directory market so moving to local search on the web is the next logical move, and they already have a huge user base at their disposal to market the service into. Another industry with strong potential is the larger media companies/networks. They often have a brand(s) established in all the major areas (print, tv, radio, web portals). Building a local search directory off of that brand is a logical next step as well. A perfect example in Canada is Canwest who is in the midst of entering the market. They have launched first in the Ottawa market but will be expanding from there.
Now I don’t think it will completely come down to a big brand behind the directory that will dictate the success of a directory. There is always a dark horse who enters a new industry and re-invents it. The key here will be the technology they bring to the table, and their overall offering. If you can differentiate yourself from the competition and make yourself truly unique, users will find you. This is why I think it is important to keep an eye out on the lesser known companies in the space to see what they are doing. A perfect example of such a company in my opinion is GenieKnows.com.
If you ever were to do a Google search for local directories, online yellowpages, business directories, etc. you will see that there are hundreds of thousands of results. Everything from sites running on their own custom built technology to college kids running open source scripts just cause they can. Some are entirely free to submit to, some are paid, some are a mix of free and paid. The fact that its a money maker has caught on.
As a small business, I would want to submit to as many of these as possible for the simple reason that generally these directories are well optimized for search engines. Meaning your business profile page is likely that much more likely to be returned high on a search than even your main website if you have one. That alone is worth the investment for me.
Mark A. Harper
VP Strategic Relations
Mark joined IT Interactive Services as Director of Operations in July 2002. Prior to joining ITIS, Mark managed the Operational Budget and Accounting Office for the Delegation of the European Union (EU) in Washington DC (1997-2002). In 2004, Mark became Director of Affiliate Relations and Marketing, and in 2006 was appointed VP of Strategic Relations.
Mark studied at The Kensington School of Business in London, gaining a Business Administration Degree with the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators.
A proven team leader, Mark brings with him a wealth of international project management know-how, financial and operational management experience.
About GenieKnows.com
GenieKnows.com’s mission is to provide a rewarding search experience that delivers focused and useful information, while supplying advertisers with a gainful medium in which to drive targeted traffic to their web sites.
GenieKnows.com narrows the field of organic search results by developing niche-specific portals tailored for distinct searching communities, and also empowers a broad distribution network for advertisers by conveying meaningful, revenue-generating search results.
As the world enters a dynamic new era in Internet technology and online marketing, GenieKnows.com’s industry-leading search technology continues to provide innovative products and solutions to meet the ever-changing needs of the IT industry.
The Interview
Q. GenieKnows, it is fair to say, is a little fish in a big, big, BIG pond. The search industry is dominated by the likes of Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Where does GenieKnows fit in, where does GenieKnows differentiate itself?
GenieKnows.com has been around since 1999 so we aren’t new to the online search marketing space. Consequently we have gained a lot of respect and brand awareness in the B2B space with the success of our online publisher / advertising platform. The recent change in emphasis for GenieKnows.com is to position ourselves as a destination search website for niche focused websites; 1. Local Search, 2. Health Search, and 3. Games Search Engines)
Q. GenieKnows has developed and invested heavily in its own technology. For those of us who have wondered just what goes into starting a search company, what can you share that will have most of us in awe at the amount of work and costs involved?
That’s a good question. For GenieKnows.com the starting point (several years ago) was developing closer links with the local Universities (Dalhousie and SMU located here in Halifax are most notable) and this then led to funding research through MITACS (Mathematical Institute for Technological Advancement in Computer Science). This then gave GenieKnows.com access to the faculty and students at Waterloo, Simon Fraser and ‘U of T’ universities.
As we hired for key positions we found that our reputation was solid as a result of the relationships cultivated in the ‘early days’ and most of our technical staff are hired in from these universities.
For instance our Director of R&D and our CTO are PhD and Masters level graduates from Dalhousie Computer Science School. More recently we have visited other Maritime universities such as Acadia and UNB with a ‘Tech Road Show’ were we showcased GenieKnows.com and the type of research we perform. Of course, it’s important to note that we had a definite vision, where we identified the opportunity to develop channel or vertical specific Search Engines and the products that you see today are a result of that vision.
Q. Today, GenieKnows is using its search algorithms and technology to power 3 niche portals: Games, Health, and Local. What is the story behind going niche, and specifically going with these niche portals?
We realized some time ago that we would have to find a niche area in order to compete with the larger search engine companies and decided that we could gain more market share and credibility by concentrating on vertical search, or channel specific portals.
Local is the future game for the online search sector, games is and continues to be appealing to a wide and growing demographic and is after all fun. Health is an area of vital interest to everyone.
The technology that we deploy for our Games and Health search platforms (which is patent pending) was originally developed for our Local search engine.
Q. Google has established the fact and by some accounts really pioneered the idea that Search companies like GenieKnows can in fact make money from advertising and in turn also help content publishers (like bloggers) make money as well. What can you tell my readers who are either advertisers or publishers about the GenieKnows ad solutions? The benefits you see to using GenieKnows over (or maybe in conjunction with) some of the competition out there.
We are witnessing an incredibly strong interest from content providers and bloggers in the GenieKnows.com sponsored search publishing platform and believe that we have a much higher degree of flexibility than other players in the market. We can offer a broad array of implementation options that suits the publisher. This platform provides the publisher with sponsored search listings from our own advertisers directly and from other pay-per-click providers in one, simple to install, feed solution. Of course we are seeing a growth in advertisers buying search traffic in the Health, Games and Local sectors – but we are also very strong in a number of other markets, such as; Finance, Travel, Entertainment, E-Commerce and Pharmaceuticals.
Q. For smaller content providers like bloggers, is integration with your ad solutions as intuitive as something like Google Adsense? Do you hold any requirements for content providers? How does one get started?
There are lots of situations where we’ve seen a higher degree of relevancy when a publisher uses our content match solution for sponsored listings over than other provider’s solution. The relevancy of the sponsored search obviously helps with the click through rate and with revenue generation opportunities. We will also allow some degree of customization for partners that are monetizing their content and this helps our publishers out immensely. Sign up is quick and easy and we pride ourselves on being very responsive. Click here to sign up; http://www.genieknows.com/publishing/signup
Q. Your technology is used and demonstrated in the powering of your 3 portals, are the ads that you serve to content providers limited to specific content such as Games?
No – we power sponsored search listings alongside content and integrated into search results across all of the major search markets.
Q. Brand awareness, once you have a service in place, is the key behind any successful company. Recently GenieKnows and its Games Portal ran an impressive little promotion where you gave away $25K in game related gear to one lucky winner. Tell us, who came up with that wild prize/promotion, what were you expecting or hoping would be the result, and finally give your assessment of the final outcome.
The Ultimate Games Room (or UGR as we called it) was an interesting promotional campaign, initiated by a Halifax based marketing agency, that was designed to promote the use of our Games Search Engine.
We had a series of questions related to the Games market and the answers could only be found after using the Games Search Engine. The users needed to gather enough points to win the $25k UGR prize.
To be brutally honest we were not entirely happy with the over uptake and usage of the Games Portal after this campaign. We have found that viral marketing has produced much better results for us. The Games page has recently undergone a considerable revamp with lots of cool features and tools. The redesign of this page has helped with user stickiness; http://games.genieknows.com
The winner of the UGR has recently posted a blog entry here – as you can see he seems to be very happy with his loot!; http://games.genieknows.com/feature/unbelievable-games-room
Q. Any more big promotions in the works for any of your portals?
I’ll have to keep that under wraps – but we are often asked “when is the next party or competition?” and the answer is that we are planning more promotions this year to bring attention and usage of our products. The next promotion will be very different to anything that we’ve done and will (as always) have a fun twist to it.
Q. Your Local portal is still in beta, the publicly viewable site at the moment is somewhat barebones as far as functionality, what is coming up in the next few months that readers should keep an eye out for?
Since you asked me this question we have launched (March 4th 2008) v1.0 Local Search Engine; http://local.genieknows.com – and needless to say we are very proud of the effort and expertise displayed by our R&D and Product Development teams. This engine covers the USA and Canada in terms of mapping and local search data. What makes GenieKnows.com different is the way we present local business information and web-crawled data together for the user. So as an example; a user may search ‘Restaurants in Toronto’ and find ‘Brownes Bistro’ using GenieKnows Local. The user will then be presented with ‘related website’ information that provides more detail about the restaurant (reviews, guides and blogs) that will help the user make the right choice for their lunch or dinner plans.
Q. In 2007, the Nova Scotia Government caught on to the great things happening at GenieKnows and put forward a $2 million payroll rebate which could see your company grow by 200 more employees over the next 5 years. With that many extra resources (potentially) what is in store for GenieKnows over the next few years? What type of employees/positions do you envision being created? How and where can people who are interested in your company apply for current and future consideration?
Yes – we were delighted to be recognized and awarded the tax-roll rebate incentive program by Nova Scotia Business Inc. This will give GenieKnows.com an added incentive to continue with our research and product development efforts here in Canada. The outlook for GenieKnows.com is very bright as see gaps in the marketplace for our product lines and we’ll continue to build a solid foundation of experts to further enhance our technology. You may also have heard about the award of the Atlantic Innovation Fund by the Atlantic Canadian Opportunities Agency – this now means that we’ll have increased resources to further develop the Search technology that you see in the market place today. If anyone is interested in positions with us we post jobs here; http://www.genieknows.com/jobs
Q. Is there any interest brewing in GenieKnows technology from some big industry players? Anything or anyone you can share?
To be honest we do receive a lot of interest from various industry players (and have deals in place with many of them). It is fair to say that other online marketing companies are keeping a watchful eye on the work we are doing on the technological front.
Here is a really crazy/funny post by a blogger who actually decided to put his skills (or lack of) on the line and showed up to an open try-out for the Detroit Tigers.
I loved this post.
“The time was 8:38 AM. I climbed into my Chevy Tahoe with only one question on my mind: What am I doing? I have declined the opportunity for extra sleep in order to try out for a baseball team that I have no shot of making. This sounds like a novel idea. Welcome to the world of Internet blogging.”
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