It appears that Salesforce.com may have acquired the Community.com domain name, as the company is now listed the registrant of the domain name. According to Whois records as of October 15, 2013, the Community.com domain name is now owned by Salesforce.com. The Whois records from October 14, 2013 and prior show the owner of Community.com as CBS Interactive, Inc. Prior to that, it was owned by CNET, which was acquired by CBS Interactive, Inc.
Based on the fact that I didn’t see Community.com listed for sale anywhere, nor did I see any record or report of a sale, I can only assume the domain name changed hands privately for an undisclosed figure. If I had to guess, I would say that Community.com is worth seven figures. I reached out to the Whois contacts at Salesforce for more information, but the lead contact is currently traveling.
There are a couple of ways I think the domain name may be used by Salesforce. First, and probably the most likely is the SalesforceSuccess Community. “Community” is one of the drop downs in the top menu on the Saleforce website, and that takes you to the Success Community page within the website, currently operating on a subdomain. The graphic on the top says there are 900,000 members, so it seems to be popular.
Salesforce also offers something called “Chatter Communities,” although that doesn’t seem to be as showcased on the company’s website. This is also the plural term, so it would seem less likely the acquisition was related to this.
As of right now, Community.com does not resolve to any website. If I was to bet, I would bet that it is going to be used for the Success Community given the likelihood of confusion if they used it for the product/service with the plural term combined with the fact that it does not appear that Salesforce acquired the Communities.com domain name.
Salesforce has been quite active in domain name acquisitions in the last few years. The company now owns Data.com, Social.com, Site.com, and other exceptional domain name assets.
I will update this article if I receive more information from the company.
It appears according to archive.org, that Community.com was originally owned by CNET — in ’98-’99 it had a 301′ to Snap.com it’s online community portal, then most of 2000’s it forwarded to CNET.com
Then it was simply a parking page the past 8 yrs or so.