Demand Media spun off Rightside, and the company began trading on the Nasdaq stock market on its own this week. This gave us an opportunity to see the market capitalization of each of these companies independently.
According to Yahoo Finance, at the time I began writing this article this morning, Rightside (ticker symbol: NAME) has a market capitalization of
As I wrote yesterday, Rightside had its first full day of public trading on the Nasdaq stock market on Monday under the NAME stock ticker. In celebration of this achievement, Name.com shared this funny video that I want to share with you.
Looks like everyone is happy about the company’s spin off. I agree with Ashley’s sentiment at the end of the video – the customer should always come first. The spinoff is a nice achievement but not an end point!
Last week, Rightside was trading in its “when issued” phase under the NAMEV stock ticker symbol. On Friday, the company officially split off into a separate company from Demand Media, and this morning, Rightside will trade on the Nasdaq market under the NAME stock ticker symbol.
This is a big day for the company and also for the domain industry. There are several other public companies that operate in the domain space, but I believe Rightside may be the only publicly traded company that currently operates exclusively within the domain space. The company operates eNom, Name.com, NameJet, and Rightside Registry, all within the domain industry. This will make their earnings reports and SEC filings all the more interesting to read.
One point of interest,
Domain industry veteran Dwayne Walker was hired by Rightside as Senior Vice President of Business Development. In this role, Dwayne will oversee all new business development opportunities across Rightside brands including eNom, Name.com, NameJet, and the Rightside Registry. With Rightside’s position in the market, this seems like an excellent opportunity for him.
Taryn Naidu shared the news with me, and spoke highly of Dwayne. “Dwayne will be heading up our BD efforts across the entire organization as we continue to develop the market for new TLDs,” Naidu informed me. “We’re excited to have him on board.”
If you’ve been to a domain conference or have an account at Domain Sponsor, you probably had the opportunity to
I thought you might like to watch this humorous clip from @midnight with Chris Hardwick on Comedy Central. This week’s episode features Deon Cole, Jesse Joyce, and Brendon Walsh, and one of the topics is the new domain names.
In the video, which I embedded below for your convenience, the three comedians play a game called “NewDomainArticles.Game” and come up with funny new gTLD domain names. Perhaps some of their suggestions will be found in the next round of new gTLD applications.
Thanks to Taryn Naidu for the link!
It is my opinion that in order for the new gTLD domain names to have investment value for domain investors, there need to be companies who use these domain names for their websites. In order for this to happen, end users need to know what the new domain extensions are and why they should choose them over existing TLDs. These end users also need to be convinced that their domain names will be recognized and trusted by their clients and prospective customers. Educating these end user buyers will require significant marketing efforts.
This leads me to the question: who is responsible for new gTLD marketing?
On one hand, the domain registrars have direct contact with the prospective end user buyers, and they are responsible for suggesting specific new gTLD domain names to potential buyers. On the other hand, the domain registries operate individual gTLD extensions, and to a large extent, each TLD is its own brand that needs to be marketed to prospective buyers and end users.
I reached out to representatives from several domain registrars and new gTLD registries, and I asked them who they think is responsible for the marketing that needs to be done to make consumers aware of the new gTLD domain names. Below, you will find the responses from those who were kind enough to take the time to share their thoughts:
