Domain Industry News

According to a press release I received this afternoon, Donuts has reached an agreement to acquire the Afilias registry business. Afilias operates a large number of domain name extensions, and the company also provides back-end services to operators of domain name extensions. Terms of the deal were not disclosed by either party, but the deal is expected to close in December of this year.

With hundreds of domain name extensions under its control, Donuts is already the largest operator of domain name extensions. The acquisition of Afilias makes sense for the privately held company, as it will bring more extensions under its roof and will also move it into the back-end management for ccTLD extensions like .ME and .VC. As far as I recall, I do not believe Donuts operates in the ccTLD space yet.

Media Options, the domain brokerage founded by Andrew Rosener, announced that it hired Jonathan Tenenbaum as its Chief Operating Officer. Jonathan had been working as Chief Privacy Officer at Web.com since October of last year. Jonathan is probably most well known in the domain investment space from his time as General Manager of NameJet, which is owned and operated by Web.com.

The press release I received is below, but the part that caught my attention was from Jonathan’s quote:

Bill Sweetman, founder of Name Ninja, has been involved in the domain industry for many years. I first met Bill when he worked at Tucows, managing the company’s YummyNames domain name portfolio. At Name Ninja, Bill works primarily with businesses seeking to buy domain names. His industry experience is why Bill is one of the few people who regularly moderates conference panels and discussions.

Bill shared that he was the featured guest on a startup-focused podcast called The Startup Stack, which is hosted by Louis Beryl. The discussion centered around choosing a domain name and acquiring a domain name. I have not had time to listen to the podcast, but here are the primary topics that were discussed:

I was reading the New York Post this afternoon, when I came across a photo of a person I recognize, Mike Zapolin, known to most as “Zappy.” The article briefly mentions his domain name investment past, but the focus of the Page Six article is his current status as “‘psychedelic concierge’ to the stars.”

From the article:

Earlier this month, Efty co-Founder Doron Vermaat announced that Efty customers would soon have the option to integrate DAN.com buy it now purchase buttons on their landing pages. This would allow sellers to automatically facilitate new transactions via their DAN.com account. This morning, the company announced the integration has been completed.

To see how this integration looks in a real world example, MovingUp.com has DAN.com buy it now and make offer buttons on its landing page. When a prospective buyer clicks on either of those links, they will be taken to the corresponding page within the DAN.com website: