Last we heard from Demand Media it was beating earnings expectations, with a revenue performance up 17 percent in the second quarter and even boasting of a small profit. The ‘social content’ company was also on an upward swing on its stock. Perhaps it’s that momentum which is behind today’s news that the company has acquired the Denver-based Name.com, a domain name registrar with a strong retail brand, in order to add to its platform plans for Top Level Domains (TLDs) this year. Demand already owns the eNom registrar. Over one thousand new domain extensions are expected to become available for registration in the years ahead. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Founded in 2003, Name.com customers have registered nearly 1.5 million domains. The deal makes sense for security given that Demand Media’s subsidiary, eNom, has over 13.5 million domain names on its platform registered by over 8,800 resellers and partners. As Richard Rosenblatt, chairman and CEO points out, “Name.com will provide a direct channel for us to reach consumers and small businesses as they develop and manage their online identities.”
Demand Media applied for 26 new gTLD, and is a partner with Donuts, Inc., in another 100 of its new gTLD applications, according to The Domains. Demand Media is also the backend provider for all of the new gTLD registries that Donuts will be awarded.
In 2011, ICANN started the process for creating new domain extensions so that, for examples, integritymortgagesolutions.com can become integrity.mortgage or integritymortgage.solutions.
This is assuming, of course, anyone will actually understand such URLs…