Startups Choosing Longer .coms Over Alternatives

Elliot Silver
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13

Chris Sheridan, Head of Strategic Partner Sales at Weebly, shared a link to a TechCrunch article covering startup branding:

The article discussed quite a few funded startups and their brand name choices. Brands mentioned in the article include Waldo, Morty, Pie Insurance, Carrot Fertility, Lemonade, Oscar, Herb, Bud, Radish, Purple Squirrel, and quite a few other companies with interesting (or even confusing) brand names.

I was interested in the brand name choices, but I was particularly interested in the domain names the companies chose for their websites. The article

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Neustar Webinar About Launching .Neustar TLD

Elliot Silver
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1

Neustar is obviously a big proponent of the new gTLD domain name extensions. Last year, the company launched its .Neustar brand TLD, and its website can now be found at Home.Neustar. In an effort to promote .Brand extensions, the company is hosting a free webinar to share some of the things the company learned when it launched its own extension.

Here are some of the topics the company intends to cover in the webinar, as shared by them:

What technical and operational steps went into our launch
How we built a communications plan for stakeholders around the change
Where we see some of the biggest opportunities and challenges of a .brand transition

There is quite a bit of technical

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50 Year Old Company Rebrands With a .Health Domain Name

Elliot Silver
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0

A company called Sound Mental Health announced (via press release) that it was undergoing a rebrand. The company will now be known simply as “Sound.” To enable this rebranding effort, the company is now using the Sound.Health new gTLD domain name for its website. The press release noted that the company has been in business for 50 years.

A Whois search shows that this company is the first registrant of the domain name. It is unclear to me if this domain name is classified as a premium domain name (ie the buyer had to work out a deal with the .Health domain registry) or if this was simply a hand-registered domain name with a normal renewal rate. It looks like .Health domain names cost $69.99/year at GoDaddy and other registrars seem to be in the same ballpark. Sound.Health is registered at MarkMonitor, a brand protection and domain name management company.

If you visit Sound.Health, you will notice the company’s logo does not reference the .Health aspect of the domain name. In addition, it does not appear that the company referenced the .Health domain name in its page title or description. It will be interesting to see how the company lets its customers and partners know it is using a .Health domain name.

If there is any confusion and people visit

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Pocahontas.com: Elizabeth Warren Wants to “Stop Trump”

Elliot Silver
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13

President Donald Trump has been referring to US Senator Elizabeth Warren (my Senator) as “Pocahontas” for quite some time. In an event honoring Navajo veterans on Monday, the President once again referred to Senator Warren as Pocahontas:

“I just want to thank you because you are very, very special people. You were here long before any of us were here,” Trump said. “Although, we have a representative in Congress who has been here a long time … longer than you — they call her Pocahontas!”

Since mid-2016, Pocahontas.com has been forwarding to Senator Warren’s website, ElizabethWarren.com. The Whois information on Pocahontas.com is private, so the owner of the domain name remains publicly unknown. When I wrote about the forward last year, I was unsure whether it was being done as a prank on Senator Warren or done in support of her. I am

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Wordfence Parent Rebrands as Defiant – Bought the EMD via Sedo

Elliot Silver
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0

I use the Wordfence plugin for security on all of my WordPress-based websites. I think it offers an enhanced level of security, and it has both a free and a paid version. This afternoon, Wordfence announced that its corporate brand name has been changed from Feedjit Inc. to Defiant Inc. Smartly the company acquired the  matching Defiant.com domain name in advance of the rebranding.

Curious to learn more about the sale price, I searched through my email history and found the name in a Sedo sale report. Defiant.com was acquired for the very reasonable price of $45,000 in February of 2017. The sale is publicly archived on NameBio. I am not sure if the domain name was being brokered by a Sedo domain broker or if the owner put the name up for sale on the platform with a make offer listing or a buy it now price.

It looks like the Wordfence service (and plugin) will

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Startup with $19m in Funding Gets Less.com

Elliot Silver
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5

TechCrunch reported on a $19 million funding round for a startup called Less, “a ride-sharing service for commuters and other short distance rides.” The company was founded by Jean-Baptiste Rudelle, who reportedly founded “one of the most successful French startups,” Criteo. Smartly, Less is using the perfect domain name for this venture: Less.com.

When I noticed the url for Less, it rung a bell. I searched through my email, and I see that it had been offered for sale via several brokers. In 2015, Less.com was offered for sale via Brannans for $325,000. In 2016, I see an email from Mark Daniel of Domain Holdings who offered the domain name for sale without a price. In December of 2016, Brannans was once again offering the domain name for sale in its newsletter with a $160,000 price. Most recently, in August of this year, Brannans had Less.com in its newsletter as a “make offer” listing.

Based on Whois records, it appears that

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