Huffington Post Writes About Domain Name Theft

Elliot Silver
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There is an interesting article on the Huffington Post this morning that discusses the problems associated with domain name theft and the difficulty some owners encounter when trying to recover their stolen domain names. The writer interviewed “several recent victims” for the article, and DomainGang.com also received some positive acknowledgment as a result of its coverage of domain theft.

You should certainly read the entire article when you have a chance, but a few interesting personal takeaways  of the article include:

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Rightside Hackathon to Create Tools to Promote New TLDs

Elliot Silver
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Rightside manages 33 (and is in the running to manage several additional) new gTLD extensions, and the company operates popular domain registrars, Enom and Name.com. Clearly, it is in the company’s best (financial) interest to sell domain names in the new extensions, particularly the extensions the company manages and will manage.

On October 2nd and 3rd, Rightside will be holding an internal hackathon to come up with ideas that will help the company promote the new gTLDs and encourage usage of them by the general public. I saw a tweet mentioning the Rightside hackathon, and I asked a company representative for additional details about the hackathon.

According to

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Flock: Directi Launches Business Chat Product

Elliot Silver
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Divyank Turakhia, co-founder of Directi, announced that his company just launched a chat service targeting business users. The service is called Flock, and the company is using the Flock.CO domain name for this new  business app.

Here’s what Div had to say about Flock in a Facebook post announcing the launch:

“Excited about the launch of our new cool product: http://flock.co – awesome chat service for businesses – teams, groups and workplaces. Runs on iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, Chrome. Switch devices and pick up right where you left off.”

For companies that have employees all over the world (like

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Escrow.com Acquires Agreed Escrow Service

Elliot Silver
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I just received a press release from Escrow.com announcing that the company has acquired the Agreed.com escrow service from Thought Convergence. Agreed was granted its escrow license from the California Department of Business Oversight in October 2012, and the escrow service was introduced during NamesCon. Terms of the acquisition have not been released given that both companies are closely held.

Although this news was surprising to me, it was somewhat less surprising given the recent news of Thought Convergence’s sale of Aftermarket.com to Igloo. It made sense for Thought Convergence to operate an escrow service that worked closely with its domain resale marketplace, but after the sale of Aftermarket.com, it probably didn’t fit within the company’s ecosystem.

This acquisition allows Escrow.com to acquire the updated technology and platform that Agreed uses, which should benefit customers as well as the company. For the time being, Agreed.com will forward to Escrow.com, and the Agreed technology will be integrated with Escrow.com’s technology.

The press release announcing the news is published below:

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Mike Robertson Hired By DNC Holdings

Elliot Silver
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This morning, DNC Holdings, Inc. announced that Mike Robertson was hired by the company as its Business Development Director. Mike Robertson is the co-founder of DomainGuardians.com, and he and co-founder Jen Sale recently brokered the million dollar BTC.com deal. Mike is also known by many in the domain space after working in a business development role at Fabulous.

This news comes shortly after the company announced that domain industry veteran Kellie Peterson was promoted to company President from her role as Chief Strategy Officer of DNC Holdings.    In case you aren’t familiar with DNC Holdings, it is the company that operates Directnic, a domain registrar and hosting company.

In his new role with the company, Mike will be working with Directnic, DomainApps, and other company projects. Mike will be relocating to DNC Holdings’ Tampa, Florida office from his native Australia.

The press release announcing the news is below:

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Igloo.com Acquires Aftermarket.com Marketplace

Elliot Silver
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I just received word that Igloo.com has acquired the Aftermarket.com domain name resale marketplace from Thought Convergence. Terms of the private deal were not released. I’ve always felt that the Aftermarket.com platform had the ability to compete with the largest domain name marketplaces, and perhaps this acquisition will spur that to happen.

The acquisition indicates to me that Igloo.com is poised to grow beyond its reputation as a high end domain brokerage service. There is a major difference between brokering 6 and 7 figure domain names and operating a platform that specializes in the sale of every type of domain name. The key factor for Igloo.com will be its distribution channels because the most successful marketplaces have a wide variety of sales outlets. I am interested to see how Igloo.com establishes those relationships.

The press release announcing the sale is below.

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