Rook Media Rebranding as Domain Sponsor

Founded by Ovesee.net in 2002, Domain Sponsor is one of the oldest and most well-known domain name parking companies. The company has thousands of clients, and even people within the domain industry who don’t work with Domain Sponsor likely know the brand because of its DomainFest conference sponsorships.

In April of 2014, Rook Media acquired Domain Sponsor and its clients. After the acquisition, Rook Media gave clients the option to continue using the familiar Domain Sponsor platform or to switch to the Rook platform. Since the closing of the acquisition, the company has undergone the process of migrating the databases and features of both platforms. Essentially, this means that a client using Rook and a client using Domain Sponsor would have access to the same features, albeit with different branding.

Rook Media has been advertising on my blog for well over a year, and at the beginning of the year,

Verisign to Share .Com and .Net Registration Trends

In a blog post from Tuesday, Verisign announced that the company will be “launching a new monthly blog post series that will identify the top 10 trending .COM and .NET keywords registered in English.” The trend reports will be shared on the company’s Between  The Dots blog.

I don’t know how much value can be extracted from the lists that are shared, but they will certainly offer some insight into what is trending in new domain registrations. I would imagine these lists would be similar to the new listings on domain marketplace venues.

The company released the top 10 keyword registration trends for .com and .net in January 2015:

Take the 2015 DNW Survey

Each year, Andrew Allemann of Domain Name Wire puts out a domain industry survey for people involved in the business of domain names. The survey asks a variety of questions related to all aspects of the business, and it gives all of us some valuable insight. This is the tenth year Andrew has run this annual survey.

Andrew began to distribute the 2015 domain industry survey last week, and I encourage you to fill it out honestly. The information shared can be helpful to companies that provide services to people in the domain name space, and it can also

With a Domain Acquired in 2014, Attend.com Has Raised $5.6 Million

Yesterday morning, CrunchBase reported that Attend.com raised $5.6 million in Series A funding. Attend.com was founded in 2013 with goal of creating web and mobile event management software to serve the multi-billion dollar market for event management.

Boston based .406 Ventures played a key role incubating and providing seed funding for the launch of the company. .406 Ventures provided the vast majority of the Series A funding along with additional financing from Comerica Bank. Matt Engel, the CEO for Attend.com, led the financing effort for Attend.com

Attend.com was established in 2013 as Attendware, and it originally used Attendware.com for its business. It appears that the Attend.com domain name was privately acquired in early 2014. Although I could not find a public record of its sale, my guess is that it cost into the 6 figures to acquire Attend.com. I don’t personally know the former owner of Attend.com, but I have seen his Whois information on some exceptional domain names.

In doing my  research about Attend.com, I noticed that someone with significant domain industry experience helped the company acquire

Mauli Fry Hired by Escrow.com

I want to share some domain industry news I just learned about this morning. Mauli Fry, formerly of Thought Convergence, has joined Escrow.com in a business development position. Mauli had previously been nominated on my blog by a reader as a favorite domain industry account manager. Mauli had worked on the TrafficZ, Aftermarket.com, and Agreed.com lines of business, in addition to other roles at Thought Convergence.

In an email this morning, Brandon Abbey, President of Escrow.com, reported the news of Mauli’s hiring:

#InternetOfficial Contest from Verisign

Verisign operates the .com registry, and the company has been working hard to continue promoting .com domain names. This morning, Verisign announced its #InternetOfficial contest on the company’s blog. The contest helps to commemorate the 30th anniversary of .com domain names, and someone can win $35,000.

In the email I received announcing the contest, a nod was given to the ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com, a domain name and business that was registered, launched, and then sold for $85,000, all in a span of less than two weeks. It’s unlikely that someone will see the same immediate success of that business, but there is a chance to win money in this contest.

Here are some of the prize details as shared by Verisign in its blog post announcing the #InternetOfficial contest: