Just between .yu and .me…

The former Yugoslovia ccTLD has been designated for a 3 year sunset process, transitioning to .RS (Serbia) and .ME (Montenegro).   Following in the footsteps of the ccTLDs that have some generic appeal beyond simply that of the country (.TV, .MD, .FM/.AM, .CD, etc), there was some competition for the registry services with this recently introduced ccTLD.

According to the NIC, A bid was tendered, with three primary parties vying for this opportunity. 

According to a Dutch Telecom Paper (googled – non/pw version), Afilias and GoDaddy have partnered with Montenegro’s MeNet and are the top candidate for managing the registry of .me (Montenegro’s ccTLD).  They had been competing with  Neustar and a consortium of companiesand VeriSign’s Registry Services. The government will now negotiate the final terms of the contract with the lead candidate.

All strong candidates with very capable registry services.  It must have been a true challenge for the parties having to determine the most favorable bidder.

Domain Marketplace moves…

The Domain Marketplace converged on New York this week for the Sedo User conference and T.R.A.F.F.I.C., with other events like the DomainJamNYC happening in the midst of it all.

Lots to report, though I am not there. Oversee.net completed the acquisition of Snapnames (which is like peanut butter and chocolate getting together), and Sedo announced their acquisition of GreatDomains from VeriSign.

Fabulous is gaining ground with their DDN, announcing that large regsitrar Tucows is coming aboard there. Tucows also completed a $3M(USD) premium portfolio sale, and announced their secondary market platform.

Moniker will be performing the worlds largest domain auction this week at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference.

DomainsBot is demonstrating new technology that categorizes or identifies the language of domains when submitted a list of names.

Pool.com has launched myrebel.com as a platform allowing consolidation and management of domains into a single registrar, but leasing one of the creds that are owned by momentous/pool.

DNZoom.com, a consolidated domain management platform, was announced by Modern Gigabyte, and looks promising as a central platform.

It’s been a long road, but this journey is over…

Yes, I have officially left VeriSign after 7 lovely years with them and the company that they acquired to bring me on board. Great people, and it was a good run. I’ll miss the whole team, but will probably see many of you at ICANN meetings or other industry events.

Leaving the V

With a heavy heart, I’d like to announce that I am leaving VeriSign’s Naming and Directory Services.