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As first reported by DNN, Keydrive bough Monikter and Snapnames from Oversee.net. The official Press Release was published today and can be found after the jump.

KeyDrive S.A. Acquires Moniker and SnapNames from Oversee.net

Luxembourg and Los Angeles, Calif. (February 1, 2012). KeyDrive S.A., an internet solutions holding company with subsidiaries providing domain registration, monetization and aftermarket services, announced today that it has acquired the Moniker and SnapNames business units of Oversee.net, a leader in online performance marketing.

Moniker® and SnapNames® offer businesses and individuals an array of services for domain name registration, acquisition, brokerage and sales. Moniker introduced the live domain name auction concept. SnapNames operates the largest online auction of expired and deleting domain names, giving its customers access to valuable names.

“The purchase of these two leaders in the domain aftermarket perfectly fits our global growth strategy”, said Alexander Siffrin, Chairman of the KeyDrive S.A., and CEO and founder of Key-Systems®. “We now have the opportunity to extend our global outreach, target a broader customer base and cross-sell our services. Furthermore, our European clients will gain access to US buyers and sellers of domain names. We’re delighted to welcome the Moniker and SnapNames teams to KeyDrive S.A.”

“The sale of these assets allows us to focus more on our core monetization and vertical markets divisions which are the fundamental building blocks of our global performance marketing network,” noted Debra Domeyer, Co-CEO of Oversee. “As the domain industry landscape changes, it is essential that we invest in new technologies that leverage our existing platform and unlock the potential of domain traffic. Our focus is on developing new monetization alternatives for both publishers and advertisers. We also want to thank Craig Snyder and the Moniker and SnapNames teams for their years of dedicated service. ”

Oversee was advised in the sale process by Petsky Prunier LLC.

(c) 2011 DomainNameNews.com (4)

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According to industry sources, Keydrive S.A. will announce this morning that they have purchased Moniker & Snapnames from Oversee.net. Information about the sale has already been posted on the companies website and was also added to ICANNWiki yesterday.

KeyDrive S.A./Luxembourg includes the Key-Systems Group in St. Ingbert/Saarland (Germany), the NameDrive Group (Luxembourg/USA) as well as Moniker and SnapNames (Florida and Oregon/USA) with more than 160 employees.

After the takeover of Moniker in January 2012 the group ranks among the TOP 10 biggest ICANN registrars in 6th place; the group currently administers a total of more than 5.4 million domains.

Rumors about a potential sale of Moniker & Snapnames had been circulating for  a while. DNN expects an official announcement to be published shortly and will update this post accordingly. Keydrive was created by merging KeySystems and Namedrive.

(c) 2011 DomainNameNews.com (2)

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SnapNames/Moniker’s year end auction ends today. At the time of this post (about 10 hours before the end of the auction), 15 domains of the 53 domains in the auction have currently received bids and apparently “answer.com” (which was listed for $150,000) has been removed from the auction.

Domain	Minimum Bid	Bidders
paternitytest.com	$22,000.00	6
fyny.com	$400.00	3
omib.com	$376.00	3
apw.com	$13,499.00	2
mentality.com	$7,001.00	2
conp.com	$400.00	2
ce.com	$1,050,000.00	1
qx.com	$82,500.00	1
f.biz	$10,501.00	1
mock.com	$10,500.00	1
teaclub.com	$5,250.00	1
dairy.net	$2,600.00	1
rvrx.com	$1,050.00	1
ftsw.com	$325.00	1
mosquitowipes.com	$325.00	1
yogurtshops.com	$325.00	1
creditreports.com	$1,000,000.00	0
floor.com	$1,000,000.00	0
prime.com	$1,000,000.00	0
cheyenne.com	$250,000.00	0
phd.com	$250,000.00	0
empire.com	$100,000.00	0
tofu.com	$100,000.00	0
webmastertools.com	$100,000.00	0
cheaplaptops.com	$50,000.00	0
crete.com	$50,000.00	0
financialmanagement.com	$50,000.00	0
snare.com	$50,000.00	0
taxpreparers.com	$25,000.00	0
golfgloves.net	$10,000.00	0
guitarstrap.com	$10,000.00	0
herbalpills.com	$10,000.00	0
interlink.com	$10,000.00	0
motorcycles.net	$10,000.00	0
fliphomes.com	$5,000.00	0
betas.com	$2,500.00	0
coffeeshop.net	$2,500.00	0
golfcart.net	$2,500.00	0
ticketoffices.com	$2,500.00	0
autism.me	$1,000.00	0
baroquepearls.com	$1,000.00	0
cloudmusicstorage.com	$1,000.00	0
corporateattorney.co.uk	$1,000.00	0
onlinestorefronts.com	$1,000.00	0
realityshows.tv	$1,000.00	0
ridinggloves.com	$1,000.00	0
vipz.com	$1,000.00	0
marketingflyer.com	$500.00	0
cyberdiscounts.com	$300.00	0
intinction.com	$300.00	0
mlvm.com	$300.00	0
pranks.tv	$300.00	0
answer.com	-	-

(c) 2011 DomainNameNews.com (3)

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As announced via email by Ovesee.net today, the company has laid off 13% of its workforce. The official announcement sent to DNN in an email says:

As part of its plan to address new growth opportunities, Oversee.net has realigned its work force resulting in a staff reduction of 13 percent. These moves, along with pending new hires, will allow the company to leverage core assets to innovate more effectively, improve competitive positioning and achieve growth.

When question about the areas of reduction, the company stated they would not provide details, but stated that ”the workforce reduction was across all functions”.

(c) 2011 DomainNameNews.com (4)

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Godaddy launched a domain name market analysis section on their site today which touts the claim that they are selling more domain names at auction than industry veteran Sedo.com.

According to Godaddy :

• Go Daddy sold more than 109,000 domain names through auctions in 2nd Quarter 2011.
• Sedo sold approximately 10,600 domain names in 2nd Quarter 2011.

The sheer volume of sales is likely due to the fact that Godaddy is one of the largest domain registrars that auctions off domain names that are expiring from it’s user base and Sedo is not.  The comparison is a bit apples to oranges, yet the numbers are stunning.   Namejet.com might be a better company to compare Godaddy with.  Namejet auctions many registrar deletions at a starting price of $69 compared to Godaddy’s $10 starting price.  It would be interesting to compare those numbers and we invite Namejet to jump in to this competition. :)

The data on the site also shows some interesting numbers about the amount of domains that are sold Buy it Now, Offer/Counter-offer and  Auction.  Again, the numbers are likely skewed with the Auction numbers receiving more volume because of the deleting names that Godaddy auctions.  The Buy Now number is the one that is impressive.  It would be great to see these numbers made a little more granular to know how many of those auctions were deleting/expired domains vs actual sellers and how many of the Buy It Now were Premium Listing names sold from home page searches.

The launch of this new section of the Godaddy site and the recent lowering of commissions seems to be a clear indicator that Godaddy is aggressively going after the domain aftermarket business.  Kudos to Godaddy for sharing this data.

After the disappointment of the DomainFest Barcelona live auction cancellation, the SnapNames.com re-do auction has ended with what most would consider to be more disappointment, only 4 5 domains sold for a total of $55,670. (Note this is an unofficial total).

The highest priced sale, Houses.co.uk at $50,870,  received the most activity on bidding with 19 bidders and at least 3 bidders battling for the name at over $20k.  The auction extended 30 minutes past the end time. It’s noteworthy to mention this sale was for one of the best names on this list started with a No Reserve price.

A few other domains appeared to receive bids that were seemingly near the reserve prices including worldclock.com, bodysculpting.com, duffelbag.com and premed.com.

One bidder with the alias “buyitfromme” chipped away at the price on WorldClock.com over the course of over 30 minutes, essentially outbidding themselves.  The initial bid came in at $25,001 and the bidder kept upping their bid at the >1 minute mark. As I watched I kept thinking “Just keep bidding right away. Let’s get this over with. Why are you waiting until there’s >1 minute left”  Their bid amount reached $41,000.  After all that effort, the domain still didn’t meet the reserve.

Notably, Social.com received a bid of $2.5 million today, which means there is some high-level interest in the domain, but the offer failed to meet the reserve.

pilsners.co.uk  - $300
houses.co.uk – $50,870
gado.com – $3000
seoagencies.com – $900
semexpert.com – $600

All domains from the “live” auction will be entered in to the extended auction along with many other domains. The extended auction can be viewed online here.

As pointed out elsewhere, Moniker did broker Data.com for over the $1.5 million mark. The domain was on this list and removed before the auction, and it was not part of this auction or the results from today.

 

(c) 2011 DomainNameNews.com (9)

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After technical difficulties last week, the DomainFest Barcelona auction was re-scheduled to conclude online today. The auction of Social.com had gained some press and I’m sure the cancellation of the live event was a huge disappointment for the owner.   There’s nothing more disappointing than building up buzz and getting people to come to the auction and then having it fall apart.  Just ask the guys at Boxcar.com.

Good news just came in on Social.com though.  The domain name has a bid at $2.5 million (see below). It hasn’t met the reserve but this is a pretty good sign regardless.  You don’t just lay out a $2.5 m bid if you aren’t serious.    Check out the auction action as the names close at SnapNames.com

 

 

The auction closes in a little more than 2 hours.  What do you think ?  Will Social.com sell today ?

 

(c) 2011 DomainNameNews.com (8)

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SnapNames.com just announced and made live a two day flash auction,  of domain names  “that were recently registered by SnapNames due to their high VeriSign Data Analyzer Traffic Score and Generic Word strength!”

You can view the VeriSign Data Analyzer Score here (Note the traffic score is on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 as the highest traffic domains.)

The auction end as soon as tomorrow June 4th with the majority closing on June 5th and a few for the 6th

Bidding starts generally at $69 for each domain

After a recent announcement by SnapNames for a price increase for catching dropped domains from $59 to $69, NameJet will be announcing to their customers in an email later today that they are dropping their price from $69 to $59 in a trial. It appears the prices have already been lowered on the site.

[Updated] See the text of the email below.

Dear NameJet Customer,

Ready to save money?

NameJet just lowered our minimum bids on all pending delete domain names to $59*!

In addition, NameJet has increased its available inventory of pending delete domains by adding TV and CC to our inventory which already includes COM, NET and ORG.

Get your backorders in now because this offer is valid for a limited time.

Search or Download Inventory

Learn More About Pending Delete Names

Sincerely,
NameJet™

* Promotional offer is only valid for a limited time and minimum bid amount can change at any time.

According to an email just sent out by SnapNames the pricing for backordering deletion domain names will increase from $59 to $69 starting tomorrow.

See the full text of the email below:

On February 15, SnapNames will raise the starting bid for backorders for all deleting domain names from $59 to $69. This starting bid increase applies only to orders for names that are deleted from their respective registries (not the expiring or privately held names listed from registrar partners or sellers).

This change applies exclusively to new orders—any previously placed deleting domain name backorders will be grandfathered in and remain at a starting bid amount of $59; thus, $59 will be the opening bid if the name enters our system. (Note, if you are the only bidder in this scenario, like today you will be the buyer at $59. If another party backorders the same name after February 15, that party’s opening bid will be at $69 and the system will alert you to raise your bid if you so elect.)

As is the case today, all non-deleting domain names will enter our system at the starting bid price specified by the listing party. Opening bids for those names will stay at the amounts originally set.

There is no change to auction procedures. If there is only one bidder for a name at the time of its availability, the name will be awarded to that bidder. For names with more than one interested party, the names will go to auction and the highest bid at or above the starting bid amount will prevail.

Questions can be directed to the SnapNames support team:

E-mail: support@snapnames.com
Web: http://support.oversee.net/login.php

(c) 2011 DomainNameNews.com (8)

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