Hey.com Acquired by Basecamp CEO Jason Fried

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In September of 2019, I posted an article highlighting a domain name acquisition request from Basecamp CEO Jason Fried. At the time, Jason’s requirements were that the domain name “Must be 3-5 letters, must be pronounceable, must be a .com.” In a tweet today, it looks like Jason revealed the domain name that his company acquired – and it’s pretty awesome – Hey.com:

Saw.com Brokering FMA Domain Names

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With domain names like Cool.com, Media.com, and Research.com, Future Media Architects (FMA) has one of the most valuable portfolio of generic domain names. I recently visited a FMA-owned domain name, and I was surprised to see an Efty landing page rather than Uniregistry landing page since the company’s domain names have been brokered by Uniregistry for quite some time.

I filled out the inquiry form for the domain name I was inquiring about, and I received a reply from Saw.com co-founder Amanda Waltz. Saw.com is a new domain brokerage that was recently launched by long-time domain industry veterans Jeff Gabriel and Amanda Waltz. Amanda confirmed that the company is now brokering domain names on behalf of FMA.

Amanda let me know that Saw.com is doing more than fielding inbound inquiries on behalf of FMA:

Portabellas.com Acquired for Progressive Super Bowl Commercial

During the run up to this evening’s Super Bowl, Progressive Insurance ran a television commercial featuring its “employees” Flo and Jamie in the role as a waiter and waitress at a fictitious restaurant called Portabella’s. The Progressive Super Bowl advertisement caught my attention because of a generic domain name that was featured in it:

Towards the end of the commercial, you can see the Portabellas.com domain name prominently marketed. That caught my attention because I remembered seeing the domain name transfer very recently in my DomainTools Registrant Alert email from January 25, 2019:

Lingerie.com Acquired by Walmart

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It looks like Walmart acquired a, ahem, sexy domain name. According to Whois records, Lingerie.com is now registered to Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.. The domain name is registered at MarkMonitor, the brand protection registrar the company uses for its domain name management. Lingerie.com had previously been registered under privacy proxy at Moniker.

The acquisition of Lingerie.com was reported in a tweet from Jamie Zoch:

Get to the Root to Find a Prospect

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Many domain investors rely on outbound marketing to sell their domain names. Domain investors have many methods for scouting for prospective buyers, and one way that is popular is to find registrants who have similar or complementary domain names that might benefit from buying another domain name. Some people use lead generation tools found via tool providers like Estibot and Dropping.com, and others find leads on their own.

I want to share a tip to help people find prospective buyers for their domain names, and I think it can be helpful whether using lead generation tools or if searching by hand.

Report: XL.com Sold in Bankruptcy Auction for €600,000

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XL Airways was a low cost airline that declared bankruptcy and was set to have its assets liquidated. One of the assets the airline owned and used is the valuable two letter XL.com domain name. I recall hearing about the bankruptcy filing, but I did not pay close attention to it, nor did I follow along to see what would happen to the domain name. Apparently, the auction for XL.com was held earlier today in France.