Registrar Connections

A recent study found that 71% of job seekers rely on the Internet to search for jobs. As a result, U.S. organizations spent over 57% of their budget on Internet sources. A full 15% of the budget is spent on the organization’s Web site alone. But are they getting the appropriate return on their investment?

Candidates can only recognize the value of a site if they actually get to it. But in most cases, the recruitment section of a company’s Web site is three or more “clicks” away from the home page. It is difficult for recruiters to drive traffic to a site when the URL is long and complicated, for example: www.CompanyName.com/aboutus/mission/careers. As a result, only 5% of job hunters reported receiving a job as a result of an ad on the company’s web site.

Although organizations are investing in their recruitment portals or sites, job seekers are not getting to these sites. This represents a great opportunity to offer the recruiting community a simple but effective solution, .jobs. With .jobs, candidates know where to go and what to expect when they get there. There is no need for messaging because .jobs says it all.

“Merck is a global pharmaceutical and chemical company with 177 companies in 56 countries. We decided to register merck.jobs for several reasons. As a general policy we try to register our name and trademark MERCK in a large number of countries. For the internet we decided to register merck.TLD wherever appropriate. But each company had their own system for recruiting people. Prior to the introduction of the .jobs domain we decided to establish a worldwide job portal offering jobs in the different companies. Now, www.merck.jobs is the perfect domain name to host the worldwide job portal of Merck.” Jonas Kölle - Rechtsanwalt / Legal Counsel - Merck KGaA, Corporate Legal & Intellectual Property / Trademarks

A New Registrar Tool is Now Available!

Did you know that the Internet Profile Service is now immediately available to all registrars?

The Internet Profile Service is a scalable approach to maintain an up-to-date categorization and classification of new and existing Web sites on a scheduled monthly basis.

There are over 120M domain names world wide and it is key that registrars better identify for what purpose registrants and their resellers are registering domain names. The Internet Profile Service’s objective is to build a holistic view of your online activity by industry segment to increase your understanding of your online environment and to complement your own existing micro-analysis Web analytics tools. This service will also determine trends in overall Web site activity without the “noise” and will allow you to manage your resellers and retail customers more effectively. The Internet Profile Service has also recently expanded to include the categorization of blog sites.

VeriSign uniquely positioned to understand domain behaviors and is widely viewed to be a go to source for domain related behavioral content with our visibility into the entire .com, .net, .cc and .tv domain name landscape. Leveraging the Internet Profile Service with its large scale ability to categorize and classify domains registrars can now take advantage of this paid service and enroll in this new service offering.

For more information and a demo, contact Customer Service or Lenn Orentas, the Internet Profile Service product manager at lorentas@verisign.com.

VeriSign Partner Logo

VeriSign’s Domain Name Suggestion Service provides registrars a quick and easy solution to generate significantly more domain name registrations. Released into General Availability on December 1, the service’s beta customers have experienced a significant increase in new registrations directly attributable to the Domain Name Suggestion Service. The implementation effort is simple and the service is completely free!

The Domain Name Suggestion Service is the perfect solution for any Product Manager looking for an easy, cost-effective way to generate additional domain name registrations. Visit our Web Site at http://www.verisign.com/domainnamesuggestion or send an email to info@verisign-grs.com to learn more about Domain Name Suggestion Service and get access to our Web-based product demo.

.com/.net Software Release Scheduled for April

We are re-issuing the notice from last month’s newsletter to respond to some of our registrars who have been asking us about the key dates for the .com/.net software release.

Registrar's Com/Net Accounts will be merged with the Name Store Registrar Account during the scheduled maintenance on April 28, 2007. The OT&E maintenance is scheduled for March 27, 2007. We would encourage all Com/Net Registrars to connect to the Com/Net OT&E environment to regression test your applications following the March 27th OT&E Maintenance. For those registrars also in the Name Store we would further encourage you to also test in the Name Store OT&E Environment following the March 27th Maintenance.

What this means: This new release will help you manage your finances better because you only need one financial account to manage the different Registry activities.

In addition to the account updates previously announced and summarized below, the XML parser will also be updated. The updated parser will result in an EPP 2001 “Command syntax error” when passing both a date and time (2007-04-03T22:00:00.0Z) in the <domain:curExpDate> element of a domain renew.

With these updates in addition to the account updates it is important that all registrars connect to OT&E in order to test your client application following the OT&E software release on March 27, 2007.

- The Com/Net and Name Store financial accounts will be consolidated into one account that is managed through the Name Store System. This means one account, and one account balance to manage all of your products.

- The same login and password will be used to access both the Com/Net and Name Store EPP systems.

- The Com/Net Registrar Tool will be decommissioned and Registrars will use the Name Store Manager Tool to manage account information, review your financial balance, and use as a GUI interface to administer your domain and name server related information for the Com/Net and Name Store products.

- Introduction of a Registrar Tool in Com/Net OT&E environment. The Name Store Manager OT&E Tool will be updated with the Com/Net products and will also migrate all Com/Net OT&E account information into the Name Store during the OT&E release scheduled for March 27, 2007.

If you missed the Webinars and have questions or need additional information, please send an email to namingMarketing@verisign.com.

Guess Who Made Fortune’s ‘Most Admired Companies in America’ List?

Fortune published its 25th annual ‘America’s Most Admired Companies’ report this month and VeriSign made the list. A total of 306 top companies were rated in eight different key areas. In the ‘Information Tech Services’ category, VeriSign came in at number 5, marking its debut on the list as well its image as one the industry’s leading companies.

The Most Admired List is an annual report card of leading corporations that are judged via survey by other peer companies to measure performance and reputation. To see the full list, read the article in Fortune . For more information, read the press release on the VeriSign company Web site .

VeriSign Naming Services Staff Spotlight: W.S.

Our registrars have been working closely with this VeriSign “old-timer” back when he was a supervisor in the Customer Service team handling our 24x7 on-call escalation support. He has changed jobs since, and as of late last year transitioned to the product management team for .com and .net.

William (better known as “Will”) Shorter joined VeriSign in January 2001 as a customer service representative for the .com/.net Domain Name Registry. He spent many indeterminable hours learning and understanding the complexities of DNS, the Shared Registration System and IDNs, until he could speak it forward and backward with equal ease.

Curiously, Will also exhibits the same relentless passion he shows with his work, on his other interests, namely sports. Whenever Will finally decides to leave the office at the end of each day, he recharges his internal batteries by going straight to the outdoors to practice flag football, or play kickball, or softball, or tennis, or basketball, or golf. And later this spring, his kickball team "Gonzo", will be attending the World Adult Kickball Association championship in Boston, Massachusetts in a serious attempt to de-throne the perennial champions, "The Kick Asphalts". He concedes that we could label him a sports ‘junkie’ and admits that he is looking forward to hiking part of the Appalachian Trail this summer. Then, during those rare free moments he gets, Will also loves cooking outdoors – that’s barbecuing on the grill and making homemade beef jerky for his friends and family.

What does Will think about his years at VeriSign? “I enjoy being at VeriSign because of the talented people I am able to work with, learn from, and create friendships with while helping to operate one of the key pieces of the Internet's Infrastructure.”

Customer Service: Frequently Asked Questions

This section includes some recent questions handled by the Customer Service group.

Question: When the logon name is replaced by the GURID for transfer notification emails and poll messages, where can I find a list of GURIDs.

Question: Why can't I connect to the COM/NET OT&E environment and the NameStore OT&E environments?

Answer: On Monday, 3/5/07, we changed the IP address of the COM/NET OT&E host name from 65.199.34.140 to 72.13.44.22. Please ensure you are connecting to the OTE server epp-ote.verisign-grs.com and not the old IP address.

Also, the NameStore OT&E IP was changed. Please ensure you are connecting to the server names below and not the IP's.

Special Report on Technology from eMarketer: U.S. Online Advertising Spending

Having grown by more than 30% in each of the last three years, online ad spending in the U.S. is set to rise by less than 19% in 2007. Lower annual growth rates are mathematically inevitable for any growing market; as total spending increases, each new dollar represents a smaller percentage of the total. At the same time, the widely expected fall in U.S. economic growth will have the very real effect of constraining advertising budgets in 2007. Nonetheless, online ad spending growth in 2007 of 18.9% will far surpass the levels seen in the other major media. Furthermore, while online video advertising will eventually contribute far greater sums to the Internet totals, significant enough levels of spending will not occur for several years.

However, 2008 will see a spending bounce back, supported by the U.S. presidential elections and the Summer Olympics, with slowing but still strong growth from 2009 through 2011.

Overall, 2007–2011 will show much slower growth than 2004–2006, reflecting a maturing market and a degree of weakness in the U.S. economy. The expected weakness is generally attributed to the still-increasing federal budget deficit, the sharp imbalance of foreign trade and the associated softness of the U.S. dollar.

While virtually all researchers expect online ad spending to increase each year through 2011, five firms—Borrell Associates, Forrester Research, JupiterResearch, Oppenheimer and PricewaterhouseCoopers—see positive annual growth slipping into single figures for the first time since the dawn of Internet advertising in the 1990s (apart from 2001 and 2002, when online ad spending fell by 11.8% and 15.8%, respectively).

The perspective from eMarketer is more bullish, projecting annual growth falling to 13.0% by the end of 2011. Three unique characteristics of the Internet support that view:

1) Even if the economy slows down, continued growth in the online audience and the need for advertising to follow that audience will drive an ongoing shift away from other media, most notably newspapers and radio

2) The opportunities for better targeting and more accurate tracking offered by online advertising relative to other media makes spending on the Internet even more appealing in a soft economy

3) As online video advertising becomes more widely used, large brand marketers who have up to now only dipped their toes online will devote increasingly greater budget shares to the Internet

To read the full report, please contact eMarketer’s Jennifer Moore at 212.763.6046 or jmoore@emarketer.com.

In the News

This section contains a selection of articles pertaining to the Domain Name Industry compiled by Information, Inc.

"Web Site Owners May Get Tougher to Find"
National Law Journal (03/01/07) Marek, Lynne
ICANN this year may approve a policy proposal to enable domain name owners to mask their contact information available to the public, and for instance allow them to substitute the contact information of a go-between entity. ICANN plans to consider a report on the issue in March 2007, and may vote on it as early as June 2007, according to one lawyer working on the policy. ICANN council member and Tucows director of retail services Ross Rader is working with others to forge a policy recommendation for the ICANN board, and Rader says any solution will take a phased-in approach. If a masking policy is adopted, trademark owners and their lawyers may find it harder to track down domain name owners infringing on their trademarks. On the other hand, consumers and privacy advocates argue that domain name owners need to be able to shield their private information from invasive online openness. ICANN likely will consider only these three options: leave WhoIs policy as is; require domain name owners to display their name and country only, with any additional information optional; or enable domain name owners to shield contact information only if there exists a threat to their personal safety. ICANN Board member and private attorney Rita Rodin says ICANN will make a decision on this in 2007, and that the two basic sides on this issue have become biased and vociferous. Some trademark lawyers say that being able to contact domain name owners quickly in a dispute is crucial to minimizing the damage of fake or infringing Web sites, for instance.

"CNNIC May Launch Children Domain Names"
SinoCast China Business Daily News (03/05/07)
China Network Information Center (CNNIC) recently held a survey about children domain names on its Web site, which analysts say may mean that CNNIC is planning to launch children domain names. The survey asked respondents if most Chinese parents have considered children domain names, if it is necessary to come up with children domain names, and what would be a suitable price for registering a child's domain name. Of the four price options offered, three are much lower than the current average price of domain names.

"Big Names May Not Prevail in Domain Disputes"
CNet (02/21/07) Sinrod, Eric J.
Three recent domain name arbitration cases show that a trademark owner must prove all three fundamental points under the process to win a domain name from a registrant, writes attorney Eric J. Sinrod. Arbitration panels will award a domain name to a trademark owner if the trademark is legitimate, if the registrant lacks legitimate interest in the domain name, and if the registration being challenged has been made in bad faith. In the recent case over MagicJohnsonTravelGroup.com, which was being used by Myspecialprice.com, the domain name was transferred because all three criteria were met. However, in two recent dispute cases over pig.com and wargames.com, arbitration panels rejected the claims of legitimate trademark holders. While companies did possess trademarks for "pig" and "war games" in their respective niche industries, both registrants showed legitimate interest in their respective domain names and won their case. Many trademark holders today are using domain name arbitration to win names in a matter of months, rather than pursue a more lengthy process in the federal court system, even if a court victory can award plaintiffs attorneys' fees and damages.

"Cerf: Internet Is a Reflection of Society"
IDG News Service (02/21/07) Ribeiro, John
Cybercrime and Internet fraud are problems that are socioeconomic in nature, not technical problems, says Google VP and ICANN Chairman Vinton Cerf. He says the problems that plague the Internet are a reflection of society itself. "If you stand in front of a mirror and you don't like what you see, it does not help to fix the mirror." Cerf predicts that the next big Internet growth area will be sparked by mobile applications. In support of this prediction, Cerf points to the IP packet layer architecture, which separates applications from the communications medium, which can be wireless and wireline. Cerf says it does not matter how the IP packet is carried or what it is carrying. There are 2.5 billion mobile phone users across the globe, and this number will grow with increasing development in India and China. Cerf explains that people do not have to get permission from ISPs to run applications on the edge of the Internet system because the architecture of the Internet keeps intelligence at the outer edge, thereby sparking an outburst of creativity, such as the founding of Yahoo and Google.

March 2007

In this issue:

.jobs: Providing HR a Solution