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- ICANN publishes its Woke Manifesto. Here’s my hot take
- Alibaba, Name.com among new RDRS opt-ins
- The Swiss can register .swiss domains from next week
- .ai up to 425,000 domains
- A million “free” .music domains up for grabs
- D3 to get $5 million in crypto to apply for .ape gTLD
- Alibaba hit with ICANN breach notice
- New Vegas conference “Davos for Web3 interoperability”
- ICANN content policing power grab may be dead
- Cable company unplugs its dot-brand after acquisition
- Germany crosses 10,000 dot-brand domains milestone
- Founders out as Com Laude gets equity injection
- PIR’s Diaz to leave domain industry
- Some registrars have already quit ICANN’s Whois experiment
- ICANN opens $217 million Grant Program
- Internet could get one-letter gTLDs (but there’s a catch)
- .ai registry fights deadbeats with tweaked auction rules
- Amazon and Google among .internal TLD ban backers
- .ai registry advises buyers not to use GoDaddy
- .post liberalizes with new sunrise period
- Team Internet spends $41 million on content farm
- Epik backtracks on Kiwi Farms claim after legal threat
- .austin names launch on blockchain
- Freenom shuts down 12.6 million domains — report
- GoDaddy’s next .xxx contract may not be a done deal
- GlobalBlock blocking 2.5 million domains
- Microsoft moving its cloud apps from .com to .microsoft
- ICANN 79: anonymous trolls and undercover lawyers
- ICANN scores win in single-letter .com lawsuit
- Cosmetics brand terminates its gTLD
- Up to 70 jobs on the line at Nominet as .uk regs dwindle
- Governments back down on new gTLD next round delay
- Private auctions could be banned in new gTLD next round
- ICANN meeting venue “insensitive and hurtful”
- GoDaddy to start selling graphic.design domains
- GAC spinning up new gTLD curveball at ICANN 79?
- GoDaddy’s GlobalBlock supports blockchain names
- Police .uk domain takedowns dive in 2023
- GoDaddy wants to cut the bullshit from .xxx
- Dueling domain blocking services to launch at ICANN 79
- Freename tries to bridge DNS and blockchain
- Olive retires from ICANN
- Whois policy published without life-saving disclosure rule
- UK gov takes its lead from ICANN on DNS abuse
- Tucows reports 2023 results
- Twitter “completely unresponsive” on clickable domains
- ICANN spends $5 million more than planned in first fiscal half
- .art takes a million domains off its premium list
- KeyTrap ‘the most devastating vulnerability ever found in DNSSEC’
- Freenom settles $500 million Meta lawsuit and will exit domain business
- New gTLD lottery to return in 2026
- First GlobalBlock prices revealed — they ain’t cheap
- Domain universe grows on new gTLDs despite .com shrinkage
- D3 signs up crypto gTLD client number five
- GoDaddy reports strong domains growth
- How to qualify for a $40,000 gTLD
- Registry service provider evaluation handbook published
- WebUnited inks deal to “mirror” country’s TLD in the blockchain
- GoDaddy project unveils brand-blocking calculator
- Report: Monster “misappropriated” millions from Epik
- .com is shrinking but Verisign raises prices again anyway
- D3 announces fourth crypto new gTLD client
- Donald Trump loses second UDRP case
- UK cybersquatting complaints hit record low
- No excuses! PIR to pay for ALL registries to tackle child abuse
- ICANN insists it is working on linkification
- Namecheap sues ICANN over .org price caps
- GoDaddy offers free Ethereum blockchain integration
- Epik reveals who is running the company
- Epik gets acquired again! The plot thickens…
- Airline gTLD crashes and burns
- First chunks of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook drop
- Epik to reveal its owners soon
- Another crypto firm to apply for a new gTLD
- Monster and Royce are NOT involved in Epik?!
- Nominet to overhaul .uk registry, turn off some services
- Russia blames DNSSEC, not Ukraine, for internet downtime
- Team Internet says revenue beat estimates
- Sold for over $20k, insure.ai and dog.ai back in .ai’s expired names auction
- .ai helps UDRP cases rise in 2023, WIPO says
- Freenom’s domains land at Gandi after termination
- .ru domains fly off the shelf as Western sanctions bite
- ICANN picks its first ever Supreme Court
- Lebanon’s ccTLD going back to Lebanon after ICANN takeover
- ICANN picks the domain it will never, ever release
- ICANN approves domain takedown rules
- Has Epik gone “woke”?
- First bits of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook expected next week
- ICANN bans closed generics for the foreseeable
- You can’t use money to buy .box domains
- After 14 years, ICANN practices what it preaches on IDNs
- Weak demand for private Whois data, ICANN data shows
- .ing doing way better than .meme
- DNS Women barred from ICANN funding?
