GoDaddy Testing Outbound Marketing of Domain Names

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Several weeks ago, I saw that Jebidiah Burnett had left Donuts to pursue other domain industry opportunities. Jebidiah has also worked with the new gTLD domain names at Rightside and eNom. Yesterday afternoon, I learned that Jebidiah was hired by GoDaddy to do outbound marketing on the company’s NameFind domain portfolio as well as some of the premium new gTLD domain names owned by its registry partners.

GoDaddy to Introduce Bidder IDs to Auctions

Following up on GoDaddy’s pledge to make its auctions more transparent, I was just notified that GoDaddy will be introducing unique bidder IDs for all bidders on GoDaddy Auctions. The plan is to implement this change following the close of auctions tomorrow, April 11th.

Legal Threat Within GoDaddy Auction

The top publicly reported domain name sale of the day this past Saturday was the auction for ChefD.com. The domain name sold for $11,850, as reported in a tweet from NameBio on Sunday morning:

3 Things GoDaddy Should Do to Reassure Auction Customers

For the past few days, I have been digesting the news about a GoDaddy employee bidding on GoDaddy Auctions. As I wrote on Thursday evening, the news is disappointing. In the article revealing the discovery, Paul Nicks wrote, “We are also reviewing platform changes to make things even more transparent.” After thinking about this, I think there are three things GoDaddy should do to be transparent and reassure customers that GoDaddy Auctions is a fair auction platform.

GoDaddy Catches Employee Participating in Auctions

Paul Nicks, VP and GM of the Aftermarket at GoDaddy, published an article on the GoDaddy Blog this evening that is concerning to me as a GoDaddy customer, especially because I am an active bidder on GoDaddy Auctions. Paul tweeted a link to the article via his Twitter account a short while ago:

How GoDaddy is Celebrating International Women’s Day

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Today is International Women’s Day, and organizations and businesses around the world are celebrating and honoring women and highlighting the importance of gender equality and gender balance. GoDaddy, the largest company in the domain name business, has made gender equality a corporate priority for the last several years. In fact, you may recall that Paul Nicks wrote an article about women in the domain industry several years ago, and the company has been striving to improve its diversity and equality.

To that end, GoDaddy is an active participant in International Women’s Day, and the company shared a number of ways it is celebrating women and the importance of gender equality in its business and among its customers.

Karen Tillman, GoDaddy’s Chief Communications Officer, had this to say about how International Women’s Day and how GoDaddy is participating in the holiday: