GoDaddy is a privately owned, Internet-based company that provides a variety of services including domain name registration, web hosting and e-business software sales. The company, which is headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, was founded by Bob Parsons. Parsons previously owned a financial services software company, which he sold in the mid-1990s upon retirement. He came out of retirement in 1997 to form Jomax Technologies, the predecessor to GoDaddy.
Since it’s inception, GoDaddy has risen to become the largest domain registrar in the world, with tens of million of domains registered to its clients. The company ranks as the world’s largest ICANN-accredited registrar; it’s approximately four times larger than its nearest competition. Recent corporate acquisitions include Outright, Locu, Afternic, and Media Temple.
GoDaddy has redefined Internet hosting services, and it has been the recipient of numerous industry awards and accolades. Among these awards are the 2001 Arizona BBB award for Business Ethics and the 2011 SC Magazine award for Best Security Team. In 2011, it ranked number four in the Phoenix Business Magazine list of “Best Places to Work in the Valley” and it made the 2012 Forbes list of “Best 100 Companies to Work For.”
Known for its sometimes controversial commercials and interesting spokespersons, GoDaddy also sponsors a number of charitable causes in support of domestic violence and child abuse awareness, and sports events, including NASCAR and the Super Bowl. In 2013, the company shifted its advertising strategy to focus more on small to medium sized business owners (SMB). Reflecting this change, its commercials and advertising materials shifted from “sexy” to smart.
As I mentioned yesterday, Go Daddy CEO Warren Adelman made an appearance on Your World With Neil Cavuto on Fox Business to discuss his outlook for venture capital funding for new business and where VC money is being invested right now.
The video is embedded above.
#GoDaddy CEO @asocialcontract is on Cavuto @FoxBusiness tonight talking venture capitalist spending – 5pm MT/8pm ET twitter.com/StephB0302/sta…
— Stephanie Bracken (@StephB0302) July 20, 2012
According to a tweet from Go Daddy Public Relations Specialist Stephanie Bracken, Go Daddy CEO Warren Adelman will be making an appearance on Your World With Neil Cavuto on Fox Business tonight at 8pm EDT. The Huffington Post has reported that this is the #1 show in its time slot, and it averaged well over 1 million viewers in May.
Mr. Adelman will be discussing small business and venture capitalist spending, and I would expect that he will discuss domain names and the domain aftermarket during his appearance. One reason the domain aftermarket has been strong is due to VC-funded entities acquiring good domain names for their startups.
I think special appearances like this are good for the domain industry because it’s insolar and channels like Fox Business have a pretty large following.
A few weeks ago, GoDaddy announced that the company had engaged Deutsch, one of the largest advertising agencies in the world, to create a new ad campaign for the company known for its provocative marketing. At the time of the announcement, CMO Barb Rechterman said, “We are teaming up with Deutsch because we think the team there ‘gets us’ and can help take Go Daddy to the next level.”
This afternoon, the first advertisement dubbed “Otter” was posted, and I have embedded it above. As you can see, it’s much different from the former “GoDaddy Girls” campaigns the company used during big events such as the Super Bowl, NASCAR races, and other events where the company advertised.
Yesterday evening, the New York Times published an article about the new campaign, “In New Ad, GoDaddy Upgrades Its Image.” When I first learned about the campaign, I assumed the GoDaddy Girls would still be included in the company’s marketing efforts, but that may not be so according to CEO Warren Adelman in the NYT article:
“The commercial “captures what we wanted to do really well,” said Warren Adelman, the new chief executive at GoDaddy, whose decision it was to end the era of what the founder, Bob Parsons, called “GoDaddy-esque” ads.
“We wanted to acknowledge our past,” Mr. Adelman said, and “not walk away from” it, but also begin to talk more about “products and services” and “who we are.”
Check out the first advertisement when you have a chance, and let me know what you think of it.
