<

p>Last week, we sent some of our people down to TRAFFIC, which bills itself as the domain industry's premier conference. Among those attending was our very own Adam Eisner, whom I interviewed yesterday about the conference and what he saw. I captured the interview as a podcast, which is a 4.8 MB MP3 file. The transcript for the podcast appears below.

Transcript of the “Tucows Goes to the TRAFFIC Conference” Podcast

Joey deVilla: I'm talking with Adam Eisner, Tucows' product manager for domains and today we're going to be talking about the TRAFFIC conference. Last week you attended it; tell us a little bit about it.

Adam Eisner: Well, TRAFFIC is a trade show of sorts; it brings together domain owners, search engines, internet marketers and together they discuss the latest developments in things like domain names and marketing. It's held a few times a year, and the last one that was held was held last week, June 19th to 22nd in New York City.

Joey: What typically happens at TRAFFIC?

Adam: What you usually get is a couple of straight days of conference sessions focused on the newest developments in the domain name industry, internet marketing, e-commerce, online sales, things like that. You know, the industry is moving so quickly — especially as the domain name aftermarket keeps growing — that it can be really, really difficult to keep up with the latest developments and what's going on.

So TRAFFIC is a really good place to meet with some of the leaders in the space around domain names and internet marketing and to learn about some of what the “next big things” (and I'm making quotation marks, but you probably can't see that because this is a podcast) might be in domain names and internet marketing.

You know, there's also a really popular domain name auction that usually takes place, and that gets a lot of press and attention as well, and this one had a lot of big sales. CreditCheck.com and FreeCreditCheck.com together sold for about $3 million and Seniors.com sold for $1.8 million, interestingly. It was a really interesting auction to attend live for domain names — you know, intangible assets.

Joey: So…is it like an antique furniture auction, where everybody sits and there's a guy at the front going “Okay, what do I…?”

Adam: It is! It actually is. It's really interesting. There is an auctioneer, a real live auctioneer, that you might expect at some sort of event where you were auctioning cattle, and he's sitting around going “Seniors.com, one million, one million one…”

Joey: Is he actually doing the [mimics auctioneer-style talk]?

Adam: He's doing the whole thing, and everybody has paddles, but what people are bidding on are domain names. It's really, really interesting.

Joey: And is there anything beside him like — I don't know — an easel with the domain name for sale? Beside him, or is it projected?

Adam: It's pretty funny. It's projected, and this time — I believe this was new, I hadn't attended the actual auction component before — there was a bank, kind of like a telethon, of people on a riser, toward one side of the room that were sitting in front of telephones, and people were calling in with telephone bids. And so they would yell up in the middle and go “Five hundred thousand dollars!”

Joey: I was going to ask if there were remote bidders like that, like in an auction for tanglible goods.

Adam: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It was — not that I've been to a lot of live auctions before; I haven't had the need to buy livestock of anything — it was a real auction. It was really, really interesting.

Joey: Can anybody attend TRAFFIC? If I happen to have the money for an attendance fee, could I just go, or is it invitation-only?

Adam: I believe it's an invitation-only event of sorts, but if you're involved in the industry and you request an invitation, I believe it's pretty easy to attend.

A wide range of people go to this conference: domain name registrars, domain name registries, folsk who own domain name portfolios, internet marketers, investment bankers, anyone with an interest in how the domain name market is developing and how the developments can affect things like online sales and online marketing tend to attend this show, so it is easy to attend, I blieve if you show the genuine desire to go and get involved.

Joey: Okay, and what were we doing there?

Adam: We were there first and foremost to talk about our new Premium Domain Name offering, which includes name from two of the larger players in the space, Fabulous.com and BuyDomains, two larger aftermarket players. We wanted to talk about how we now integrate these names for sale from these providers directly into the Tucows domain name search process, and as fewer and fewer names become available, this feature's only going to become more important.

<

p>So, we want to get some information on new market development on the aftermarket, talk about this new feature, see who is interested in this sort of technology and meet a lot of different folks. And when Tucows goes, we go to have a look, and it's also really important to attend and see where the industry is headed.

You know, as the domain name market changes and the aftermarket grows, a lot of participants in these conferences are pretty much down in the middle of things, so to speak — they're heavily involved. So, it's always important to hear what they're thinking, what their thoughts are, and you also get to meet a lot of customers and a lot of partners, all in one central place. It's always worth going.

Joey: Anthing else that you'd like to say? Any interesting observations, funny anecdotes, even?

Adam: You know, what was interesting was — as Tucows, to attend this one and because of our Premium Domains offering, we're becoming a lot more recognized at conferences like this, so it was very productive for us to go because we got to talk to a lot of people about our premium names offering.

Our Premium Names offering is something that is, at this point, more or less ahead of what most registrars have introduced. There are very few registrars out there, particularly on a wholesale level, that have introduced anything like this, so there's a lot of genuine interest from attendees there about what we're doing the in space right now, so it was really good for us to go.

Joey: Cool! Well, that's Adam Eisner, Product Manager for Domains at Tucows. I'm Joey deVilla, Tucows' Technical Evangelist — thanks for listening.

This weekend is the Canada Day long weekend, which means that our headquarters, located in Toronto, Canada will be operating with reduced hours on Monday, July 2, 2007.

Schedule for Canada Day (July 1st)

Here's a breakdown of what will (and won't) be open that day:

Schedule for the Rest of Next Week

We'll resume our normal hours on Tuesday, July 3rd and all our departments will be open.

As for the Fourth of July — it's not a holiday in Canada, so our Toronto headquarters will be doing business as usual.

Whether you celebrate Canada Day or Independence Day — or hey, both — we at Tucows would like to wish you a happy and safe national holiday!

Our President and CEO, Elliot Noss is at Supernova 2007 in San Francisco this week. Yesterday, he participated in a panel discussion titled “Dark Matter: Are We Missing the Real Internet Economy?” along with Ge Jin, Max Levchin, Andrea Matwyshyn and Ellen Siminoff.

Reaction to the discussion is starting to appear around the web:

The Supernova Conversation Hub has a great set of session notes to give you a flavour of what was discussed. Read about it here.

Cluetrain co-author Doc Searls also attended the session and shared some thoughts on his blog.

We'll keep an eye out for anything else that might continue the conversation started at Supernova 2007.

photo:  Supernova 2007 uploaded by JasonDeFillippo

Those of you didn't follow the link in yesterday's article about Premium Domain Names might not be aware that our amusing technology demonstration, The Duke of URL, is back!

This is a new version of the Duke of URL that shows off the full power of the name suggest function of the Tucows API. Simply type in a word or phrase into the textbox provided and the Duke will come back with:

• .com, .net and .org lookups on that word or phrase
• Up to 10 Premium Domains based on that word or phrase
• Up to 100 suggestions for available names based on that word of phrase

Go ahead and give the new Duke a try!

I'm on vacation right now, but when I get back, I'll post an article for developers who'd like to find out more about the changes to the name suggest API call and the code for the Duke of URL.

And don't forget — if you're scratching your head and going “Premium Domains? What are Premium Domains?”, there's a screencast in which Adam and I explain all.

In my last blog entry, I wrote that a domain name suggestion tool was the “tip of the iceberg” in re-thinking the domain name search process. Today we’re pleased to introduce what we think is another important step in the evolution of domain name search: Premium Domain Names.

Like the name implies, Premium Domain Names are high-quality domains that are owned by third parties and available for sale. Historically, these names have been bought and sold among a relatively tight-knit group of professionals; however, this market, also known as the “aftermarket”, is quickly moving mainstream. Consumers and businesses alike are starting to realize that many of the names they once thought to be “unavailable” are actually for sale, and our Premium Domain Names service lets you offer these names to your customers. What’s more, the transaction closely resembles a “new” domain name purchase; so, instead of waiting days for the escrow and transfer processes to complete, these names arrive in your account in seconds. We've made it is easier to find and a buy a great domain name. We put together a screencast that explains how our Premium Domain Name service works. We've also built a demonstration of our service, where you can query our premium name database of over 600,000 high-quality names, and also see the results of our name suggestion tool. Go ahead and check out how easy (and fun) it is to search for a great name for yourself, business, or brand.

For our customers it means that integrating our Name Suggestion Tool and Premium Domain Names feature into the domain name search process, will significantly increase the chance that a visitor to your website will find the domain name they want. And that doesn’t just mean more revenue from a domain name sale; it means more ancillary revenue from services sold on top of the domain, and will result in another (hopefully) long-lasting customer relationship for your business.

Both our Name Suggestion tool and Premium Domain Names feature are entirely free to our wholesale domain resellers; in fact, Tucows resellers earn a 10% commission on any Premium Domain Name sold. And together, these features will make sure out customers satisfy more customer searches and leave less money “on the table.”
 
Customers who already have an account with Tucows, can get started right away. Simply login to the Reseller Web Interface and activate the feature. For more information on Premium Domain Names, visit our Services site.

Last night I attended a meeting of the XP Toronto chapter, a usergroup of developers who use the extreme programming methodology to develop software products. I was part of a Product Management Panel with Saeed Khan (from Platespin) and Lee Garrison (from Riverdale Partners).

The purpose of our panel was to talk about what product managers do (and shouldn’t do), and how product management works inside an agile environment. For those of you who read the blog, you know that recently we moved to the agile methodology here at Tucows.

I got a lot of questions about why we moved to agile. People wanted to know what pain brought us to the point of realizing that iterative development was the way to go. Some of the reasons I shared  - we weren’t able to reach our goals fast enough; we took so long spec-ing a product that it was not salient when it got to market; and we couldn’t easily change mid-course.

We discussed a lot about what Product Managers should do. (Shouldn’t do included things like managing bugs, picking button colours on interfaces etc.) Most of the discussion about the role of product management came from the methodology we follow at Tucows (as did the rest of my panel - the Pragmatic Marketing approach. This is a market driven approach to product management. Its main mantra is to fully understand your market. To talk to your customers, your prospects, your competitors, and other market influencers to fully be able to articulate what the market needs to the customer.

When this is done well, it makes for a really great product.

When you combine a market approach with an agile process, I think you get the best of both worlds. One of my fellow panelists spoke about agile coming around out of frustration by developers, and pragmatic methodology of the frustration in product management, and I think that makes a lot of sense.  By understanding the market well, and responding to changes in the market, you can release something that really works for your customers.   The two releases that Tucows has coming out this month (email that you already know about and another coming shortly…I’ll leave that as a surprise) are real results of listening to the market, and adjusting our course as we learned more and delivering using the agile methodology.  It is really encouraging to be on a couple of those teams and feel the energy that comes out of a team working in an agile environment. It’s amazing to see people so committed to a release.

Over the past year, we’ve given a lot of thought to how customers search for domain names. The rising popularity of domains, combined with the proliferation of the domain name ‘aftermarket’, has made the task of finding the right name much more difficult than, say, four or five years ago. And to be honest, it doesn’t look like finding the right name is going to get any less challenging any time soon.

In response, we introduced a couple of features late last year designed to improve the quality of search results returned to customers. We unveiled our Name Suggestion feature, which uses technology from domain search gurus DomainsBot, to display available domain names related to a query based on keyword popularity, domain extension, word relevance and more. We also built some improved search logic directly into the heart of OpenSRS, so that searching for queries like ‘hockey&league’ or ‘tucows!!!!’ wouldn’t return errors – instead, they would return relevant search results.

If you’re not taking advantage of these features, you should. They’re free to all Tucows customers, are easy to implement, and have proven to increase sales (not to mention they’ll make your customers happier). They provide your customers with more relevant results, increasing the chances you’ll sell more domain names and related services.

An improved suggestion system, however, is only the tip of the iceberg. We want all of our partners, whether using a domain name suggestion tool or not, to make sure their customers are given the best opportunity possible to find the name they want. To that end, we’re working on some new features to make search results even more relevant. Keep your eye on this space in the coming weeks for details.