In a email that just went out to customers of Afternic.com, the online domain name marketplace owned by Name Media, Godaddy has acquired Afternic.
According to the email, Name Media which owns Afternic.com, is just selling Afternic.com the marketplace and not BuyDomains.com another company owned by NameMedia which owns and operates reportedly some 1 million domain names.
It will be interesting to see how this will effect some new gTLD registries.
Afternic.com has been offering an aftermarket product geared to the new gTLD registries in a partnership with NameJet.com.
Godaddy has also been offering an aftermarket program to new gTLD registries which competes with the Afternic.com/Namejet offering.
Guess we will see how that plays out.
Here is the email that just went out:
“Afternic has agreed to be acquired by GoDaddy.
This will be made public later today but as a valued member of Afternic we wanted you to hear it from us first. This has some powerful benefits for you and our industry.
First, Afternic will continue to operate under the Afternic brand.
Your account services will remain in place to support you. Your business terms with Afternic will remain the same and you will continue to manage your account directly from the Afternic.com control panel.
Second, GoDaddy will be joining Afternic’s Fast Transfer network, meaning your domains will be available on a Fast Transfer basis to GoDaddy’s massive audience of customers seeking a domain. Fast Transfer domains enjoy by far the highest sales velocity so this should translate into incremental revenue for you.
Most important, GoDaddy is making this move as an endorsement of Afternic as the industry standard by which cross-registrar fulfillment of aftermarket transactions can occur.
Afternic will operate as an industry utility.
The adoption of—and investment in—this technology ensure that that the domain industry can reduce friction and increase velocity of aftermarket domain sales.
We believe these changes will benefit our industry as we move towards an increasingly distributed and unified domain aftermarket and are excited to work with you to realize this vision.
We’ve included some questions and answers about the transaction. We invite you to contact your Afternic representative with any other questions you may have.
Warm regards,
Kelly Conlin
Chairman and CEO
NameMedia
[email protected]
Q&A
Q: What led to today’s announcement of GoDaddy’s acquisition of Afternic?
A: Both Afternic and GoDaddy share a vision for a unified domain aftermarket that allows any registrar anywhere in the world to offer for sale all of the available secondary market domains with the same confidence that exists in the primary market.…
