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Pop.com Acquired for “Roughly $1.5m”

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A thread on Hacker News about Pop.com was trending on Wednesday. In the thread, the Founder of Pop.com, Jahanzeb Sherwani, shared quite a bit of information about the company. In addition, he shared that the company paid “roughly” $1.5 million to acquire the Pop.com domain name. He also shared some additional thoughts about what the domain name means to the company and how it was acquired.

Here are a few excerpts from what Jahanzeb said about the Pop.com domain name in the Hacker News thread:

Near.com Sold for $1.15 Million

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Near.com has been sold by Anything.com, in a deal brokered by Larry Fischer. The domain name was sold for $1,150,000, and the escrow and legal aspects of this deal were handled by Ari Goldberger and Jason Schaeffer of ESQWire.com. This is the second million plus deal closed by Anything.com in the last week, following up on the $2.5 million sale of Marketing.com, reported by DNJournal. This is the ninth publicly reported million dollar sale of 2021.

If you visit Near.com, you will be forwarded to the Near.CO website. The company is called Near, so it is no surprise it wanted to upgrade to the .com domain name. Near is billed as “the world’s largest source of intelligence on people and places.” According to its Crunchbase profile, this Singapore-based company has raised $134 million in funding through its Series D funding rounds.

Could ICANN Prohibit Registrars from Investing in Domain Names?

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A UDRP was filed against the VOCL.com domain name, and the single member panel ruled in favor of the complainant. A request made by the panelist in the decision could be concerning to domain registrars that own domain names as investments or are directly related to domain investment businesses.

You should read the entire decision to understand what occurred, but here’s an excerpt from the decision that could be particularly concerning to some domain registrars:

Paul Nicks Comments on Fiscal Auction

Fiscal.com appeared to be destined for an expiry auction at GoDaddy earlier this week. The domain name auction was due to conclude on Monday afternoon, and bidding had surpassed the $30,000 mark. I was a participant in the auction (bidding over $30,000), and I was prepared to spend considerably more than the high bid. In fact, I had offered more for the domain name earlier this year.

The Fiscal.com auction disappeared from GoDaddy Auctions at some point between Sunday night and Monday. This was surprising because the domain name was registered at GoDaddy and there was less than 24 hours remaining in the auction. As far as I know, a 2017 change in how the expiry process works was supposed to ensure that GoDaddy-registered domain names that make it to 3 days or fewer in an auction with bids can no longer be renewed by the registrant since the redemption period had passed.

NamesCon Global Moved to Late Spring 2022

The Covid-19 pandemic continues to cause changes to events around the world. NamesCon just informed attendees that its largest annual domain investment industry conference – NamesCon Global – will be moved to “late Spring 2022.” NamesCon Global has been traditionally held each year in late January, with the last in-person conference taking place in Austin, Texas in January of 2020. NamesCon had been planning on hosting its NamesCon Global conference in January of 2022, but those plans are now scrapped.

The NamesCon Online event will still be held as planned from September 22-24, 2021. Tickets for the event are available to purchase online. Past online-only NamesCon events seem to be popular amongst industry participants.

Here is the announcement from NamesCon, along with a discount code link organizers shared for the upcoming virtual event:

Hilco Streambank Looking to Hire Domain Business Leader

Hilco Streambank posted a job opening on LinkedIn that might appeal to someone with domain industry experience and expertise. Hilco is looking to hire a Domain Business Leader. The person will help the company build a domain name brokerage business and will help manage the domain name assets of the company and its clients.

Hilco Streambank specializes in the sale of assets owned by companies going through bankruptcy proceedings. I wrote about one of the company’s domain name bankruptcy auctions earlier this year after winning AllOut.com. Hilco has sold many domain names in this manner, and the company also manages its own portfolio of domain names.

Here’s an excerpt from the LinkedIn job listing describing what the company does and what the company is seeking in a candidate for this position: