Last week, a NamePros member with the username Maple Dots wrote about how a company called Jane switched urls from JaneApp.com to Jane.App for its website. There was quite a bit of discussion about the domain name change and the company’s branding that followed. In my opinion, the domain name change is totally acceptable and maybe even more memorable; it’s the Jane branding that could use some work.
A California company called Plantronics acquired a company called Polycom in a $2 billion deal announced last year. This morning, I saw a Google Alert about the company rebranding as Poly. The acquisition and rebrand was covered by eWeek. Smartly, the company acquired the matching Poly.com domain name in advance of the rebrand news.
This morning, I saw several “Project Zero” related domain names registered by Amazon. I saw that they company registered domain names like AmazonProject-0.com, AmazonProject0.com, Project-0.net, and quite a few other similar “Project Zero” domain names of various lengths. I searched Twitter to see if I could find anything about Amazon’s Project Zero, and I saw this tweet from The Verge with more information about it:
Amazon’s Project Zero will let brands remove counterfeit listings of their products https://t.co/GVsZFUPm7p pic.twitter.com/kuKiMAY7Gl
— The Verge (@verge) March 1, 2019
If you visit the Lebron.com domain name right now, you can see that it forwards to LebronJames.com, the website for NBA superstar Lebron James. Lebron.com is currently registered under privacy at GoDaddy, so it is unclear if Mr. James acquired the domain name, but it appears that someone associated with James may now control it. This was reported this morning in a tweet from Daryl Lopes:
.@KingJames now owns the domain name https://t.co/QFAvNo1aqJ 🏀 #domain #domainname #brand #lebron #domainbroker
— Darryl Lopes [D-LO] (@DarrylLopes) February 15, 2019
In early January, Joshua Schoen also reported that the domain name was forwarding to Lebron James’ website:
This morning, TechCrunch reported that “Mode, a five-year-old collaborative analytics platform based in San Francisco, has raised $23 million in Series C funding led by Valor Equity Partners.” In total, the company has raised $50 million in funding. Smartly, Mode acquired the brand match Mode.com domain name prior to the announcement of the most recent round of funding.
Chris Zuiker is a senior domain broker at Media Options (Andrew Rosener’s brokerage company). From what I understand, Chris has brokered some of the larger Media Options domain name deals. I saw a video Chris shared on LinkedIn that discusses the recent Leasing.com rebrand. I shared my thoughts on the rebranding from ContractHireAndLeasing.com, and I think it’s always good to hear from someone else.
Here’s what Chris had to say about the rebrand to Leasing.com:
