In the Summer of 2017, I reported on Elon Musk’s acquisition of the X.com domain name from PayPal. The acquisition price for this domain name was not disclosed by Musk or PayPal, so the purchase price for X.com remains publicly unknown. Since that time, Musk has done very little with the X.com domain name. It currently has a text letter “x” in the top left corner of the landing page.

According to a Wall Street Journal article this morning, Musk may use X.com for a social media platform if his deal to buy Twitter does not go through. That deal is currently being litigated. Here’s what the WSJ article noted:

Tom Glover, President of Northwest Registered Agent, LLC, asked me to share a job posting that might be of interest to someone with experience and expertise in the domain name space. The company is looking to hire a Director of Domain Name Registrar for its registrar business. The job listing was posted on TwoBarrels.com.

Northwest Registered Agent is a registered agent service that also offers business formation services. I wrote about the company in 2013 after I saw a press release announcing its acquisition of StartingABusiness.com. The idea behind the acquisition was that people would find the company when starting a business since they offer business services in addition to registered agent services.

The Walt Disney Company posted a job listing on LinkedIn and is looking to hire a Domain Names Management Program Manager. This is an important corporate domain name management role as Disney operates many different brands and companies in a wide variety of industries.

Here’s an excerpt from the overview of this job post:

In a recession, there are a few levers a domain investor can do to preserve capital and increase runway if it becomes necessary. Slowing or halting domain name acquisitions, portfolio downsizing, and selling domain names at reduced prices are the three levers that will have the biggest impact on cash preservation for a typical domain investor portfolio.

Reducing acquisition spend may be the easiest way to save cash for a business that spends a substantial amount of money on domain acquisitions and registrations. I typically spend a lot of money on domain acquisitions each year, and reducing my spend would have the greatest impact on cash preservation for my business. Other people may look at halting domain registrations as a means of preserving cash.

In the small city in New Hampshire where I grew up, we would get a lot of snow in the Winter. Each Winter, we would get a handful of “snow days” off from school when enough snow fell overnight to make it difficult for the school buses to pick up kids and drive them to school.

When the school district would cancel school for the day due to the snow, we would hear a loud foghorn blast several times at 6am. Of course, the announcement would run across the screen on the local news that morning, but hearing the foghorn meant we didn’t need to get out of bed early for school.