Just saw this in GoDaddy's customer newsletter... They've launched a Discount Domain Club. Once you've paid a $89.99 annual membership fee, you'll be able to register .com domains for $6.49, and .net domains for $6.99. While these prices are 22% to 27% less than GoDaddy's regular rates, they're 7% to 14% higher than 1&1's $5.99 loss leader deal.

I'm guessing what GoDaddy really wants to sell is its CashParking program, which offers a 60%-80% cut of ad proceeds from your parked domains. Discount Domain Club members get the $107.88/year premium CashParking plan for free.

If you're not an active domain collector, you'd figure that you'll have to register 37 domains a year to break even on your $89.99 investment. That's probably not going to happen. You might also be a little skeptical of the CashParking offer. If these are your domains, why should GoDaddy have access to 20% of your ad revenue? Wouldn't you be better off setting up AdSense yourself?

And if you own a large domain portfolio and are looking for an automated monetization solution, you might prefer a vendor who doesn't splash its brand name all over your inventory. You'd also be curious about new services like Sendori (I read about them on TechCrunch). When visitor types in the URL of your parked domain, Sendori redirects them to a sponsor's website instead of showing them a page full of ads. And you'd surely be keeping an eye on Demand Media's plans to bring user generated content (and repeat visitors!) to parked domains.

By the way, the discount club concept reminds me a little bit of Amazon Prime, which gives participating customers unlimited 2-day shipping for a $79 annual fee. Amazon told InfoWorld last year that the program has been "very expensive". On the other hand, members tend to buy larger quantities of products from a wider variety of categories. Hmm... should GoDaddy have bundled benefits associated with non-domain products into its discount club?

VeriSign CEO Stratton Sclavos announced during his RSA 2007 keynote that the company will invest over $100 million to increase its DNS query capacity from 400 billion to 4 trillion per day. The initiative is code named Project Titan. Rich Miller at Data Center Knowledge reports that it will expand VeriSign's presence from 20 regional centers around the world to 100+, and scale connectivity to its resolutions systems from 20Gbps to 200Gbps.

The interesting thing is, VeriSign currently handles just 24 billion queries per day, which means it should have available capacity for 376 billion additional queries? And according to the New York Times, VeriSign expects the Internet user population to increase no more than 2x (from 1 billion to 1.8 billion) by Project Titan's completion in 2010. But ZDNet's Dan Farber says VeriSign's DNS infrastructure will also have to support 2 billion cell phone/PDAs, 63 million IPTV users and 34 million VoIP households by 2010.

In other news, the nation of Hackistan claims responsibility for Tuesday's attack which nearly took down 3 of the Internet's 13 root servers (VeriSign operates "A" and "J").

Well, ok. Not really. Lovely Hackistan (which I read about on Business 2.0's Dawn Patrol blog) is a figment of Fortify Software's imagination. The really funny marketing campaign drew huge crowds at Fortify's RSA booth. In addition, it's inspired a 150% increase in attacks on Fortify's website. You should check it out!

That's what Business Week says. And Garett Rogers points out on his ZDNet blog that a Google Apps for Enterprises page is already online. Pixar is reportedly dying to ditch its homegrown messaging system for Google-powered seamlessness.

Google is expected to charge "a few dollars" per person per month. (Ars Technica says most likely less than $3, to stay competitive with Zoho.) Considering large scale deployments such as Arizona State University's 65,000 users, Google's 300-person enterprise group might soon be generating significant revenue.

In fact, Nick Carr thinks that Google has far greater ambitions than Google Apps as we know it. He's betting on additional SaaS acquisition following last year's JotSpot deal.

Everyone's asking how Microsoft's Office Live (now at 250,000 users) will hold up against Google's assault. Another good question is how the continued evolution of Google Apps will affect low-cost hosting providers? (GoDaddy and eNom are Google's domain registration providers at least. eNom also has Office Live's domain registration business.) And no, 24/7 support won't be enough for maintaining a competitive advantage; Google's planning to offer that as well.

PS - Just came across Phil Wainewright's very interesting list of mega traps for Google Apps. He wonders how committed Google is to generating subscription versus advertising revenue, and he worries that Google will ditch the paid apps business after setting loss-leading pricing expectations that no other vendor will be able to match.

1. Jan from HosTest sent me some very interesting data from his latest research. During November 2006, Jan submitted a variety of tech support requests to 50 hosting providers. He rated responses on a 5-point scale based on accuracy and completeness. MochaHost, Intermedia.NET and NetRegistry got perfect scores. Jan was particularly pleased with MochaHost's 24-minute response time.

In contrast, the wait time at Verio was 62 hours and 59 minutes. This is particularly disappointing considering the "select the right hosting provider" report that Verio recently commissioned from Tier 1 Research. It advised customers to monitor their hosting providers closely. "The company's response to issues early in the relationship will be an indicator of things to come".

2. Declan McCullagh from CNet surveyed 12 domain registrars on their policies for handling abuse complaints. DirectNIC and French registrar Gandi.net, he said, offer the most extensive guarantees against unnecessary domain name suspension. DirectNIC requires a court order unless a clear case of child porn or phishing is involved, and Gandi.net takes extensive steps to contact domain owners.

I was surprised to read that Demand Media subsidiary eNom chose not to respond to Declan's survey. CEO Richard Rosenblatt told Business 2.0 some months ago that he's planning to bring a sprinkling of Web 2.0 stardust into the domains market. One would hope there's some transparency in the mix?

3. Barry Abrahamson from WordPress writes that he's in the market for 37 servers. It looks like ServerBeach will get the business because of their "super-simple and painless sales process", their "everything we asked for at a very fair price" proposal and the fact that Peer 1 VP Marketing Rajan Sodhi blogs on WordPress. Rajan was also first to respond to Barry's blog post. Very cool!

SoftLayer, on the other hand, misses out on a possible opportunity. James Byers from WikiSpaces comments that SoftLayer is fantastic, but no follow up from SL so far. Considering that 4 out of the company's last 5 press releases mentions Web 2.0, maybe SL should start a WordPress blog?

PS - BTW, Matt Mullenweg pointed out earlier this week that you can blog on WordPress using MS Word 2007. You might want to pass along these instructions and these screen shots to your customers.

Last night Jon Price asked if GoDaddy's "Road to Super Bowl" promotion reaches the right kind of audience: "fast cars = domains? I can have a hot model if I buy a domain? I'll be a super-stud if a buy a domain? It's fun to buy domains as a prank on your buds at work? Uh, whatever."

That's my reaction as well, but if GoDaddy is willing to bet millions on its ability to convert the average sports lover into an avid domain collector, I guess I'll have to suspend my disbelief. On the other hand, what I'm 100% certain of is the very negative impression GoDaddy has made on existing domain owners (including myself) with its Seclists fiasco.

Seclists.org is home to some 250,000 pages of security mailing list archives and other resources. One of the pages contained data from MySpace's recent phishing incident. In response to MySpace's removal request, GoDaddy nuked the entire site by changing its nameserver to "NS1.SUSPENDED-FOR.SPAM-AND-ABUSE.COM". (GoDaddy is just the registrar, BTW. The site traceroutes to SVColo.com.)

Seclists owner Fyodor Vaskovich and GoDaddy general counsel Christine Jones played "he said, she said" in this CNET article. Christine said GoDaddy tried to contact Fyodor, but did not hear back from him until about an hour later. She acknowledged that GoDaddy is "probably the most aggressive" among registrars in handling abuse complaints.

Fyodor said his site was taken down 56 seconds after GoDaddy left him a voicemail. He contacted GoDaddy repeatedly, and was told by Craig, Ricky and Wael that the abuse department doesn't take calls. CNet agreed that the logs he produced backed up his story. Christine did not respond to CNet's follow-up questions in time for its article, but she admitted to Wired later on that she actually didn't know how much notice Fyodor was given. Nonetheless, she insisted that even the 56 second notice was "pretty generous".

University of Miami law professor Michael Froomkin said he's never heard of registrars taking down sites without a court order. He suggested that "some people might feel safer with a registrar that's a little more pro-customer". And Techdirt pointed out that the offending content Myspace complained about had been spread all over the net. GoDaddy did little to make the world a safer place by taking Seclists offline. Peter Cashmore from Mashable added that it's deeply worrying when registrars become censors.

The sites I mentioned above collectively reach more domain buyers than GoDaddy will with its Super Bowl ad. After this incident, I'm afraid it'll take a lot more than GoDaddy girl videos to convince these customers that GoDaddy is a company they want to do business with.

A few months ago, in response to Trinity Ventures' $10.5 million investment in Photobucket, Tier 1 Research wrote that "the growth in functional hosting represents a growing threat to shared hosting providers."

Photobucket has grown rapidly since then. It had 15 million users back in May but recently passed the 30 million mark. Other functional hosting services - such as YouTube, MySpace, LinkedIn - have also enjoyed unheard of momentum (and valuations!) in traditional web hosting. In contrast, GoDaddy is just now entering the photo hosting market. I'm sorry to say that I don't think its Online Photo Filer will *ever* reach 30 million users. It offers too little, too late.

Instead of chasing after functional hosting coattails, maybe Bob Parsons should position himself as the king of "situational hosting"? As his ads put it, life is full of dotcom moments. For instance:

JohnAndMaryAreGettingHitched.com
As a newly engaged couple, there's nothing you need more than a web hosting account! Set up a forum where your bridesmaids can gripe about your dress selection! Install Pligg and let your friends vote on who deserves to be invited to the wedding!

BabyJane26Dec2006.com
Yay! She's finally here! Now sign her up for a domain name, put a "donate to college fund" button next to the cute pics, and email the URL to all of your relatives!

RIPSteveSmith.com
Great grandpa's lived a good life; now doesn't he deserve an online memorial? Create a central repository where everyone within the extended family can upload old letters and photos. It's part of your personal history, don't let it disappear!

You get the idea: it's up to web hosts to make web hosting a relevant part of every milestone (KimIsAKindergartenGrad.com), every product purchase (FredHasAFastNewCar.com), every trip people take (AndysAwesomeAustralianAdventure.com)... Because there's an endless array of dotcom moments that can be leveraged to reach highly targeted audiences of super eager buyers. The trick is to focus on *customers* as stars in their dotcom-worthy experiences - not French Maids, not Candice Michelle and not Danica Patrick.

I did a little experiment a couple of weeks ago. I registered a domain name at 1&1 (because it cost $5.99, versus $9.20 at GoDaddy), and used it to sign up for Google Apps for Your Domain. I don't think the process would have been intuitive to the average man on the street. When I followed Google's CNAME and MX record instructions, I got this message from 1&1: "Full functionality cannot be guaranteed if you choose DNS settings... Click on Reset to return to the 1&1 default settings.".

I wondered why Google didn't offer domain registration itself. As Netcraft pointed out, Google became ICANN accredited almost 2 years ago.

As it turns out, Google was working on it. I just found out via CNet that Google has partnered with GoDaddy and eNom to offer $10 domains (price includes private registration). The service went live yesterday, along with other features such as multi-domain support and customizable subdomains.

Google says a fee-based advanced version of Apps for Your Domains is coming soon. The current free version includes site builder (you can build separate sites for up to 5 domains), email (2GB per user), group start page (customizable with 10,000 widgets), group calendar, and instant messaging. Lakehead University was the latest large scale deployment. Lakehead CIO Shahzad Jafri says he transitioned 38,000 users to Google's platform in under a week, saving $6 million in infrastructure costs and $2-3 million in annual maintenance.

If you think Google isn't in the web hosting market, you might have to reconsider...

PS - Check out HipMojo's list of other services Google could bundle:

* Docs and Spreadsheets
* Google Payment (what's the name again?)
* Google Maps (for directions to clients' offices, or meeting spots)
* Picasa (so you can see what people look like or people can put a face to their favorite salesperson's voice and name)
* Video player (for demos, presentations etc.)
* Analytics (prospecting tool par excellence, I mean most sales people rely on Alexa, not Nielsen Net Ratings or comScore)
* Blogger (so your clients can read about you, your products and services)
* Jotspot (so employees can share intelligence, or clients and salespeople can share information)
* Alerts (a prospective client announces something, you can hit them up ASAP)
* Finance (so you can check out the size of the company you are hitting up)

I would also add Google Base, where companies could create "stores" out of their product/service/event listings.

eWeek and Peter Cashmore at Mashable! report that Demand Media has launched ChannelMe.tv. The site says traditional TV is "sooo 1999"; it's time to "broadcast your own channel online" via (what else??) a .tv domain name!

The ChannelMe website points out that Internet video is exploding. It's the future, and it starts with you and your very own online destination. Demand Media is starting out by helping customers redirect You.tv to their YouTube or MySpace profiles, but the company will roll out site building/video uploading/social networking tools in early 2007.

