Breaking Reports: Snapnames Acquired by Web.com

According to tweets from two employees of Web.com this evening, Snapnames was acquired by the publicly traded company. I don’t have details about the reported deal, and I can’t find a press release announcing the news, but I understand that Web.com CEO David Brown informed employees of the deal earlier today.

Snapnames and NameJet are two of the main auction houses for expiring domain names. NameJet is a joint venture between Demand Media and Web.com, and it remains to be seen what will happen now that these two companies reportedly share the same owner.

I assume more details about the reported deal will be made public soon, especially given the fact that Web.com is a publicly traded company and will likely have to disclose details about a transaction. Once I hear more and receive an official confirmation of this deal, I will pass it along.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

17 COMMENTS

  1. This is *huge* news. Let’s hope they revamp the company that’s been flaky in recent months. Web.com has the infrastructure and the capital to breathe new life to the old Oversee/Key systems asset.

    • @ Acro, You know I respect you and like your blogs, clicking Domaining headlines which appeal – not all of them.

      Would you update your understanding when new knowledge becomes unveiled?

      Web.com defines, “Cybersquatting,” as, “obtaining a domain name merely to attempt to sell the rights to the domain name or subdomain to some third party.”

      This is Web.com terms I dug around and found them in a popup window.

      Web.com sullies the industry of legitimate domain investors. You can’t agree to Web.com terms and “obtain a domain name to sell the rights to a third party.” We have to pull the wool from our eyes. You have to help. Please.

      The link, hidden in the registration process: web.com/legal/termspopup.aspx

    • Louise – Perhaps the language of those terms sounds threatening but it’s legalese to protect the registrar from lawsuits; after all, the problem of true cybersquatting still exists.

      I would be more concerned about the stronghold that GoDaddy has demonstrated in the past against its customers by charging for incoming C&D’s, and other such niceties a la carte.

      Either way, Web.com is a large company that will hopefully improve the SnapNames platform.

  2. Good catch! I cannot recall the last time I placed a bid at Snapnames – at least a few years ago. I could not stand having domains scattered across a dozen different registrars and the hassle of having to consolidate them at Godaddy. With my Name.com backorders they all roll into the same control panel even if the drop occurred at a different registrar.

  3. I can’t see this being good at all.
    It takes two competitors and turns it into an absolute monopoly.
    Start bid will raise up to $99 per domain or something even more absurd.
    Leaves the door wide open for shill bidding instances, because there is almost no alternative.

  4. If this is true (personal tweets would mention something like this that hasn’t been announced yet for a public company?), I wonder what this means for Namejet, which is also part owned by the web.com group.

  5. snapnames and namejet are the two top drop catchers in the industry. i am not a fan of namejet for a few reasons, some being that they don’t take paypal as a form of payment and another being that they show bids on pending deletes. i don’t want people seeing what i backorder…so i don’t use namejet. i hope that web.com doesn’t change snapnames too much or much worse, combine the two…

  6. does this mean they will lose all the moniker.com registrars? since they are the bulk of the registrars catching (others being directi and dotster) they will either have to have a contract with moniker or don’t care about losing registrars since they plan to merge with namejet..which would suck for everyone due to lack of competition at the level that namejet and snapnames are at.

  7. So what happens with Moniker.com ? 😮

    Sounds like Oversee/Key systems are heading into the abyss. I’ve got my most expensive domains at Moniker too! 😯

  8. With the Afternic / GoDaddy merger there still remained competitors like Sedo in the market place.

    When it comes to the expired domain market, this SnapNames acquisition by the owners of NameJet means a much more drastic reduction in market competitiveness.

    Bad news for the rest of us!

  9. @jayjay – You don’t have a clue about KeyDrive and their subsidiaries. They’re the company no one heard of until they aquired Moniker. KeySystems has been backending a large number of existing registries for a decade, and do a good job at it. Now they will backend a lot of right of the dot registries in the future. And they backend for registrars and resellers as well. As for Moniker – they could be integrated into KeySystems – I wonder what KD has been wating for. KS is a better company and product than Moniker, especially for “techie” domainers.

    My question to the peanut gallery: What happens to Craig Snyder?

    He had one foot in Moniker and the other in SnapNames after the KD acquisition of Moniker. How does this split (pun intended) affect him? Does he finally have to get a real job? Will he ever stop denying covering up the Halvarez scandal which screwed the whole industry? Will the new owner of Snap finally be hit with a federal RICO investigation after all these years?

    If this consolidation in drop catching doesn’t show the domain name reselling and drop catching days are over… I’ll wait for the reality show or the 2AM infomercial “domaining for dollars” – and then declare this industry’s bubble has burst. Pop.

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