This is a guest post from GoDaddy.com. The company has generously supported the Ronald McDonald House. I am hoping to raise $10,000 for RMH in 2012, and I invite you to contribute to help. It’s a great organization!
In 1991, when the Web went public, it was remarkable because it was the first time in the history of the Earth that you could create a presence anyone else in the world could find, see and interact with instantly. Best of all, you had 100 percent control over the content of the site and therefore over the experience of each visitor, as well as the data from it. Now, two decades later, a massive sea change has seen the addition of pages on Facebook ®, Twitter ®, Google+ ® and other similar sites. The problem is, unlike traditional websites, some of the content and all of the data created by interactions on those sites are not yours to use and to control . . . it is theirs.
To be clear, a presence, for instance, on Facebook can be a good thing; it is the “water cooler” where 900 million people gather (that’s more than 12 percent of the planet’s population). Even Go Daddy, a company founded on the concept that every individual can have and control his or her own Web presence, has a Facebook page. What is important to realize is the difference between building your presence on what has been dubbed the Dependent Web versus the Independent Web: both have value, but you only fully control one.
Apparently it was John Battelle, co-founder of Wired Magazine and news website The Industry Standard, who coined the terms in his 21 October 2010 blog entry on BattelleMedia.com. He explained that in the Dependent Web, host companies deliver content, advertising and services based on what or who it thinks the visitor is. Therefore, the content presented is actually dependent upon past and present actions such as webpages visited and mouse-clicks. In contrast, in the Independent Web (with some exceptions) host companies do not change content according to their perception of visitors’ wants/needs.
Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, compared the two in a recent GigaOM blog by making the analogy that now “. . . more people want to own their own space on the Web – they want to own a house instead of rent an apartment.” In a posting early this year Battelle added, “Companies that have planted their presence too deeply into the soils of Facebook are going to realize they need to control their own destiny and move their focus and their core presence back into the independent waters of the open Internet.”
To demonstrate the difference, (and while preparing this blog post) a visit to GoDaddy.com presented all the products and services the company offers, as well as links to various company news, facts and commercials. In contrast, on the Facebook.com/GoDaddy page mentions of the same products and services were presented (albeit in different format). In place of the supplemental information, “another chance at love,” taking away from the overall company message. In addition there was a column listing text posts from Facebook friends around the country. Is this good or bad? Well, neither; they are simply different experiences companies can offer by building Dependent Web-based pages or not. So, at the surface, this is fine; below that, maybe not.
Battelle went further saying “I’m a fan of integrating Facebook into your brand efforts . . . but the point is simple: If you are a brand, publisher or independent voice, don’t put your taproot into the soils of Facebook. Plant it in the Independent Web.” Therefore, if your promotions and the results of SEO drive visitors to www.Facebook.com/YourCompany; that would mean that ALL of the data is Facebook’s to exploit. Instead, if you drive people to www.YourCompany.com/Facebook, you at least “own” the data that led them to your Facebook account.
So consider that, when registering an Internet domain name and signing up for a hosting account, you end up with a blank canvas on a wall anyone in the world can see. What you put on that canvas is entirely up to you and what data you gain is yours. That’s the real value of the Independent Web and why Go Daddy has supported it from the start. Oh, and be sure to remember that if you build a website – but choose to use a free hosting service or free email address – you are giving the host company free reign to place their ads on your site and subsequently harvest your data from it. And remember, obtaining a good domain and driving lots of the world’s population to your site on the Independent Web means you have created a real value in the virtual world.
So what does this mean to you? If at some point you find you no longer need it, check out how Elliot Silver and his blog (ElliotsBlog.com) followers have turned domain names into re-sellable properties worth from hundreds to millions of dollars; just try to do that with a Facebook page!
* Third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved.
I bought a domain name (BrandManagement.com) from someone who has it registered at Go Daddy, and when Escrow.com confirmed my wire, he pushed it to my Go Daddy account. I didn’t want to transfer it away from Go Daddy because an ICANN lock would have been added to the name, which is a problem if I decide to transfer it elsewhere.
