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Go Daddy buys Afternic

Kevin Murphy, September 20, 2013, Domain Registrars

Go Daddy has strengthened its already pretty strong hand in the domain name aftermarket by acquiring Afternic from NameMedia for an undisclosed sum.
Afternic provides a centralized platform for listing domains for sale. About 100 registrars, including Go Daddy, carry its six million listings.
Go Daddy also offers its own customers a Premium Listings service. Integrating the two platforms will happen “over the coming months”, Go Daddy said.
Afternic usually reports about a million dollars of domain sales via its platform every week, but those figures don’t include private sales. It already has deals in place to sell premium names for several new gTLDs.
Some of Go Daddy’s biggest competitors — existing Afternic partners — appear to be happy about the move. Go Daddy’s press release quotes Tucows and Web.com executives giving the deal the thumbs-up.
Afternic did once belong to Register.com, one of Web.com’s registrars, but for the last six years it has been owned by NameMedia.
The deal also includes SmartName, NameMedia’s parking service, but not BuyDomains, where NameMedia sells its own portfolio of names. Go Daddy will take on Afternic’s Boston-based staff.

Afternic picked to handle .buzz premium names

Afternic and NameJet have been selected by the applicant for .buzz, dotStrategy, to manage premium domain name allocation in the new gTLD.
Afternic will build the .buzz reserved names list and sell them through its marketplace, while NameJet will exclusively handle sunrise, landrush and premium name auctions, the company said in a press release.
Arkansas-based dotStrategy, which is also in a contention set for .fun, thinks .buzz will be a memorable gTLD for marketing campaigns, among other purposes.
Its .buzz application has already passed Initial Evaluation with ICANN, is uncontested and has no objections or GAC worries. The company reckons it could go to sunrise by October.