Brand Marketing

During the early days of the pandemic in 2020, Zoom became a household brand name. People were able to communicate across the world via the Zoom platform. One notable thing about Zoom was the company used a ccTLD domain name – Zoom.us – for its website.

Smartly, in 2018, Zoom was able to acquire its brand match Zoom.com domain name. The acquisition price for Zoom.com was reportedly $2 million, as recorded by Namebio. Andrew Rosener sold Zoom.com to the platform. This turned out to be a prescient acquisition given the hockey stick-like growth seen by Zoom as quarantines spread across the world and working from home became the norm.

Nearly two and a half years ago, WooCommerce acquired the Woo.com domain name for an undisclosed price. Since that time, the company has continued operating under the WooCommerce brand, and the shorter Woo.com domain name has been used as a forwarder. WooCommerce is owned by Automattic, the company that operates the WordPress platform.

As of yesterday, WooCommerce is now known more simply as Woo. The company introduced its truncated branding, updated logo, and new domain name in a blog post. Here’s what the company shared about its decision to officially rebrand as Woo:

This afternoon, Axios reported the sale of the Media.com domain name. Kismet Group, an Australian private equity company, acquired the domain name to launch a reputation management platform. According to the Axios article, the company is investing $20 million into the business, including the purchase of the domain name.

I reached out to James Mawhinney, Founder of Kismet Group, seeking more information about the acquisition of Media.com. Unfortunately, the acquisition price of Media.com is not being disclosed, but Mr. Mawhinney commented to me about the importance of the domain name:

Yesterday evening, Michael Cyger shared an email that he received from Voice, the company that paid $30 million to acquire the Voice.com domain name in 2019. In the email Michael received, the company announced it will be shutting down.

In a series of tweets posted last night, Voice shared why it made the decision to shut down:

There’s been a lot of talk about Twitter and its rebrand to X. It was probably the most popular topic of the day, particularly as it relates to the brand equity the company has built since it was founded.

This afternoon, Squadhelp CEO Darpan Munjal appeared on Fox Business as a branding expert to discuss the challenge Twitter faces with its X rebranding. Here’s the video of Darpan’s appearance:

Just spoke with @FoxBusiness regarding Twitter's rebrand to https://t.co/QltgJafunv pic.twitter.com/r02HTB5aXs

— Darpan (@darpanmunjal) July 24, 2023