Demand Media paid $18m for Name.com, the retail registrar company founded in 2003 by Bill Mushkin. Name.com was reported to have around 1.5 million domain names under management – that’s about $12 per name.
Demand Media (NYSE: DMD) also owns eNom (the second largest registrar in the world with 13.5 million domain names registered by more than 8,800 businesses) and is expected to release Top Level Domains (TLDs) in April. (A TLD is a domain extension–better known as what comes after the dot. The most familiar are com, org, net and gov. Less common but growing are TLDs like .me and .tv. ) Mushkin and other industry leaders pushed the new gTLD program through Senate Hearings in 2011, arguing it would be innovative and economically beneficial. The new TLDs will allow businesses to create more memorable or descriptive web addresses, e.g. marticormand.com could become marticormand.artist. Nearly 2,000 businesses have already submitted applications for new TLDs.
