Demand Media just announced this morning that the are acquiring the retail registrar name.com. name.com was founded by Bill Mushkin in 2003. Demand Media also owns eNom and BulkRegistrar.com and is an active player in the new gTLD space. The acquisition will increase their reach into direct domain sales. name.com has over 1.5 million domain names under management.

Santa Monica, California – January 7, 2013 – Demand Media® (NYSE:  DMD), a leading digital media company, today announced the acquisition of Denver-based Name.com, a domain name registrar known for its strong retail footprint, award-winning customer service and creative spirit.  The acquisition is intended to expand Demand Media’s platform as it prepares for the historic release of new Top Level Domains (TLDs) this year.

Founded in 2003, Name.com customers have registered nearly 1.5 million domains, and use the company’s tools and services to grow their online presence.  As the second largest registrar in the world, Demand Media’s eNom subsidiary has over 13.5 million domain names on its platform registered by over 8,800 resellers and partners.  “Name.com will provide a direct channel for us to reach consumers and small businesses as they develop and manage their online identities,” said Richard Rosenblatt, chairman and CEO, Demand Media. “This becomes even more valuable as over one thousand new domain extensions are expected to become available for registration in the years ahead.”

In 2011, ICANN initiated the process for creating new domain extensions as a way to increase domain name choices for memorable or descriptive web addresses (for example, integritymortgagesolutions.com can become integrity.mortgage or integritymortgage.solutions) and help organize websites and information better (for example, gwathmey-siegel.com could end in a domain extension that maps to the nature of the business, such as .law, .architect or .cpa).  Last June, ICANN announced it had received 1,930 applications for new TLDs that were submitted by entrepreneurs, businesses, governments and communities around the world looking to operate a TLD registry of their own choosing.

Demand Media will retain the Denver-based team and the business will report to Taryn Naidu, executive vice president, Registrar Services.  “Our strategy is to provide an end-to-end solution for all things domains — whether you are looking to consume or distribute names and services,” said Naidu.  “Name.com brings innovation, creativity and a deep commitment to their customers – factors which we believe are essential in the environment of new gTLDs.”

[via Press Release]

According to an interview by PaidContent:UK, Demand Media’s content division will expand to Europe this year.

[...] Demand’s European sales and business development VP Stephanie Himoff tells paidContent:UK Demand will start filling its gaps on the continent from this summer.

“Through 2011 – and particularly in the second half of the year – you’ll see, in Europe, a lot more in terms of building the community and content,” she says.

Demand Media also is the parent company for domain registrars eNom and Bulk Register and is also operating NameJet in a joint venture with Network Solutions.

[via PaidContent:UK]

Domain Registrar Fabulous.com announced this evening that they have partnered with domain name registrar eNom. Emails sent to their customer base (quoted in full below) this evening aren’t exactly clear in what capacity the two companies will be partnering. Fabulous says that the partnership allows them to “streamline and optimize our registrar technology, freeing us to focus on what has been key to our success:- great tools, great support” and that they “continue to remain a wholly-owned business of Dark Blue Sea“.

[Updated/added] A representative of eNom told DNN: “The Fabulous.com websites will remain in place and they will be leveraging eNom’s Registrar API technology to operate some of the backend Registrar operations. This shouldn’t effect the way customers do business with Fabulous except it will allow them to leverage some additional TLDs and products currently not offered.“

Fabulous’ announcement of Yexa, a registrar reseller software, in the summer of 2010 was an interesting move in to a space that eNom, a Demand Media company, dominates, the reseller business. Enom’s partnership with a potential competitor in that space, leaves one wondering about the specific arrangements. Recent news from Photon Group could also leave one wondering if there’s more to this arrangement as well.

Fabulous parent company Dark Blue Sea (DBS) was acquired by Photon Group in 2009. Photon was in debt at the time and since then their stock hasn’t faired well since. Last summer Photon brought in a new CEO, Jeremy Philip from News Corp who announced that he was going to “clear decks“.  With mounting debt and a new CEO at the helm Photon sold four of their online properties.  The company sold Findology.com in January 2011 and released a statement saying “Photon is examining its search marketing businesses” (of which DBS is it’s largest company) and “assessing the impact of the carrying value of the remainder of the search marketing businesses.”  An announcement on the Photon site [PDF] states, “The Company continues to concentrate on its strategic review and operational improvements across the business.”

As of December 2010 Photon had reduced the number of companies owned from 45 to 28 and rumors about a potential sale of Dark Blue Sea have been circulating. DBS referred DNN requests for more information to Photon. DNN has not been able to reach Photon Group contacts..

See a full copy of the email that went out to Fabulous’ customers after the jump.

(more…)

According to Bloomberg Demand Media plans to raise $120 million selling shares for $14 to $16 in their IPO scheduled for January 25th, 2011. The company, run by co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer Richard Rosenblatt, has now cleared its final SEC hurdle and set the IPO date and pricing. The IPO had stalled in December when the SEC was waiting for responses on the company’s accounting practices. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are leading the $7.5 million offering. The shares will be offered at the New York Stock exchange under the DMD symbol.

Demand Media is parent company to many companies such as registrars eNom and Bulk Register, many websites such as eHow and domain parking company Hotkeys.

[via Bloomberg]

As we had reported earlier this year, Demand Media, parent company of numerous registrars, websites and a domain parking company, was planning to file for an IPO in 2010. According to an article by CNNMoney, the IPO has now stalled due to the regulator’s questions regarding Demand Media’s accounting practices.

The company’s CEO, Richard Rosenblatt has always insisted that the company was profitable, but the IPO filing revealed a different story, showing that the company is in the red for at least for $6 million USD for 2010. One of the reasons the filings are being investigated is that Demand Media expenses the cost of content creation over the course of five years, stating that the average time period this content will generate revenue for is 5.4 years.

[via CNNMoney]

The newest proposed and supposedly final version of the ICANN new TLD applicant guidebook brought some unexpected changes and questions such as the sudden dropping of the requirements of registry/registrar separation.

As pointed out by industry watchdog George Kirikos on the ICANN forum the changes in the new gTLD guidebook block any entity from applying for a new TLD that has lost more than three UDRP proceedings. The arbitrary rules seems to have been added in order to block specific applications, especially from domain investors who have been target of UDRP proceedings. Unfortunately the decisions in these proceedings have been less than impartial in the past.

Interestingly enough it seems that the changes to the new TLD application could for example bar registrars GoDaddy (through their subsidary “Standard Tactics LLC”) and eNom/Demand Media from applying for new TLDs, as they have lost more than 3 UDRPs in the preceding four years.

As pointed out by The Domains, this change also affects the registrar Tucows, which has lost more than three UDRPs.

According to an article in the Financial Times, Demand Media has hired Goldman Sachs to explore an initial public offering. The company, founded by the former chairman of Myspace, Richard Rosenblatt, owns registrars eNom, BulkRegister, parking company Hotkeys and operates the NameJet drop catching site in partnership with Network Solutions. Aside from owning a domain portfolio, which includes a large number of expired domain names, the company also runs a user generated content production service called Demand Studios. The content is then published on Demand’s websites, such as eHow. The company’s freelance workers produce about 4,000 video clips and articles per day.

DomainFest is less than 2 weeks away and there will be plenty of networking and big name speakers at the event. If you can’t get your fill at Domainfest though, there’s even more going on in LA that might be of interest to you as well.  Wednesday and Thursday Los Angeles will also be host to another internet/tech event with big names and venture capitalists galore.

Internet start-up gurus like Paul Graham, Robert Scoble, Om Malik, and even Demand Media’s own Richard Rosenblatt, will be speaking at  Twiistup.  The 2 day event features an agenda geared toward start-ups and features some of these start-ups in the “show-off” session.  Twiistup calls themselves the event “where venture capitalists and entrepreneurs come to find the next big thing”.  If you are an investor or launching a start-up idea Los Angeles is definitely the place to be the week of January 25-29th.

Paul Stahura (image from his facebook profile)

Paul Stahura launched eNom in 1997 from an ISDN line in his garage in Redmond Washington. The company now is part of Demand Media and Paul was a CSO as well as a member of the board. After 12 years, he is now leaving the company. Here is what he writes on Facebook:

After much thought, and 12 years after founding eNom, I’ve decided to join the ranks of eNom alumni. Demand Media, the company I sold eNom to nearly four years ago, is a great company and will be even greater in the years to come. Truly “going big”… Huge. The board, the management team, the employees – everyone – our customers, our services, are top notch. Demand is still in the first innings, but its time for me to move on. I look forward to working with Demand in the future, just not as an employee, and to keeping in touch with you all. Very best of luck to everyone at eNom and Demand Media! So long for now, Paul

DNN wishes Paul all the best for his future plans.

If you are interested in catching the ICANN meetings live, the webcast is up with a chat window.

There was a popular “adversarial style” debate held between VPs from Afilias and Demand Media over new TLD registries owning registars that according to one tweet was compelling enough to create a “packed room” at the event.

Video recaps will be posted at the meetings main site at http://sel.icann.org and the transcripts at http://sel.icann.org/sel/transcripts and the presentations here http://sel.icann.org/sel/presentations

If your eyes glaze over from all the “domain talk”, you can also take a break and listen to the “Hero Guitar” opening video here : http://bit.ly/4A3Dgb