Demand Media reported some positive news related to its planned spin off of the company’s domain name entities into a company called Rightside, which was officially announced last November. According to a release in the Wall Street Journal, Demand Media (stock symbol DMD) filed a Form 10 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is a part of the process in spinning it off into another public company.
This morning’s press release emphasizes the importance of the new gTLDs to Rightside:
“In order to capitalize on the historic launch of new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) under the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) program, Demand Media has made significant investments in its domain name services business, including securing interests in registry operator agreements or applications for more than 100 new gTLDs. The new gTLDs create a new and better way to organize the Internet, greatly expand the inventory of domain name suffixes containing descriptive web addresses, and open new business opportunities for international adoption of native language web addresses.
These investments further strengthen Rightside’s existing business, with approximately 15 million domain names under management and a network of more than 20,000 active resellers and more than 225,000 retail customers. The new company will own and operate an ICANN-accredited registry (United TLD) and ICANN-accredited registrars providing services to wholesale customers through eNom and to retail customers through Name.com. It will also offer extensive aftermarket services for premium domain names, including domain name auction services through its NameJet joint venture.”
It will be exciting to see Rightside go public because there aren’t very many publicly traded companies that focus exclusively on domain names. Perhaps this will spur some Wall Street interest in domain assets, and we might be able to learn more about the business side of domain names via filings and reports.
Congratulations to the Rightside team on this news.
