Rionge is a Kenyan national, described last year by Forbes magazine as “one of Kenya’s most successful and revered serial entrepreneurs”.

She founded Wananchi Online, a successful ISP in East Africa, and the business consultancy Ignite Consulting.

Her candidature was revealed in an open letter posted today by Sophia Bekele, CEO of DotConnectAfrica, a likely applicant for the .africa generic top-level domain.

DCA and Rionge have severed ties due to her new CEO aspirations, according to Bekele:

At the end of 2011, Ms. Njeri Rionge had expressed to DCA Executive Director, a direct interest in competing for the soon to be vacant ICANN CEO position, and for this reason, was kindly requested by DCA to submit her resignation from the DCA Strategic Advisory Board for ethical/conflict of interest reasons.

This was done after due internal consultations with concerned parties. Accordingly, Njeri Rionge is no longer involved in DCA and DCA Registry Ltd either as a Board Member or shareholder and will not represent neither would she be affiliated with DCA in any capacity, now or in the near future.

Rionge served on the ICANN board of directors as a Nominating Committee appointee for two terms between 2003 and 2008.

While there’s a ban on current directors applying for the CEO position, I don’t believe there’s any such prohibition on former directors.

ICANN is currently interviewing would-be replacements for Rod Beckstrom, who intends to leave the organization in July after a three-year term.

No other candidates have been revealed to date.

The only other name being circulated in the rumor mill is Lesley Cowley, CEO of .uk registry Nominet and current chair of ICANN’s ccNSO, but I’ve no idea if she’s even interested.

Related posts:

1. Four more ICANN 40 sponsors revealed
2. ICANN directors ruled out of CEO search
3. ICANN CEO job ad in The Economist [image]

National Arbitration Forum panelist Beatrice Onica Jarka got the “answer” correct in a recent UDRP case. But she really should have considered reverse domain name hijacking.

The case was brought by deals site Shopzooey, Inc.

Shopzooey, Inc was founded in 2011. Upon finding the domain name Shopzooey.com already registered, the company registered MyShopZooey.com in July 2011. ShopZooey.com was registered in September 2010.

Fast forward to 2012 and ShopZooey is frustrated that it can’t get in touch with the owner of the better domain name to try to buy it. So it files a UDRP.

Here are some of the complainant’s arguments:

“Respondent has failed to address continued overtures by Complainant in a good faith attempt to open up a negotiations dialogue for the possible purchase of the domain.”

“The domain name is being used in bad faith, as upon purchasing the disputed domain name, Respondent failed to put the domain to proper use. To date, Respondent has yet to make proper use of the domain and this misuse has continued for one year and four months.”

“…Respondent’s continued renewal and failure to properly utilize the domain qualifies as a deliberate attempt by Respondent to profit from diverting users to the Respondent’s myshopzooey.com website by causing mistake or deception as to the source of origin of the services and intentionally disrupting Complainant’s business.”

“Respondent utilized a third-party registration company (Domains by Proxy, Inc.) to shield the true identity of the Respondent. As such, Complainant submitted numerous requests to the third-party registration company to contact the Respondent to attempt to engage in a dialogue regarding the disputed domain name.”

My God, I think I might throw up.

If there ever is UDRP reform, arbitration forums should be required to throw out cases where the subject domain was registered before any claimed trademark rights.

In the mean time, panelists should call reverse domain name hijacking when they see it. Even if the respondent doesn’t have a lawyer and doesn’t know to ask for it.

© DomainNameWire.com 2011.

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No related posts.

ICANN have announced they are seeking volunteers to assist in the evaluation of those organisations seeking financial support to apply for a gTLD.

“These volunteers will be key to ICANN’s effort to assure that the less-developed parts of the world are able to participate in the new Domain name program,” said Kurt Pritz, Senior Vice President. “The panel members will make a real impact in ensuring that the opportunities for innovation and economic development created by the Internet are open to everyone.”

The volunteers will be chosen for their background and experience in areas such as running a small business, operating in developing economies, analysing business plans, serving in the public interest, managing a domain name registry service, or awarding grants.

The financial assistance component of the Applicant Support Program offers a limited number of qualifying applicants the opportunity to pay a reduced evaluation fee of $47,000 instead of the full evaluation fee of $185,000.

The selected volunteers will assist in the evaluation of financial support applicants in the context of established public interest, financial capabilities and financial need criteria as outlined in the “Financial Assistance Handbook.”

For anyone interested in applying, review the criteria, work out if you can commit the time required and check out any other expectations at newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/candidate-support/sarp-eoi-request-03feb12-en.pdf.

While there are very good reasons for a business to have a gTLD, there has to be a plan by the company to use it, and to get some benefits. To spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just to protect against someone else registering a gTLD is nigh on a waste of money.