I emailed my representative at Go Daddy to ask to have the 60 day Go Daddy lock removed and was instructed to send an email to the people in the “Review 60” department. Andrew Allemann discussed this new review process before. This is what they asked me to provide for them to remove a lock on a domain name my company bought and now owns.
Thank you for your email. To remove the transfer lock on the domain names, you would need to provide us with the following:
1. A completed 60-Day Lock Removal Request Form (attached).
2. Photo identification. Acceptable photo identification is clear, readable, and issued by the government. We must be able to clearly identify the pictured person, name, signature, and expiration date.
3. Government-issued business identification for the current registrant, Top Notch Domains, LLC. The following are considered acceptable business identification (if not based in the United States, please provide a Certified English translation of your country’s equivalent documentation):
Ø A copy of business license
Ø Tax certificate (number alone is not acceptable)
Ø Doing Business As documentation
Ø Fictitious Name documentation
Ø IRS 501(C)3 “Determination Letter” (You may request a copy of this letter by contacting the IRS at 1-800-829-4933)
Ø State issued certificate of tax exemption showing charitable statusYou may scan or take a digital photo of the information and email it to review60@godaddy.com.
I’m sorry, but this is annoying. First off, I’ve been a customer for nearly ten years without any security issues, so that should count for something. Secondly, the seller also has an executive account at Go Daddy, so they can easily email and/or call him to confirm the sale. Thirdly, they can likely check the IP address from when the seller pushed it to my account to compare to prior account logins (ie if the IP address of the push from the California based seller originated in Iran, it would be a red flag).
Finally, it seems pretty silly for Go Daddy to police transfers like this. If the name was stolen or if the account had been compromised somehow and I still provided the requested information, I would imagine the owner could hold Go Daddy liable for approving the transfer after reviewing all of the information. If it was not the policy to police transfers like this, much like it is not their policy to police trademark domain registrations, they wouldn’t be responsible for fraudulent transfers like they aren’t responsible for clients registering Microsofts.org.
I am a happy Go Daddy client, but this issue is very annoying to me and I am sure it’s annoying to others, too. I can’t think of another registrar that does this, so I would assume it’s a domain retention issue in addition to a security measure, and that makes it even more frustrating.
For the last several years, my blog has been hosted by Liquid Web. They have 24/7 customer support, and whenever I had an issue, they were quick to resolve it. For that, I paid between $60 – $100 a month for my hosting plan (a VPS).
Last month, I read about Andrew Allemann’s switch to Go Daddy hosting. His concerns were similar to mine, and I knew if he was comfortable making an important change like hosting, I should have the same comfort level. Andrew and I met for breakfast a couple of weeks ago, and he told me that his switchover went smoothly and he felt he made the right decision. I was sold.
I reached out to Go Daddy to inquire about hosting, and I learned the company has a support team for websites/businesses that get a significant amount of traffic like mine. I was put in touch with Flavio Andrade, Product Line Director for Go Daddy’s Hosting division, and he walked me through Go Daddy’s offerings. He connected me with Todd Cluff, one of Go Daddy’s Corporate Account Executives. I decided to move to Go Daddy’s 4GH web hosting platform, which seems to be perfect for WordPress websites like mine.
After doing prep work for the move, testing my current website for errors and potential issues, and setting up my account, Todd connected me with Daniel Feuster, who works on the Advanced Hosting Support support team. Daniel had me upload my Vaultpress back-up to the FTP, and he helped set up my website. After checking on the operations of the site on the new server, Daniel instructed me to change my DNS, and my site was officially hosted by Go Daddy.
The good news is that I am now paying just $9.00 a month for hosting. The better news is that the hosting company switch was flawless. I am going to see how things go for the next couple of weeks, and assuming there aren’t any issues, I plan to move additional sites soon.
There are no affiliate links in this post, and I was not compensated in any way to write this article. I am paying the rack rate found on Godaddy’s hosting page.
