Hello, happy Monday, and welcome to my weekly domain investing news roundup. If you want to know what happened in the world of domain names last week, read on and get in the know. I don’t use any bots or algorithms to put this together, instead it’s me, Morgan, reading through all the news like I do each week, flagging stories I think are important and then sharing them with you in one post.
Ready to rock? Let’s get started!
First up is one of the hottest stories of the year, Go Daddy’s acquisition of Uniregistry, and with it Frank Schilling’s massive domain portfolio. We should all expect to hear new updates and features being released as both companies join forces. Monday of last week kicked off with Uniregistry announcing support for Afternic DLS. What does this mean? If you have domains at Uniregistry you can now make them available through Afternic’s 120+ partners and are now able to opt-into the faster-transfer program. You can read more about Uniregistry and Afternic DLS’s powers combined here.
Next up is an event that I really enjoyed last year, Rick Schwartz’s Asheville domain investor meetup, which Rick announced will now be delayed. The announcement came on Twitter last Monday, here’s the tweet:
I think this is a wise move, health comes first, and none of us know what’s going to happen with the coronavirus over the next few months. Thanks to Rick for making this move, I know it wasn’t an easy decision to make but it definitely feels like the right choice to me!
On Tuesday Domain Name Wire broke the news about a lawsuit which claims that the domain name Pay.io was stolen. Given that short, meaningful .IO domains are selling for five-figures all the time now this is a very valuable name and I hope the rightful owners are able to get it back.
The biggest (public) domain sale of 2020 was announced last week on DNJournal. The domain is Palace.com and it sold for $306,000 by DomainBooth/DomainBoutique. DomainBooth is the company run by the Booth Brothers, who if you don’t know – you should, they’ve been absolutely crushing it when it comes to domain sales. I hadn’t actually heard of DomainBoutique before so I looked them up. It looks like Chris Norris is the brains behind DomainBoutique and he looks familiar so I feel like I’ve met him at some point over the years. This is a great domain and a great sale, so congrats to everyone involved – you’re now in the #1 spot for 2020!
Of course the top news story outside of domain names is the coronavirus and Elliot from DomainInvesting.com discovered that Coronavirus.com is owned by Go Daddy. Here’s a bit more about what Go Daddy is doing with the name:
Within the last day or so, Coronavirus.com began forwarding to a page within the World Health Organization’s (WHO) website. Anyone who types in Coronavirus.com will land on one of the most authoritative websites with information about the virus, details about protection from the virus, and travel advice. I couldn’t guess how much traffic this domain name receives, but I am sure it is quite a bit. Instead of monetizing the domain name, GoDaddy is utilizing it for the greater good.(Source – DomainInvesting.com)
Adding onto the coronavirus and it’s direct impact on the domain industry, ICANN announced last week that it is postponing its Middle East DNS forum due to fears around the coronavirus. Like these ICANN events and Rick’s event I think we’re going to see a lot of conferences cancel over the coming months. Like all of us, I hope this is all just everyone being extra-cautious but until we all know more, I’d say it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Towards the end of last week MMX announced the addition of three new executives – Vaughn Liley who previously was the Sales Director for ICM, Ben Anderson the former Director of Product for Uniregistry and Ronan Prendergast. These are three super talented people so I’m guessing we’re going to be hearing more and more about MMX this year as they continue to ramp things up for 2020.
Last but not least, I wrote a blog post last week that ended up seeing a lot of activity and some excellent comments. The post is about category-killer domains and if they’ve become less relevant/valuable over time. If you want to join in the conversation feel free to hop in join the conversation.
Thanks for reading and as always if there’s news from last week you think deserves attention that I didn’t cover here, feel free to share it in the comment section below!
