5 Free Tools the Domain Blogs Use to Find “Breaking News”

People often wonder how domain and tech sites/blogs find information for their stories.   Obviously many of the stories on the big boy websites, Domain Name News, ElliotsBlog, and The Domains, come from the owner’s personal relationships that they’ve built over the years being involved in this industry.  People actually send them information and leads because they know that they are able to get the story out. They are also able to verify the information because they most likely personally know someone involved and can make a phone call to get more information.  The other stories you see are merely a result of research, data gathering, and leads and are often from a few free public sites that you may or may not know. Here are five that I use every day.

DailyChanges.com A fantastic site from DomainTools.com that lets you put in any server and see what domains are new, incoming, or outgoing on that server over the past 24 hours.  Mark Monitor is known for securing domains for companies such as Apple.  If you type in markmonitor.com and it will tell you the server they use and what domains are coming, going, or are new. You can do it with any company in the world.  Disney, Warner Bros, or Apple.  Jamie over at DotWeekly does a great daily post using the site.  If you can learn what servers the companies are storing their new acquisitions you can get the jump on new technologies or upcoming announcements. For instance you can see here that Apple is having names moved from Sedo Parking over to their servers.  Why? That’s where the digging for more information begins.

PRNewswire.com A press release website that displays all the releases for the day.  Nicely searchable and easy to navigate.  I usually search for “dot com” or “domain” each morning.  TheDomains is usually the first to do stories off the NewsWire.

Reddit.com Digg used to be a great source of information about all things social but after it died I was left with Reddit.  Much of the news is regurgitated but every once in a while there are some great ideas and stories within the enormous amount of craziness over there.

Bid on Names At Namejet. Because there are no sales release info from Namejet there is only one way to find out the final price of a domain….bid on it.  I am guessing that 25% of the bids on the top names are merely people keeping track of the final sales price either for personal record or and often for blog posts.

Domain Tools’s Domain Monitor.  You’ve seen it mentioned all over the blogs but it really is a useful tool for being alerted to changes in “story domains”.  You can watch 100 domains for free and you’ll get an alert if the nameservers are changed.  You’ll get them when they are renewed but that’s not news.  Its news when a domain changes hands.  I personally like to enter domains that are recently purchased and monitor them to see how long it takes people to flip them.  Not necessarily news but good info on how long and to whom they are selling.  Another great tool.