Pool.com is well-known in the aftermarket domain name space, and handled the auctions for the launch of .ASIA. All this and much more in the answers that Richard Schreier (contact details below) provided.

Note: In this series on auction providers, responses to my questionnaire are unedited, except that I’ve fixed typos, punctuation, grammar, complete nonsense, etc. to protect the guilty.

1. How many years have you been in business?

Pool.com, the flagship of Momentous.ca, was founded in early 2003 and is headquartered in Ottawa, Canada. We offer our customers access to over 20,000 daily deleting domains as well as a Domain Marketplace where customers can buy and sell domain names in auction or fixed price formats. Pool.com offers gTLD operators access to domain auction best practices that have been proven since our inception.

2. Will you work with new TLDs to auction names? Will you do that on a non-exclusive basis?

Yes of course. Pool.com is very interested in establishing strategic partnerships with potential new gTLD operators. Our preference is to operate on an exclusive basis as this reduces market confusion for consumers who would otherwise somehow have to figure out which venue to visit to purchase specific domains.

In addition, Pool offers registry operators and registrars direct real time integration which would be difficult for a gTLD to maintain across multiple platforms. Non-exclusivity adds a level of complexity that provides no advantage and yet increases deployment risk.

3. Do you have customizable offerings for Sunrise, Landrush, and collision (limited participant) auctions?

Yes. Our recent involvement with the DotAsia Organization (the providers of the .ASIA tld) included special provision for a variety of phases that included those referenced as well as a Pioneer Development Program, abandoned auction redeployment as well as supporting phase-cascading releases (where a domain released in one offering and then is more broadly released in a subsequent phase). Auctions included a participant base from as small as 2 bidders to as large as 424 bidders.

4. Have you auctioned names for a new TLD before? If so, which ones?

Pool.com was the selected strategic partner with DotAsia Organization providing exclusive auction support for the release of .asia domain names. We have also been directly involved in securing and subsequently making available through auction, domains in initial release for .EU as well as .MOBI.

5. Do you do online auctions, live auctions, or both?

Currently, Pool.com has only operated online auctions as our primary customer base has not requested that auctions are held live. However, we have the ability and underlying technology to conduct live auctions if requested.

6. What languages have you done auctions in? (Please distinguish between live and online auctions)

The auction interface for .ASIA was customized to provide language support for English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi and Arabic. Our technology base has been built to support a multilingual environment, the only limitation being translation. In addition, being based in Ottawa, Canada, Pool.com also offers customer support in English and French.

7. What currency(ies) have you used in your auctions?

All auction transactions are conducted in US dollars. However, our auction interface includes a currency translation facility where bidders can verify their bid amounts in multiple currencies.

8. If you run an ongoing domain auction platform, how many domains are currently listed for sale?

The current DotAsia release is nearing completion which means auction volume is relatively low (100’s per day). However, Pool.com routinely supports a daily auction base of 1000’s of simultaneous auctions with no performance degradation. More important, however, is bid volume as it is possible to have a small selection of domains with very high bid activity. Pool.com routinely supports excesses of 6,000 bids submitted daily.

9. At which venues/conferences in 2009/2010 will you have a presence where you could promote the TLD auctions?

Pool.com encourages the creation of a joint marketing program with their gTLD partners. As we did with DotAsia, we provided marketing presence at a variety of venues leading up to the first release of .ASIA domain names. These include T.R.A.F.F.I.C., Domain RoundTable as well as ICANN.

10. Will you provide any marketing/advertising for the new TLDs you are working with? Please be specific.

Yes, absolutely. As mentioned above, we are anxious to work closely with gTLD partners to ensure a successful release. This would include joint trade show attendance, banner advertising, client out- reach and more.

11. Are you willing to provide a fixed payout to the TLD in addition to percentage-based payouts?

Our preference is to establish an agreement based on a percentage payout. This approach ensures that as a strategic partner, Pool.com has a true vested interest in seeing the release succeed.

12. Are you willing to collaborate on a TLD at the business plan stage without an exclusive agreement?

Yes and indeed we would encourage that level of initial involvement. However, at some point our competitive advantages would dictate that the partner would need to make a choice so that commitments to plan can be made and very specific strategic tactics implemented that would be unique to Pool.com.

13. Do you have a primary point of contact who has TLD launch experience with the process of a TLD launch? If so, who? Please provide name and email address.

Interested gTLD operators are encouraged to contact Richard Schreier (richard@pool.com).

14. Please add any additional thoughts

Recently, many organizations have opted to release domains in an auction venue and have not used Pool.com. In most cases, the release was plagued with performance problems to the point where auctions had to be shut down and re-started. Pool.com has the enviable history of never having had an auction engine failure. In addition, we have pioneered a number of different auction models from which a set of auction best practices have been implemented. And we continue to hone the effectiveness of our offering.

Pool.com also offers a unique real-time electronic interface to the auction platform that allows both registrars and bidders alike to integrate their own platforms with ours. Using an industry standard EPP protocol, this API essentially allows any platform (Windows, UNIX, Linux) to integrate with our auction engine. As a result, Registrars, for example, can offer their own auction interface and retain the full customer relationship. Bidders can also create their own electronic bidding tool providing maximum auction responsiveness.

Please add your own observations about Pool.com as an auction provider, or ask any questions. I’ll forward them along if necessary and report the answers here.

Next up: Oversee.net (includes Moniker, SnapNames)

Tags: Pool.com, Momentous.ca, ICANN, ICANN TLD, ICANN gTLD, domain auction, domain auction provider , Richard Schreier, Dot ASIA, .ASIA, EPP protocol, T.R.A.F.F.I.C., Domain Roundtable, phase-cascading release, multilingual auction

Posted by Antony in: Domains, Guide to new TLDs