NameMedia, the company that operates Buy Domains, Afternic, and SmartName, just announced that Mark Haseltine has been hired as Chief Technical Officer for the company. Haseltine has experience working at large tech companies like Oracle and Alta Vista.
The company’s press release from this morning is below:
NameMedia, the world leader in the acquisition, development and trading of digital real estate through a targeted website network and domain name marketplace, today announced the appointment of Mark Haseltine as Chief Technology Officer.
Haseltine is recognized as an engineering innovator, with more than twenty years experience working on search, content, CRM and e-commerce solutions for Internet pioneers like Alta Vista to tech giants like Oracle.
Most recently Haseltine served as Vice President of Engineering at Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG), a professional services firm that he helped to grow from a start-up firm to an organization with operations in more than 20 countries. Prior to serving on the executive team at GLG, Haseltine headed product development for Context Media, a leading provider of enterprise content integration software and services whose technology was eventually acquired by Oracle.
As an executive team founding member and Vice President of Engineering at AltaVista Software, Haseltine built and managed the organization that developed the pioneering search web site. Before joining AltaVista, he spearheaded CRM and e-commerce development efforts as a development director for Oracle Corporation.
“Mark’s background—developing innovative e-commerce, content and search solutions that drive revenue—is ideally suited to NameMedia’s mission of building the world’s best trading platform for domains, allowing domain owners the opportunity to realize the full value of their ‘digital real estate’ by listing their name on the equivalent of the ‘MLS’ for domain names—NameMedia’s Domain Listing Service,” said NameMedia CEO Kelly Conlin. “Today, NameMedia has more partners on its network than any other domain marketplace, and Mark’s experience will assure our continued innovation and leadership.”
“With more than two hundred million registered domain names to date—and the prospect of many more domain name extensions—this is an ideal time to be building the industry’s pre-eminent trading platform,” said Haseltine. “Just as the market for real estate or financial instruments have depended on trusted exchanges for their growth, the market for this essential asset of the Internet—domain names—will benefit from a global, networked platform.”
Haseltine’s portfolio will include technology leadership of NameMedia’s domain marketplace, Afternic.com, its SMB-focused sales site, BuyDomains.com, its domain name development platform, SmartName.com, and its network of niche websites. These sites service customers in more than 100 countries around the globe, supported by a partner network that includes the world’s top domain name resellers.
Mark holds a BS in Computer Science and Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a MS in Computer Science from Stanford University.
Congrats to Mark. His first task should be fixing things on the site that have been broken for a very long time. Like column sorting in the selling stats page, etc.
Thanks good news. Hope Mark will perform very well…