The gTLD process also has procedures built into the programme, outlined in its 300+ page applicant guidebook that are designed to protect brand owner’s interests through independent objection and dispute resolution processes (and other processes).

However ICANN is now concerned that as the time of the opening of the new gTLD application window drew near, parties stated their perception that they will need to submit “defensive” gTLD applications as a means to protect their trademarks.

ICANN is now seeking public comment on the sources of this perception and how it can be addressed.

The public comment period is now open and the Public Comment Box Link is www.icann.org/en/public-comment/newgtlds-defensive-applications-06feb12-en.htm.

FaceValue.com led the way in reportable sales at $20K.

Here is the complete list of reportable sales over $1K.

Let me begin this post by saying I am by no means the end-user sales messiah. Please don’t take this post as an expert telling you what has helped them make their fortune. I have not ever made a fortune selling domain names, instead my business has always generated revenue through development and monetization.

That being said, last year was my best year of end-user sales with over ten domains sold to end-users at an average price of $2,500 each. Compare this to 2010 where I did about half the revenue and I am happy with the direction I am headed. I can’t tell you how to make millions buying and selling domains, but I can tell you what worked for me last year when it came to end-user sales letters.

I did a lot of fine-tuning last year to really figure-out how to optimize my sales letters. What I found was a higher response rate than ever before and a higher average sale price, but it wasn’t just the sales letter, it was the full package, and that’s what I’m going to talk about here. So if your end-user sales letters aren’t working, one of the reasons below might be why:

1. You Are Trying To Sell Crappy Domains – many people blame the sales letter when at the end of the day it is the product that the sales letter is trying to sell, not the letter itself. End-users will only respond if the domain name you are emailing about catches their eye right-away. This means it should be a .COM, it should be short, and it should be something incredibly relevant to their business. If you’re trying to sell three-word .NETs or what you think is a category-killer .BIZ name to an end-user there’s a good chance they aren’t going to respond. To end-users .COM really is all that exists so if you want to catch their attention, you’ll need to do it with a .COM.

2. Your Sales Letter Is Too Long – what do you do when you get a really long email from someone that you don’t know at all? Most people hit the delete button. If your sales letter is too long it could seem scammy or just too much for a busy person to digest and make a real decision. The sales letters that did the best for me in 2011 were those that were short and sweet, focusing on the one main value proposition I was going for. If you start listing the reasons why owning a strong domain name like yours is good, you’ve probably already lost them. Show the potential buyer how a domain name like yours could solve one of their biggest problems, and stop there – that’s enough!

3. Your Prices Are Too High – last but certainly not least is pricing. While end-user pricing will certainly be higher than any of your fellow Domaining buddies might pay, it takes doing some research and understanding your market to determine the right price. Try to understand how much money your potential buyer is spending on online marketing each month and use this as a guide. Don’t try to sell a domain for $20,000 to a guy that only spends $200/month on advertising. If you want top-dollar for your domain then you’ll have to wait for someone to contact you, otherwise, as long as you’re the guy sending-out sales letters, be prepared to sell at a price that doesn’t scare-away your potential buyers.

The third point here is a good one and delves into a topic that hasn’t been covered much – the difference between an inbound vs. an outbound end-user sale. While I could write a whole post on this (and I will!) it is important to understand the key differences here.

Just think it about it; if someone contacts you to buy your domain you have all the leverage. They might not even know if you had it for sale and you can really set your prices high because you have something they want, and they already know it. When you contact someone else, they instantly see you as a salesperson, someone trying to get them to buy something. In this case you don’t necessarily have anything they want, instead you have to prove that you have something that would be valuable to them.

As you can see, there’s a big difference between inbound and outbound end-user sales and it is critical to be honest with yourself when you’re sending sales letters. If you have reasonable domains, write a short and effective sales letter, and get your pricing right, then you might find more liquidity than ever before.

If you find that you’re not getting any responses to your sales letters, don’t just keep doing the same things, identify the problem, fix it, and try again. That’s what I did and after sending sales letter trying to push .US domains for years I realized that it wasn’t my sales letters that were failing, it was the domains I was trying to sell and the prices I was trying to sell them for.

Don’t be afraid to try new things and fail, heck, fail big, as long as you learn from that failure, make a change, and continue to optimize until you do it right. Nobody said Domaining was easy but there really is nothing like the thrill of a good end-user sale, or two, or three, you get the picture!

Please feel free to share your own end-user sales letter tips below. Like I said above, I’m not an expert, but I do like sharing what’s worked for me so I’d love to hear what’s worked for you!

The reportable sales were led by:

geb.com at 40,000 EUR

Top ccTLD: football-betting.co.uk at 11,800 GBP

Top “other” TLD: lotto.info at 19,500 USD

Here is a list of all the reportable sales:

 …

Hum

ICANN has budgeted some $100 Million dollars from incoming application fees from the new gTLD program and they are asking people to volunteer their time to evaluate applicants seeking financial support.