- Dev releases free open-source TLD registry platform
- INCO flips a gTLD to Identity Digital
- Anguilla fears the .ai junk drop
- Five more gTLDs get launch dates
- $10 million of ICANN cash up for grabs
- Almost 50,000 .ai domains sold in a quarter
- ICANN threatens to regulate your speech [RANT]
- Life insurance company kills dot-brand
- ICANN finds new home for Lebanon’s TLD after founder’s death
- ICANN begs people to use its new Whois service
- Shiba Inu outs itself as crypto new gTLD applicant
- Over 50,000 .ai domains sold in three months
- Amazon planning new push into registrar market?
- Registries and registrars vote ‘Yes’ to new DNS abuse rules
- ICANN predicts flattish 2025 for domain industry
- Fast-growing Gname buys another 150 registrars
- GoDaddy service to let you block domains in over 650 TLDs
- Did I find a murder weapon in a zone file?
- ICANN drops the “man” from Ombudsman
- Have your say on police domain takedown powers
- Most registrars are shunning ICANN’s new Whois system
- Nominet to take over .gov.uk
- ICANN picks Istanbul for 2024 meeting
- ICANN’s private Whois data request service goes live
- .au regs slide on 2LD anniversary
- ICANN accused of power grab over $271 million auction fund
- A registrar is getting blamed for an Israeli war propaganda site
- Two more dot-brands bite the dust
- Google sells five-figure AI domain and six-figure .ing hack
- .blackfriday is still a bit rubbish
- Internet Naming Co acquires five more gTLDs
Team Internet spends $41 million on content farm
Team Internet is back in acquisition mode, saying this morning it has picked up an Israeli content farm business for $41.8 million.
It’s bought Shinez IO, based in Tel Aviv and Denver, for the initial sum plus a potential extra $12.3 million if the company meets certain financial targets over the next two years, the company said.
Shinez operates a network of lightweight blogs covering areas such as food and fashion, which are marketed via social media and monetized via multiple ad networks.
It’s a lucrative business — Team Internet says Shinez had revenue of $111 million, $17.2 million in net revenue, and $10.4 million of EBITDA in 2023.
The acquisition edges Team Internet, formerly CentralNic, ever closer to becoming a billion-dollar company. It now expects revenue for 2023 to work out at $948 million.
The deal also seems to mean reduced exposure to Google as the company’s number one ad revenue source. Team Internet said “this acquisition would more than double the Online Marketing segment’s revenue generated independently of our Tier 1 channel partner”.
Team Internet says revenue beat estimates
Team Internet gave a preview of its 2023 earnings report this morning, saying that revenue grew faster than its own targets and analysts’ estimates.
The company, formerly CentraNic, expects to post revenue around $835 million, up 15% on 2022, and profit up 12% at $96 million for the year.
The firm’s Online Presence segment, which includes the domains business, had revenue up 16% at $179 million, while the far larger Online Marketing segment saw revenue up 14% at $656 million.
Team Internet will report its full results on March 18.
Team Internet hires Nominet alum as domains CEO
Team Internet, formerly CentralNic, has named Simon McCalla as CEO of its domains-related business.
McCalla is formerly CTO of .uk registry Nominet, though he’s been taking a break from the domains industry for the last few years.
Team Internet said he is now CEO of its “Online” division, which I can only assume is the business it previously called “Online Presence”.
That’s the division encompassing the company’s registrars, registries and back-end business, as opposed to the traffic arbitrage business where it makes most of its money nowadays.
CentralNic rebrands as Team Internet
Another well-known domain industry firm has rebranded itself around a forgettable, search-resistant company name.
CentralNic is now Team Internet, though it will continue to use “CentralNic” in its domains business.
The company has changed its primary domain from centralnic.com to teaminternet.com (a redirect is already in place) and its AIM ticker symbol from CNIC to TIG.
The brand comes from Team Internet the parking company, which CentralNic acquired for $48 million in 2019.
The change makes sense — CentralNic doesn’t even make a quarter of its revenue from domains any more. Today, most of its money comes from social media marketing arbitrage and domain monetization.
Even if it were still laser-focused on domains, the registrar side of the business is bigger and “Nic” doesn’t make much sense there.
The company started off selling third-level domains in pseudo-gTLDs such as uk.com and gb.com, before enthusiastically embracing new gTLDs as a back-end provider and subsequently getting into the registrar game.
As its 10-year IPO anniversary approaches this month CEO Michael Riedl observed in a press release that the company has grown from a $4 million annual business in 2013 to a $728 million business last year.
Also of note, Gavin Brown, who was with the company since pretty much the start and held various C-level positions on the technical side of the house over the years, left the company last week to join ICANN.
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