Forget DirecTV's 250 channels and the Dish Network's 240. ChannelMe will offer zillions to choose from. At a time when the Washington Post says teens are growing weary of social networks, and Gartner predicts blogging will peak in 2007, could broadcasting one's Internet video channel be the next big thing in self expression? It holds more promise than good old HTML websites, don't you think?

Peter's not convinced that a .tv domain name is a prerequisite for building one's channel. (Demand Media charges $19.95/year; GoDaddy charges $24.95.) People have been happily sharing MySpace and YouTube URLs. But his readers point out that users may want to be their own brands, not just a part of larger communities. They may also want to aggregate all of their media under one URL. Besides, they already spend untold sums on other personalization accessories, from ringtones to custom X-box face plates. What's another $20?

Keep an eye on Demand Media. I'm glad these guys are here to bring fresh ideas into the domains market.

Ok, this is OLD news. The folks at Firefox spotted it back in September, and Ivan Tumanov blogged about it a couple of weeks later. GoDaddy has a domain search plug-in for Firefox. Today was the first time I noticed the slide-out that Ivan saw. That's way cool!

(BTW, check out Mozilla Developer Center's instructions on making your own search plug-in.)

Maybe GoDaddy should create a NetVibes module as well? I (along with 5 million other users) almost always have an open browser tab for NetVibe's personalized start page, which I use to keep track of my Netflix queue, shop for Amazon items, look up flight schedules, weather forecasts, movie times - AND whois info.

Going another step farther, GoDaddy could offer its customers a Netvibes-like tool. That's the approach Google's taking, by the way. The Google Apps for Your Domain package includes a shared start page in addition to email and website creator. Edelman PR senior strategist Steve Rubel points out that there are almost 10,000 widgets available for the Google start page (including several domain registration tools), which allow users to perform a WIDE variety of tasks without leaving Google.

Wired editor Chris Anderson writes that the content world is changing. Back during the Web 1.0 days, readers visited publishers' websites. But with the increasing popularity of RSS, media becomes "atomized and microchunked"; readers have on-demand access to whatever information they choose - and nothing more.

The services world is changing, too. In the Web 1.0 world, hosting providers buy ads to drive traffic to their websites, where the only available items are their own products. But with the increasing popularity of widgets, might it make sense to release your offerings into third-party ecosystems - and bring other companies' products and services into your own?

I was re-reading Liam's and David's latest posts, and the answer became obvious. These guys have come up with a great new way to market web hosting to the technically unsavvy!

Liam is interested in "a place for intangible Internet services in the physical world". And David thinks there might be a market for domain name title insurance. This means...

Ok, let me back up for a sec. In 2000, CNN ran an article about the lunar land grab. 300,000 people had purchased space on the moon. And during 2003, according to Space.com, more than 2.5 million people bought property on the moon and Mars. Even now, you can get your own acre of lunar real estate for $18.95. You'll even get an engraved parchment deed; shipping is $7 extra.

So, what if you took the $18.95 package and replaced "lunar real estate" with "domain name"? Add $5 for title insurance. Add $20 for a theirdomain.com t-shirt. Plus $5 for a gift box and $7 for shipping. I'm guessing land in space is purchased mostly as a last minute present; so it could be with the now-tangible $55.95 domain name gift pack.

When the lucky recipient goes to his newly registered domain name, he should see a "welcome home" message: this land is your land, except it's empty. Would you like to set up a shop to sell off all that junk in your garage? Or maybe you'd rather build a virtual home by uploading some photos? Or a digital safe deposit box for your important documents? Or perhaps even a fan club, where people can download videos and songs from your band? Basic apps would be free, along with a small amount of bandwidth and storage space. Advanced application features and additional hosting resources would be available for various fees. Of course, domain owners could also turn their properties into virtual parking lots on which their hosting providers could run Google ads.

Ok, when I started this post, I thought of the virtual real estate analogy as sort of a hoax, more frivolous gift than serious business service. But the more I think about it, the concept could have actual legitimacy. A few months ago, 1&1 CEO Andreas Gauger mentioned that he thinks *everyone* should have a website. There are so many possibilities. Like... some of the uses I mentioned above. Only these may not occur to the average man on the street. He logs into his hosting account, sees a blank canvas and is at a loss. But if you offered some suggestions and a few templates, Liam might change his mind next year and decide that web hosting could be a useful gift.