Today we have a heavy hitters list of corporate domain name movers, registration and more by companies many of you are aware of! Some big, expensive domain names are in today’s list and most of these sales would go unreported otherwise… so here we go!
EmpiresAndAllies.com has been acquired for a currently unknown MarkMonitor client. The domain was acquired from HugeDomains.com (likely for $1,995) by a Julie Wiseman of IP Acquisition Company, LLC “[email protected]” with the domain being transferred to GoDaddy and being put into privacy protection but domain name servers were set to corporate domain registrar MarkMonitor.com
Well, it appears the domain IpAcquisition.com was acquired in 2011. A Julie Wiseman works for a company called IP Legal Advisors and has since 2011 when she switched from a Paralegal for a different legal company to office manager at IP Legal Advisors, P.C. via Linkedin IP Acquisition Company, LLC was filed by a John M. Kim who also happens to own IPLA.com which is IP Legal Advisors, P.C. . So IP Legal Advisors, P.C. owns IP Acquisition Company, LLC.
Empires And Allies is a Zynga game on Facebook, and it is stated on IPLA.com that Zynga is a client… so they are the likely buyers based on my research.
Astrology.com has changed ownership from iVillage LLC (Owned by NBCUniversal) to Horoscope.com Inc.
Founded in 1999 under the name Astrocenter.com, Inc, Horoscope.com, Inc. has quickly become the worldwide leading provider of fully-personalized, original horoscopes and astrological content on the web. In 2010, Wengo (part of Vivendi, one of the largest media groups in the world) acquired the European activities of Horoscope.com, Inc.
There was a website on the domain and by the logo it stated “brought to you by iVillage”. That same website appears to remain but the “brought to you by iVillage” is now gone. Is Horoscope.com connected to NBCUniversal is the question and not something I could easily find. It appears that NBC may be doing away with iVillage? as that domain is now forwarding to The Today Shows domain Today.com
Horoscope.com Inc. owns other domain names like Center.com, Horoscopo.com, TrueAdvice.com and TarotCenter.com to mention a few. It appears that Astrology.org was included and Astrology.net is used for name servers but that domain is showing “Astrology.com” as the registrant with the email address of [email protected] which was the registrant email address for the .org and admin email address on the .com’s admin email. 17 domains reside on the Astrology.net DNS and they all appear to have transferred to Horoscope.com Inc. StarClub.com, AstrologyClub.com and more. Knowledge Web Inc. which appears to have been connected before with iVillage may be connected also as Kweb.com and KnowledgeWeb.com are both on the name server also.
Mode.com has been acquired by Mode Media Corp. The domain appeared to start redireting to ModeMediaCorp.com in at least December 2014 according to screenshot.com history but whois changed from a “Pulp Fiction” and gmail email address “[email protected]” to Glam IT / Mode Media Corp on 2/2/2015. The domain has been registered since June 1995.
Mode Media, Inc. (formerly Glam Media) is a privately held vertical media company with more than 4,000 lifestyle websites & blogs. Mode Media’s properties package brand advertising with professional digital content. Mode Media is best known for its women’s style website Glam.com and food website Foodie.com according to Wikipedia.
Hem.com sold to Jason Goldberg, founder of Fab.com on June 10, 2014 and launched as a design business with furniture being the main focus. Fab.com was recently sold as reported on TechCrunch and DomainGang.com but nobody mentioned the domain purchase of Hem.com which Jason put his focus on and brought with funding from Fab to Hem. Hem.com was under privacy protection at Network Solutions but Roger Bindl was the owner of the domain prior to the sale.
Roger Bindl owned the domain for about 20 years and was formerly known as HEM Production but is now called Bindl Productions after the domain sale of Hem.com. The domain HemProd.com was created on June 1, 2014 which is masked and redirects to BindlProductions.com . BindlProductions.com was created on September 17, 2014 and is now the companies main website. I reached out to Roger to see if he is able to share any details on the sale of Hem.com, because not only was it a domain sale, Roger had a business with the name, which takes a large amount of work to re-brand!
I did hear back from Roger when I reached out to ask if he could provide more info on the domain sale and he mentioned in an email: “Not much to say… I did sell it. My new domain is bindlproductions.com. I get way less traffic now but it’s much more directed. Having owned it for about 20 years meant a lot of work changing. I miss it but glad to see it’s being put to good use.”
Clearly I tried to get more info from Roger, like how he was contacted, did he know who the potential buyers were, sales price or even a range.. but those questions were not answered.
MyLearning.com has been sold by Adam Dicker for $14,000 via Sedo to a currently unknown buyer.
Amazon Technologies, Inc. has registered the domain name AmazonPrimeGear.com
Ford Motor Company has registered the domain name GoSurely.com that was once registered before but expired in 2010. Ford spent $10K on the domain name GoFurther.com which I reported on in 2012 and has been using that campaign since buying the domain. I’m not sure what “Go Surely” is going to be used for yet, but I’m not sure I like the term simply because “surely” also sounds like the personal name Shirley and I’m sure more spellings of the name!
MyLearning.com seems cheap for an Adam Dicker sale, eduction market is quite large online.
Sedo reported the price and I double checked whois as to Adam who sold it. Sedo did have issues in the past reporting domain sales for a specific price, when they were multiples of payments for the reported price, but I’m pretty sure they have fixed that problem. $14K seems like a pretty fair price for the domain IMO.