Throughout the new gTLD process and various Guidebooks and meetings ICANN has stated that financial assistance would be made available to certain worthy  organization that didn’t have the $185K application fee.  This discounted rate if you will was part and parcel of the program.

To now ask people to determine which organization are entitled to financial assistance and a discounted application fee,  for free, well it doesn’t seem right to me.

Seems like its a job ICANN should be paying for,  not getting it for free.

Here is the announcement

“”The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is seeking volunteers who will assist in the evaluation of those organizations seeking financial support to apply for a new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD).

In recent years, GRFs have become increasingly popular on campuses in the United States and Canada. The funds operate and are managed by the university, with loans issued to university departments or campus groups. As of February 2011, there were 52 active green revolving funds in the United States and Canada. These funds were traditionally earmarked for energy efficiency applications like changing light bulbs or boilers. But increasingly they are now being used for IT applications.

Most green initiatives involve ICT in some form or another. A good example is Iowa State University that borrowed $300 from the university GRF to install energy saving software on over 500 computers, which is projected to result in over $49,000 in annual energy savings for the university.

One GRF model, that is gaining popularity, is national or state based GRF funds like Salix in the UK which received over $10m pounds from the UK government. These funds are also being targeted to support IT energy reduction as for example the recent funding of 2 million pounds to University of St. Andrews.

Another model, that is being explored is where the NREN operates a national GRF, sponsored by the national/state government or collectively on behalf of the institutions. Network membership or users fees can then be deducted against the fund, if the institution undertakes activities to reduce their IT energy impact through the use of clouds, remote collocation, offloading campus network management, content peering and other such services.

CANARIE, through the Greenstar program in partnership with the Canadian Standards Association has developed process and procedures on measuring the detailed energy costs savings that are possible through such arrangements.

Some pointers:
Good Overview of Green Revolving Funds
JISC white paper: Using IT to go green at universities & revolving green funds: briefing paper
CANARIE-Greenstar-CSA document

Written by Bill St. Arnaud , Green IT Networking Consultant

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Junglee.com was originally started by four Stanford students in 1996. They were providing online database technology helping consumers to find millions of assorted products shortly after Amazon went live doing the same thing in 1995. Amazon must’ve seen quite a bit of promise in the company early on, as they acquired Junglee.com in 1998 for a whopping $200 million.

India already sports the worlds third largest e-commerce market behind the U.S. and China. Indian online sales in 2009 totaled $4 billion USD. The encore to that year was an eye-opening $10 billion in sales in 2010. The move is expected to rival current Indian e-superpower Flipkart.com for the battle of online goods. The sites look very similar, featuring a conservative layout emphasizing the special product offerings. This can be directly attributed to the fact that Flipkart.com was started by two former Amazon employees and IIT Delhi students in 2007.

But why ‘rebrand’ to target a particular population when the Amazon brand is already recognizable worldwide? Is this really a risk worth taking? I think the term ‘Amazon’ strikes a particular chord here in the U.S. because it’s something that as children, we had embedded in our mind. The Amazon was a larger-than-life river and rainforest with exotic creatures and overflowing with mystery. While many Indians are familiar with the Amazon, the term ‘Amazon’ just doesn’t have the same effect there.

‘Junglee’ is term with similar connotations to the Indian people. The term ‘Junglee’ translates to wild or ill-mannered in Hindi, so the message is similar to what Amazon invokes in Americans. Hindi is the most popular of the 100+ languages in India, the primary language of approximately 45% of the population. Junglee was a musical mega-blockbuster movie in India back in 1961. Having been a classic movie and familiar term, Junglee is something, like the word Amazon, that is inherently embedded in the minds of the masses, which is good for brand recognition.

Some might argue that this new brand is a blown opportunity to expand their Amazon brand on a global scale. I actually think this is a brilliant move, one that will simultaneously boost the original brand by including the Amazon logo throughout the site. Junglee.com will not only offer local specialized goods, but access to Amazon’s global database of products that essentially includes anything one could ever want.

I believe this move has huge implications for the ongoing ‘globalization of the internet’, and we could continue to see many new brands emerge from mega-companies for various regions in the world. This is a big reason why I like to take fliers on 5-8 letter brandable.com’s, especially ones with interesting meanings outside of the United States. Technology has torn down many barriers to entry for multinational corporations, and the constantly evolving nature of the internet and it’s increasingly amazing capabilities will have fascinating implications on a global scale.

What are you feelings on this move for Amazon? Have you noticed companies taking similar risks, or even stretching this idea a step further? What are the implications for global business, and the rapidly expanding world of domains?