Jonathan Tenenbaum is New COO of Media Options

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 on The Startup Stack Podcast

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:

ICA Seeking Nominees for 2021 Lonnie Borck Memorial Award

The Internet Commerce Association (ICA) is seeking nominations from within the domain name investment community for the 2021 Lonnie Borck Memorial Award. The award, which is named in memory of Lonnie Borck, is given “to honor those whose contributions have fostered a sense of community within the domain name industry.” This will be the fifth year the Lonnie Borck Memorial Award has been given.

The winner of the 2020 Lonnie Borck Memorial Award was Ron Jackson, Publisher of DNJournal. Previous recipients of the award are John Berryhill, Kathy Kleiman, and David Weslow.

Original Domain Investor is “‘psychedelic concierge’ to the stars”

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:

DAN.com Now Integrated with Efty Landers

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:

DropCatch: Private Auction Names to be Registered at NameBright

In 2017, DropCatch.com began allowing domain investors to sell their domain names via the platform. You can now see two types of auction on DropCatch – “Dropped,” which are domain names that expired and were deleted, and “Private Seller,” which are privately owned domain names that were put into auction by the domain registrant.

In approximately one week, a change is coming to DropCatch that will impact private sellers. The change was shared with me by Abdu Tarabichi, who noticed the following message when he attempted to list domain names for auction: