In 2014, the Teamwork.com domain name sold for €500,000. The sale, which is recorded at $675,000 because of the exchange rate, is listed as the 14th largest sale of the year in DNJournal's sale report for 2014. Teamwork.com is a great domain name, and the $675,000 USD price tag seems like a fair deal for both parties.

According to an article in the Irish Times, the buyer of the domain name, a company called Teamwork, is very happy with its acquisition. In fact, buying Teamwork.com was cited as one of the two most pivotal moments for the young company so far. Here's the interview question and answer shared by the founders of the company in the Irish Times article:

"What moment/deal would you cite as the game-changer or turning point for the company?

It’s a coin toss between two events. The first is when we used every penny we had to acquire the domain name Teamwork.com for €500,000. It was a huge gamble but it paid off quickly.

The second event that stands out as a growth catalyst was the day we received a phone call from → Read More

AT&T and Time Warner are merging, and the result is a rebranding of Time Warner. According to NBCNews.com, Time Warner will be rebranded as Warner Media:

"WarnerMedia is the new name for Time Warner, according to an internal memo from the AT&T executive who is taking charge of the media company, John Stankey.

The telecom firm said that customer confusion with Time Warner Cable, long since spun off from the company, was the reason for the change."

From what I can see, it looks like this rebranding effort is being made without the matching WarnerMedia.com domain name. Instead, the company is using WarnerMediaGroup.com for its website.

Whois records for WarnerMedia.com, which are redacted due to GDPR, show the domain name was created in December of 1998. Using DomainTools' Whois History tool, I can see that the domain name has been registered to a Pennsylvania entity called WarnerMedia since at least 2001 (the oldest historical record at DomainTools). From what I can see, Warner is the last name of the registrant contact.

It → Read More

IHOP sort of went viral last week when they announced they would be rebranding as IHOB. IHOP stands for International House of Pancakes, and the company teased the IHOB rebranding a bit, promising to make the big reveal about the "B" today. Well, the company announced that the B apparently stands for Burgers and the chain is now known as International House of Burgers:

Dear Internet, we abbreciate your batience. Now let’s see who guessed right. B-hold!!!!! #IHOb pic.twitter.com/Fh3SkZ7s3Y

— IHOb (@IHOb) June 11, 2018

I'm not really an IHOP person, but I guess if I was in the mood for some fast(ish) food pancakes and eggs, that would be the place I would probably type into Google Maps to find (no Waffle House around here). I don't really understand the (more…) → Read More

If you visit GoDaddy regularly, you likely noticed a small but relatively major change to the GoDaddy logo. The caricature of a man with orange hair (the GoDaddy Guy as some people have called him) has been removed and the GoDaddy typeface is now green. The .com extension is not shown in the logo either, although that change was made several years ago. From what I can tell, the logo update was made sometime in the last week or so.

The company has been making significant graphic and typeface updates during the last year or so to align with its overall branding update. Regular users have noticed gradual changes throughout the website - from product and service pages to GoDaddy Auctions to the user control panel.

Here's a look at the evolution of GoDaddy's header logos over the years (the actual logo may have been slightly different than what was shown in the header): (more…) → Read More

GoDaddy Auctions, NameJet, and DropCatch.com are domain name expiry auction platforms that primarily cater to domain investors. These platforms are all open to the public, but I would imagine the vast majority of participants are investors seeking to buy domain names at wholesale prices.

When a domain name expires, most domain registrars place an expiry notice on the top of the landing page to inform visitors of the expired status. The notices typically contain a link to the auction for the domain name should it not be renewed by the registrant in time. These notices can be helpful to companies who may wish to purchase a domain name at auction once it goes through the expiry cycle.

Josh Schoen recently noticed an end user company bought a domain name via GoDaddy Auctions. Via Twitter, Josh mentioned that a company called McHale Performance bought McHale.com at auction for $10,000 (confirmed via NameBio) in early April:

An end-user was the winner of the https://t.co/Cu32jcAcwq expired auction at GoDaddy earlier this month. → Read More

In my daily DomainTools email, I noticed some interesting Coinbase-related domain name registrations. These domain names were registered via the DNStination privacy proxy service operated by MarkMonitor. Coinbase, Inc. uses Mark Monitor for its Coinbase.com domain name registration, so it seems highly likely that the company registered these domain names as opposed to a third party.

Some of the more interesting domain name registrations I noticed: (more…) → Read More