Interim CEO gets two C-level roles at Go Daddy

Go Daddy’s management shake-up continues apace, with the news last night that former interim CEO Scott Wagner has been appointed COO and CFO.

Wagner comes from KKR, one of three major investors to take a big stake in the registrar in 2011.

He was CEO in the interregnum between Warren Adelman’s short-lived stint and the appointment of Yahoo alum Blake Irving this January.

Irving has been filling senior spots at the company ever since taking over. Many of his new recruits are former Yahoo colleagues.

GoDaddy said in a press release that its sales hit almost $1.3 billion last year and that it has more than 11 million customers.

Go Daddy building big new facility in Arizona

Go Daddy has “broken ground” on a new 150,000 square foot facility in Tempe, Arizona.

The new Global Technology Center will have room for 1,300 technology and customer care employees, the registrar said in a press release today. It expects to create 300 new jobs locally.

The construction project was ceremonially kicked off by CEO Blake Irving and Arizona governor Jan Brewer today.

Go Daddy is of course a native of the state, with its headquarters in Scottsdale.

The new two-story center will be located in Arizona State University Research Park, and is set for completion in 2014.

Go Daddy hires CTO from Yahoo

Go Daddy has made its third top-level hire from CEO Blake Irving’s alma mater, Yahoo.

Elissa Murphy, formerly vice president of engineering, will join the registrar as chief technology officer and head of platform, All Things D reports.

Go Daddy has reportedly confirmed the move, saying she’s due to start next month.

The news comes just a few weeks after the company recruited James Carroll from Yahoo to head its international business.

Irving joined Go Daddy in January.

Go Daddy poaches another Yahoo exec

Go Daddy has hired another Yahoo executive to join its senior management.

James Carroll, senior vice president of the consumer and global platform group, is to head Go Daddy’s international business, according to All Things D.

Go Daddy is of course now headed by former Yahoo Blake Irving, who has made international expansion one of his key growth strategies.

Irving hired Carroll at Yahoo too, All Things D reported.

With Yahoo apparently undergoing a shakeup under its new CEO Marrissa Meyer, it’s not impossible we might see more execs winding up at Go Daddy before long.

Go Daddy cozies up new gTLD players, drops its own .home and .casa bids

Go Daddy has changed tack in its new gTLD strategy, dropping its own applications and positioning itself strongly as a registry-neutral channel to market.

The company spent yesterday wooing new gTLD applicants at a specially convened meeting in its native Arizona; there were representatives from about half of the applied-for gTLDs in attendance.

But apart from the fact that Go Daddy has withdrawn its applications for .home and .casa — and symbolically dropped the “.com” from its logo — the company is playing its strategy pretty close to its chest.

Director of policy planning James Bladel told DI that the meeting was more about “starting a conversation” with registries, rather than laying out Go Daddy’s specific plans for new gTLDs.

The company will be a hugely important channel to market for many gTLDs, and competition for store-front space on the Go Daddy home page is expected to be fierce.

Existing big-volume “new” TLDs, such as .info and .co, can attribute much of their success to Go Daddy.

It’s responsible for well over half of all .info domains registered today and .CO Internet’s success to date can no doubt be attributed in no small part to its strong relationship with the company.

But Bladel would not be drawn on Go Daddy’s specific plans for the next wave of gTLDs.

While the company has a patent on a method of allocating shelf space via an Adsense-style bidding technology, Bladel said Go Daddy has not yet decided whether to use that system.

The company could also use other methods, algorithmic rather than commercial, for selecting which TLDs to display to users, such as geographic location, he said.

Another conversation that needs to happen relates to launch timing.

Ideas may include staggering launches to benefit from joint marketing efforts, or pooling launches into big-draw “launch day” events, Bladel speculated, noting that the company is more interested in hearing ideas from gTLD applicants right now.

While Go Daddy will continue to push its application for .godaddy dot-brand, with the loss of .home and .casa it will no longer be in the mass-market gTLD registry game.

Registry-neutral registrars may actually be a rarity in the new gTLD era.

eNom will certainly walk away with interests in more than a few gTLDs, directly and via its deal with Donuts. Tucows, Web.com and Directi will also have some, depending on contention set results.

Apart from Go Daddy, the only other top-ten registrars without their own gTLDs could be United and FastDomains.